FIXING The Battle of Winterfell | Game of Thrones Battle Strategy Analysis

 

Game of Thrones was one of the most critically and financially successful shows ever made. It's hard to believe it's already been 2 years since the finale, but I think we're going to be talking about it for many years to come. Case in point, I have 6 videos about the Sopranos and one with hundreds of comments. Game of Thrones is a magnificent show but that doesn't mean everything about it was great. There's an awful lot to fix, but in this video lets fix the Battle of Winterfell.

Early Game of Thrones was about the interpersonal relationships between the members of several powerful families, most f them very wealthy, all of theme competing for total rule, the Game of Thrones, a game where you either win and become emperor of an empire of 7 kingdoms or you die. This was one dangerous game of chess. It wasn't a story so much about the battles between the families and characters but how the decisions of one affected the rest, and how just a little more cunning and knowledge was the difference between glory and total obliteration. It was all character driven. Every chapter of the books A Song of Ice and Fire, were named for the specific character's point of view, not for the events that took place, such as a giant battle. Early battles were often off screen. You didn't need to see each swing of the sword, so much as the aftermath.

That said, after 8 seasons, there was bound to be a humongous clash between the armies of these characters eventually, as it happened in the Battle of Winterfell between the living and the dead and the final battle between Cersei and Danaerys. There's just one problem. The writing and direction of the show fell off a cliff after season 6. In a nutshell, they ran out of book material after George R R Martin's last book in the series. While Martin wrote what was supposed to be the final book of the series, the makers of the show had to fill two seasons of the show with whatever they come up with.

The show runners felt like they had bigger fish to fry as they were negotiating a Star Wars contract, so they let Game of Thrones basically die on the vine. The actors, with some exceptions, seemed to also forget how much they cared in the earlier seasons and phoned in their performances. It seems when you are child actor and get praise and fortune thrown at you and you don't have to work another day in your life, actually working starts to get get unnecessary. So the last 2 seasons and particularly the last episodes are notoriously terrible. But seasons 1 to 6 still exist, and they are still great, so lets try to put some common sense back into the show, especially when it comes to battles.

The Battle of Winterfell

First off, when you are defending a castle, stay inside the walls. The walls are there for a reason, use them. When you put all your soldiers outside with no protection, what do you expect to happen to them when the castle is stormed? When the show was good, the writers knew how to show a castle being defended [Blackwater]. You stay in the walls and you fling arrows at the enemy, and you don't ever get suckered out into open field combat.

Secondly, why waste your cavalry? Why is it necessary to rush up to the enemy in the total darkness, way out of reach of your own artillery for support, and where you can't even be observed. The plot armor of the character Jorah allows him to escape unscathed to tell the tale, but without him coming back, you just see your entire cavalry disappear without trace, without even knowing what happened.

Cavalry is good for speed. I would have kept my cavalry divided in units, say 3 or 6 units in the center of the castle. And have signalers signal to the cavalry if backup is needed. They are on horseback so they can arrive to help anywhere in the castle in probably under a minute. Then they could dismount and man the walls where needed or stop a breach wherever it would occur.

Another problem in the episode a is lack preparation for the battle. They spent all that time put wood in the moat to burn, a burning moat that wouldn't even hurt these monsters, some of whom are nothing but bones. Instead, they could have put out defensive obstacles, traps and fences. The traps could have been spikes or time permitting, arrays of spikes called cheval de frises. These spikes would stick out to capture the running skeleton, getting it caught or even broken up. Not only do the enemy get caught up in the spikes and traps, but it slows them down. Considering the catapults and archers would already have the trap's distance figured out, the entrapped enemy would be bombarded with catapulted rocks smashing the skeletons. Fences could have been built to corral the rushing enemy into killing zones, and it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. If they wanted to, they could also have poured pitch on the wooden obstacles, which could have been set blaze when a large enough pile of enemy builds up.

Come to think of it, these obstacles should have already been built around Winterfell, but that's neither here nor there. Considering they were expecting a night assault, there should have been burning torches around a wide perimeter of the castle, and catapulted burning material shot out periodically as a flare, more to see the enemy than to assault it. There also could have been loud traps or trip wire that could have made noise alerting the defenders of the assault. At the very least, there should have been multiple scout units on horseback out patrolling and looking for the enemy.

Don't forget Bran could warg into crows, and could have been an eye in the sky, telling the defenders the positions and distances of the enemy instead of doing.... absolutely nothing. There is no excuse for a surprise attack when you are expecting an invasion.

When the invasion does come, hopefully the traps and pitfalls and obstacles take some of the enemy out, and hopefully the fences and obstacles you've built are built in a way to move the enemy where you want them, so it should have been a slaughter.

At no point should a soldier be on the outside of the walls. The defender of a fortification should have a major advantage, rather than wasting so many soldiers out front using hand to hand combat. The trebuchets should have been built on the inside of the castle walls, flinging rocks in a high arc onto the enemy when they are in the field, and of course should have been used much more than they were in the battle scene.

When you have a castle, you have so many weapons to choose from defending the walls. You can use archers all over the parapets. You can throw rocks down. At the gates you can have murder holes, into which you throw down rocks, boiling water or oil, boiling pitch which you can then set on fire. If they had them on hand, they could have put out hunting traps, which would have caught the enemy, rendering them useless even if it didn't kill them. At any point one part of the wall is overrun, the cavalry can rush to their defense. They would all still be available remember, because they weren't wasted in the beginning of the battle for no reason whatsoever.

Contrary to popular belief, putting all the noncombatants and children in the crypt is not a bad idea, considering if the dead were risen, they'd have to somehow get out of these stone tombs with noting but bones. Considering they would have to cover bodies in several inches of stone, and seal the tombs, I'd say there was no way the dead would get out of the crypts. But as we've seen, the last two seasons of the show just kind of forgot about logic.

Other than that, you'd have to defend the walls and eventually get into hand to hand combat and just hope you can defend the walls before they ever climb over. But the show put a magical force field over most major characters, so they were safe.

In the end, it makes absolutely no sense that a stealthy assassin would jump and scream while trying to kill the leader of the enemy. No sense at all. Somehow for the plot armor Arya had, the enemy doesn't snap her neck in a second, and pays the ultimate price for... I don't know wanting to stare at her for a little while.

Because the show gives almost all the main characters plot armor, most of them except for Jorah and Theon and that little girl survive against all odds. Then there is a coffee cup visible and we head into the last episodes.

As for the final episode, you can fix it in one second. Shoot Danearys with the ballista. Done. Battle done, Cersei wins. Instead, she makes the ultimate mistake in the Game of Thrones, which is to let the enemy live, thus losing the Game. All of that staring out of windows menacingly for nothing.

There you have it, the battles of Game of Thrones fixed. Please let me know in the comments how you would have fixed the battles, and if you ant o see more Game of Thrones reviews. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/KPsPrZ-hE4Y