The unsullied

They're still about a thousand man strong, and i can't help but feel their numbers will grow with time. They'd do well against any opponent not more then 3 to 1.

As for the unsullied, in my mind, they fight like the roman legions did, which basically conquered half o Europe, as well as parts of Asia and Africa.
However they have the same problems as the roman legions, once grasped they can be easily dealt with.
 
the nights watch seem to be strong only from a defensive position, one in which 3 to 1 odds are to be expected. The prowess of the Nights Watch in pitched battle remains to be seen.
Whilst we have been shown to effectiveness of the Unsullied on a couple of occasions, and in the attacking role.
 
KiwiBird said:
They're still about a thousand man strong, and i can't help but feel their numbers will grow with time. They'd do well against any opponent not more then 3 to 1.

As for the unsullied, in my mind, they fight like the roman legions did, which basically conquered half o Europe, as well as parts of Asia and Africa.
However they have the same problems as the roman legions, once grasped they can be easily dealt with.
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Roman legions never had to deal with the heavy cavalry of medieval Europe. The invention of the stirrup, which occurred sometime around the 5th or 6th century, was the key to development of heavy cavalry (allows a man to stand in the saddle (leverage to swing a mace or longsword), to brace against impact, and to better control the mount) and on an open field, little could best heavy cavalry except the longbow (battle of Agincourt, but as armour became plated, the longbow was less effective), pikemen (and you need a lot of them for them to be effective) and finally the cannon. The legions, without longbows or heavily armoured pikemen, could not hope to stand against a charge of lancers.

It is likely the Unsullied would be mowed down by knights, provided that there are any left by the time the Unsullied get to Westeros. Winter is coming, after all. The true threat is to the North.
 
I'd take The Unsullied against the Night's Watch everyh day of the week and twice on Sunday. The only advantage the NW has is The Wall. Other than that they are poorly equipped, inferior physically, get far inferior training, have inferior mental resolve, etc. etc. The whole idea of the NW is toublesome to me, but I'm going to save that for another post.
 
Grey Worm mentioned something about learning the way of the three spears. If the phalanx is one, I'm wondering if pikes are one of the others. If that's the case, then the Unsullied might do to the Westerosi what the Swiss did to knights IRL.
 
Arthur_Connelly said:
Grey Worm mentioned something about learning the way of the three spears. If the phalanx is one, I'm wondering if pikes are one of the others. If that's the case, then the Unsullied might do to the Westerosi what the Swiss did to knights IRL.
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Perhaps, but I cannot imagine a pikeman learning to also be part of a phalanx. The phalanx predated the pikeman by about 2000 years, and its biggest weakness was its lack of maneuverability. The Roman legions armed with the gladius (a short stabbing sword) quickly learned how to beat the phalanx. The pikeman is the logical successor, but pikeman were also rather heavily armoured, in order to deal with the lances of the knights.

The above being said, GRRM will let us know, I suppose, at some point (hopefully this year) what the way of the three spears is. It might include a pike, in which case, the knights are in trouble.
 
You are all using real world examples, which is inherently fallacious since we're discussing a setting in which those examples do not fit.

Jorah thought the only advantage the Westerosi would have would be their castles and knowledge of siege warfare.

Also, you're forgetting the unsullied of Qohor, I think that's the one, who held off an entire khalasar of cavalry, archers among them.
 
The said Khalasar, aside from decorating the Unsullied shield-wall with arrows, and being light, manueverable cavalry with little if any armor to mention (their arrows having for the most part been ineffective against the opposition, by the way) crashed headlong into the ranks of spear-wielding shield-bearing Unsullied. The Khalasar, again, a mounted unit, lost many men in that headlong charge against the Unsullied. The Dothraki being the Dothraki, however, they regrouped and plummeted into the spearwall seventeen more times. The Dothraki were ill equipped, tactically, materially, strategically and also in terms of leadership (though they had plenty of spirit, as far as it got 'em against the Unsullied) to go up against a battalion that utilized such foreign and obviously devastating techniques. The Dothraki routed.
 
