[SPOILERS] Tactics used at the Long Night.

Hi all, this is my first post and I am not finished with the show. I just finished The Long Night, and I'm left shaking my head with some of their strategy choices and thought I would open this to discussion.

My first point is their seemingly sparce usage of fire. Seeing as how that should be their main focus to defeating the dead as dragonglass can only be used in hand to hand combat, why is it that there wasn't more redundant measures being used to reduce the casualties? Fire was mainly used in the hands of the Dothraki and archers, neither of which helped the efforts very much if at all, and the pit which was only successful at stopping maybe a few hundred, at most a thousand. If they had taken simple smaller steps, such as arming the walls with some version of a high fantasy molotov cocktail, and perhaps some flaming crossbow bolts, then I think their defense strategy would have greatly improved.

Second, it appeared to me that the spiked barricades in the pit were made with simple wooden poles. Do correct me if I'm wrong, as there are plenty of opportunities for someone to miss key information when watching the show (it's a lot to take in and I don't have my ADHD meds), but to my understanding the only way to kill a walker was with either fire, Valyrian steel, or dragonglass? Wouldn't it had made more sense to line the poles with one of the two latter options, rather than hoping they manage to stay lit during a northern winter? Again, if the armies of men did this then their defense plans would improve greatly, and they would in turn reduce the amount of people put in harms way, as the dragonglass or steel they used would be in a stationary object rather than the hands of a soldier. If they did do this and I missed it while watching, feel free to correct me (severe ADHD, I miss things frequently).

Finally, did they even have a strategy for defending the inside of Winterfell once forced to retreat inside? The only orders given were to relieve the archers but other than that the fight inside the keep seemed to devolve into a free-for-all. I guess at a certain point there's not really any other order you can give aside from kill the Wight walkers, but even then there was no real show of leadership once the fight was taken inside.

I could be wrong on all counts, and I know I'll most likely be chastised by select diehard fans if I am, but as someone who was a interest in large scale high fantasy battles in film and tv, this is simply what I observed. Feel free to build an echo chamber of validity around my opinions though, I'm always a fan of such.

Submitted October 16, 2021 at 05:18AM by BubbyHotep https://ift.tt/2YWmPgk