First of all, if you have OCD my drawing might drive you crazy. I drew Winterfell first and then worked from the top down. That’s why it’s not aligned. It bothers me too, but I didn’t want to redraw it
I’ve always been into strategy and war game scenarios. I love games like chess or anything where you have to plan a defense or attack. I was also in the Marine infantry where that’s pretty much all we do. I am by no means an expert, so feel free to chime in, I’m all ears
I think we all agree that Winterfell’s strategy in episode 3 was horrible. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days and here’s what I’d do instead. But first, lets break down their battle plan
ORIGINAL PLAN
The Dothraki charge in the beginning was an awful idea. You’re fighting an enemy far larger in size and your first move is to blindly charge into the open at night? I know the Dothraki are elite open field fighters but that’s against humans where there’s a shock factor of seeing these savages riding at you screaming and hollaring. The WW have no feelings so that won’t work. Jon himself said they can’t beat them in a straight up fight so I’m not sure what they were thinking with this idea
They had the catapults out in the open. Not the best idea. In the military our big artillery units like a M777 Howitzer is often kept within friendly lines. Why? Because they’re huge and hard to move. Not to mention they have a huge range so keeping it in your base won’t take away from it’s ability. In the beginning of the episode we clearly see the catapults out in the open with the troops. The better idea is to put it inside Winterfell if possible. If there’s no space, put them behind the fire trench
That leads to my next point. They only had one fire trench. This was clearly an effective strategy that took the Night King a little bit to find his way around. Not only did they just have one, but it was within a stones throw of Winterfell, a little too close for comfort. The better idea would be to have multiple. I understand they didn’t have a lot of time to build multiple trenches but I think they could have done at least one more. It would have made a big difference (I’ll explain later)
Their original plan was to have Jon and Dany wait with the dragons until the NK revealed himself. By doing this they took away not one, but both of their biggest weapons, the dragons. We know the WW can be killed by fire. So why on earth would you keep both your fire breathing dragons on stand by? I understand you want to go after the NK but you could (or should have) used one of your dragons to help with the troops on the ground (I’ll explain later)
MY PLAN
As you notice there are two fire trenches. One that wraps around Winterfell and one further out on the front lines. As I mentioned, they probably didn’t have much time so the one further out is just one line instead of a circle. We want to light these trenches BEFORE the fighting begins because it will stop the initial charge by the WW. We saw that giant tsunami of WW and that just overwhelmed them from the start. With this, it would at least slow them down
Because this trench doesn’t wrap around, we need fighters protecting the flanks. When it comes to the flanks, you want your best and strongest warriors there because it’s an obvious weak point. Riot police do the same thing. They take their most seasoned guys and put them on or near the end when they form a line. If you’re a new guy, you’ll be in the middle where there’s the most support. Same thing applies here. As you can see, I put the Dothraki on the ends along with strong and experienced leaders and people who can speak Dothraki (Brienne & Jorah /Tormund & Qhono). I was thinking the Hound, but he freezes when it comes to fire so I don’t want him up there
I moved the catapults inside friendly lines for reasons mentioned above. If there’s no room, they can be right outside the walls. This will ensure you can use them for as long as possible.
Now for the dragons. We'll keep Jon and a dragon on stand by in case the NK shows up. Jon has more experience with the NK so he’s more fit to go after him. Dany is an experienced rider so she'll be doing “fire runs.” In the military, a gun run is when something like an A10 Warthog flies back and forth raining down hell on the enemy. Dany will do this with her dragon when the WW get stopped or stalled by the fire trench. She’ll fly back and forth lighting up the front lines of the WW army. Since there’s a barrier, this will minimize friendly fire with the front line troops
Eventually, the WW will get past the fire trench. But they’ll run into the waiting and ready Grey Worm leading his Unsullied. Since they’ll be right there in front they won’t get trampled by sprinting WW like what happened in the episode. The trench will force the WW to come in slower waves instead of one giant stampede
Archers. We didn’t see many archers being used in the episode. Last I checked the Dothraki were elite archers. Lets keep some in the back and have them continually rain down dragon glass tipped arrows until they run out. This will be most effective when the WW initially get stopped by the trench. They will be more bunched up and again, minimize friendly fire
As the WW begin to overwhelm our forced due to their numbers, we will slowly begin to fall back, beginning with the flanks. The catapults, archers and dragon will still be used until no more
As far as Bran goes, it would’ve been a good idea to give him more protection. We know the NK was going for him but it looked like he only had a dozen or so guards. I decided to spare some Unsullied and have them watch Bran
Winterfell. I have no clue why they didn’t have fighters up on the wall on stand by. They had to rush people up there once they saw the WW break through the trench. They should’ve already been there. I put Eddison Tollett in charge of leading the whole defense of Winterfell
Now what about he weather? We can’t really plan for it because we didn’t know the NK had the ability to bring the winter with him. That definitely threw everyone off. They’ll just have to deal with it on the fly
Now, is this plan going to defeat the White Walkers? No, their numbers are just too much as we saw in the episode. They were pretty much beaten until Arya killed the Night King (which I hated) at the last minute. But I believe this plan is a far better plan and defense than what we witnessed in E3. I also understand there’s a million “what if” scenarios. I don’t have enough time to plan for every possible scenario so I just went with the assumption that the Night King attacked from the north.