A Game of Thrones - TV Show Discussion Thread

[regexcellent]

Stannis only had 4,000 troops, but they were largely armored knights and men at arms and of course they're led by Stannis.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Stannis, the master tactician, seems to have brought columns of cavalry to fight in forests as well as on permafrost where the horses can't graze. Though, I guess if you go through the books it's fair to say logistics aren't his strong suit anyway...

[rah]

I guess that was my point. 4 thousand horseman could not defeat 25K fighters in the woods. (assuming 1/4 of the 100k were warriors.)

[Felch]

The books make it clearer that the wildlings are more of a mob of refugees than an army. Their weapons are mostly wood and stone or old rusty bits of metal, they're starving, and they have nothing that resembles formal training. A well fed and trained force of knights crushes them as easily as ISIS routs the Iraqi army today.

[rah]

Calvary usually does horrible in heavy forest. Their main advantage is running people down. In the forest Calvary can't maintain speed and people can hide behind trees to avoid being run down and pick riders off as they pass. It doesn't take much discipline for that. (fear will be enough) But yes, the book did highlight the mob part but that great of a numbers advantage should have been sufficient in the woods that minimize the advantages that Calvary usually has.

[Lorizael]

The books make it clearer that the wildlings are more of a mob of refugees than an army. Their weapons are mostly wood and stone or old rusty bits of metal, they're starving, and they have nothing that resembles formal training. A well fed and trained force of knights crushes them as easily as ISIS routs the Iraqi army today.

In the finale, you can totally see the look on Mance's face when Stannis shows up. "Oh, a real army."

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I think we lost some of the best characters there.

[rah]

You never know. Until you actually see them die, they're not necessarily dead. i.e. the mountain.
We don't see the hound actually die.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

It's probably safe to assume Charles Dance won't be back, which is a shame. He does play complete bastards so very well.

And top marks to the fight choreographers for the big Hound/She-Hulk *****slap. That was a proper brutal one.

[rah]

Yes, that fight was quite brutal.

[Dinner]

It was also a scene which wasn't in the books so the tv show writers had a free hand in coming up with the scene.

[regexcellent]

The books make it clearer that the wildlings are more of a mob of refugees than an army. Their weapons are mostly wood and stone or old rusty bits of metal, they're starving, and they have nothing that resembles formal training. A well fed and trained force of knights crushes them as easily as ISIS routs the Iraqi army today.

Yeah the book mentions heavy cavalry with lances on barded horses going up against men with sharpened wooden sticks.

[Hauldren Collider]

The Knight's Watch in the books was like 50 dudes, most of them crippled, which is why they could lose to Mance. But a bunch of armored mounted knights against an undisciplined and unequipped refugee army is no contest. Also the Wall has a ton of food stored in it apparently, they haven't shown this in the show yet I think but the Watch basically uses the wall itself as a giant icebox for a metric **** ton of meat and grain and stuff, so they have food to feed stannis' army in the interim.

[regexcellent]

In the books they had something like 600 men left after the big ranging actually.

Also, Stannis has a much more useful thing with him than food, which is money, and he can use that to buy food and have it shipped in.

[rah]

Yeah the book mentions heavy cavalry with lances on barded horses going up against men with sharpened wooden sticks.

On an open plain you are correct that it would be over quickly. But not in a forest. It would have been easy to show the encounter on the plains in front of the wall, which is why I was surprised that they did the extra effort of having the charge strike in the woods.