Pravuil said:
The said Khalasar, aside from decorating the Unsullied shield-wall with arrows, and being light, manueverable cavalry with little if any armor to mention (their arrows having for the most part been ineffective against the opposition, by the way) crashed headlong into the ranks of spear-wielding shield-bearing Unsullied. The Khalasar, again, a mounted unit, lost many men in that headlong charge against the Unsullied. The Dothraki being the Dothraki, however, they regrouped and plummeted into the spearwall seventeen more times. The Dothraki were ill equipped, tactically, materially, strategically and also in terms of leadership (though they had plenty of spirit, as far as it got 'em against the Unsullied) to go up against a battalion that utilized such foreign and obviously devastating techniques. The Dothraki routed.
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Excellent demonstration of the effectiveness of Alexander's phalanx against the Persian cavalry, which was a light, spear-wielding and bow-wielding cavalry for the most part (again, no stirrups). The heavy knights of Westeros (or Europe), with stirrups, which allowed heavy plate armour on both themselves and their huge chargers (i.e. Clydesdales, Percherons, etc.), and heavy weapons (lance, longsword, flail and mace) using the medieval heavy cavalry charge would smash a shield wall, phalanx or legion, to pieces. Only pikemen/halberdiers or cannon fire would be able to fend them off. Even the English longbow stopped being effective against knights once they switched from chain mail to plate armour, but by then, the cannon was being successfully deployed against cavalry, and armour and the big horses were slowly left behind, in favour of faster and more maneuverable cavalry.
 
southron sword said:
Well, thats the question isnt it. G.R.R.Martin is a tricksy man. I just dont think the Unsullied will follow Dany all the way to the end. They may get to Westeros, but something will happen. Dany will need someone else to fight for her.
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the smiling weirwood said:
They'll willingly sacrifice themselves to win her some great victory. It'll be tragic, poetic, touching, and will conveniently dispose of them before Westeros.
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Or something like that.

GRRM has shown us - and only three books into a seven-book** series - that Dany has an almost invincible fighting force at her disposal. The chances that she'll turn up to the final battle(s) with this fighting force available to her must be very low, given - as southron sword has said - how tricksy GRRM is, must be very low indeed.



** - Or, rather, six-book when ASoS was written.
 
the smiling weirwood said:
You are all using real world examples, which is inherently fallacious since we're discussing a setting in which those examples do not fit.
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Point taken. Yet I wonder if it's the bows and arakhs of the Dothraki that Jorah feared or their mobility. Historically (I know, woody), light cavalry would just flee or either stay out of range of heavy cavalry. Slower and more heavily armed troops are in constant danger of being outmanouvered by faster troops if they cannot come to grips with them.
 
I didn't know you could use an arbalest from horseback.:confused: Or do you mean mounted on wheels? Did they have them mounted on wheels or wagons?

Arbalests are hard and slow to reload, and unless you have a whole whack of them, relatively ineffective against cavalry (except for the poor sods who actually get hit), who tend to swarm you while you are reloading the damned thing. Excellent siege defense weapons, as they were protected and you could fire at your enemy at will, but hard to use in the field, unless you had heavy infantry and/or trench-works in front of you.
 
Essentially, a ballista would be a large mounted arbalest. And yes, there actually were those who fought with crossbow from horseback. I'm not quite sure of the effetiveness of this technique, though against heavy cavalry and on an open field I'm sure it was one of the better options. As for the swarming, once more the arbalestier cavalry should be fast, mounted on coursers preferrably, and so light cavalry; also, a crossbow can be reloaded from horseback (obviously excluding the larger crossbows, or unhistorically dubbed 'footbows'). The principal behind this is that the heavy cavalry will chase a faster foe, who is one step ahead of them and armed with armor piercing bolts to effectively negate the heavy cavalries armor, making the armor an overall liability against said arbalest cavalry. The missile cavalry can wear the heavy cavalry down by galloping away, reloading, firing, and if the heavy cavalry don't pursue then they are assailed by more consistent volleys of bolts.
 
So then just get some hussars (light cavalry, w. sabers), who are very fast, to kill the arbalestiers while they are re-loading.

Point is, an army needs more than one dimension.
 
I would like to have a few K-9 divisions, of direwolves, directed by a couple of canny humans. One division would be my nightvision scouts. One would evicerate horses. Another would navigate rough terrain, track the enemy and ambush fighters from behind. A few could specialize in terrorist howling.

It would also be nice to have a few human controlled dragons as an airforce. They could do reonnaisance missions. They could have flame on capabilities or drop buckets of special Westeros napalm.

I'd have some dragonglass arrowheads and spear tips for Other control.

I suppose there is also the possibility of birthing shadow assassins, for eliminating leadership threats.

It would be nice to have lots of sentient message delivery and spy crows.:)
 
Mission accomplished, Pravuil.

I think you have the vocabulary advantage for this purpose!

I suppose merely hobbling the horses would be more efficient, and less cruel. I'll bet a pack of purposeful Special Forces wolves could do this fairly rapidly.

All of the above seems possible given the tools at hand in Westeros. A small army of unsullied, knights and roundheads, er I mean, Faithful, wouldn't hurt.
 
Warging. Warging with dragons?

Is there any reason that Jon, Bran and Arya couldn't be the "three heads of the dragon". Is there anything which states that the "heads" have to be riders? Wouldn't being in complete control of a dragon fit the bill? Isn't this exactly what warging can provide?




* Waits while someone more familiar with the books explains why this is all nonsense. *
 
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