Good points, but I'd argue that there were archers pouring arrows onto the enemy (from the battlements, mainly), but they only had a few days to manufacture effective arrows, so had a limited supply, which is where there couldn't be the hail of arrows blotting out the sky.

Yes. This. So much. Just saw it yesterday and I was just confused when I saw the setup; "What, the cavalry is gonna guard the artillery?". Well no, it got worse - the first thing they do is send light cavalry straight into the front of the enemy lines. And then everybody looked shocked when all their fire swords vanished - well what did you think was going to happen? And that was the brain child of a whole bunch of nobles, who study tactics and strategy for years?

if someone can explain, why exactly the NK needs to kill Bran, please do because as was said in the previous episode, with Bran being the three eyed raven he is effectively a portal in to the past that is far more reliable than any written account. It would appear the night king wants to erase everything not just in the present but the knowledge of the past also. Where best to start than with the one individual who can recount knowledge of the past at a whim?

@JamesTrotter, Yes, but specifically why did the NK have to do it? Any individual minion could stab Bran. It was a cheap excuse to have the BBEG expose himself, at the cost of common sense.

@Fifth_H0r5eman true, was not thinking from that perspective.

Mostly correct, but I'd point out that star fortresses with bastions are a post-gunpowder invention, with the idea of designing a new castle from scratch. Winterfell is modelled on pre-gunpowder castles such as the Tower of London, Caernafon or Winchester. Not only did the concept of star fortresses not exist, but most families couldn't afford to do more than build extensions on the castle they already had. Perhaps the Lannisters could (except they actually couldn't...) but not minor nobility in a poor region which doesn't raise much tax.

@gra, Is the concept of scrap, counter scrap and ditch also too modern or too expensive for those castle? A good ditch would have reduce the worldwarZ effect. And a gound counter scrap would have been easy to defend by a line of spear Unsullied .

Good answer. Our heroes didn't have an advantage in numbers, strength, stamina, or morale - strategy was really their only edge over a mindless horde of the dead. But they didn't even use that.

@Fifth_H0r5eman I don't know why, but (if the fandom wiki is correct) the Night King also killed the previous Three Eyed Raven.

I'd also question their deployment of their most devastating weapon, the dragons. Why didn't the dragons just incinerate the first lines of the dead instead of pointlessly throwing away the Dothraki? Why, when the dead used their own bodies to cross a line of fire (which why didn't the dragons start in the first place), didn't the dragons patch the gaps with their own fire?

@Trotski94 I still don't understand why it's so important for Bran to go down ASAP. Knowledge of the past wasn't a factor in opposing NK's army, and as armed resistance is crushed (and added to NK's strength) it only becomes easier to take Bran out, especially since he can't hide. Even if NK needed to eliminate Bran eventually, it doesn't seem like an urgent task. Just a bit of bad writing jammed in to explain why NK would make some otherwise inexplicable decisions.

@Graham - I agree that the term "star shape fort" is newer. The concept of firing upon your own walls is old. While ancient fortification weren't completely "star shaped" they still had featured that allowed them to fire upon their own walls. Whether that was (I had to look this up) Machicolations, the holes from the castle wall over hang that let you fire down the walls, or extended portions such as circular bastions, such as surrounding the gates. I was just being short with saying star shaped, but the concept of eliminating dead space on walls is very old.

@Trotski94 - My main issue is that while Winterfel is obviously the next step down for assaulting westeros, killing Bran is a bit useless. It felt personal as opposed to any real reason. And he could have just waited. Bran isn't a set piece in the battle for the planet, he could just be a fun side trip when the majority of the population is destroyed.

You forget that units work better when they are trained to work together. The northerners did not have time to develop tactics and strategies for combining their fights with the Unsullied. The Dothraki do not have any tactics other than charge and kill the enemy. They fight the dead, and the dead are too many, too unstoppable, and too powerful. You want the best advantage you can get. Pairing Unsullied with northerners without a few good months of practice first is as good as just killing them before the battle.

@MattBurland - I believe the Dragons were there specifically to do battle with the other undead dragon and the Night King. It was Dani going off her rocker when all the Dothraki were killed that led to her strafing the enemies. In story, I don't think they imagined being that ineffectual against the White Walkers army. Like I said, they had no idea what they were going into, but they were really poorly prepared.

@Upper_Case: Since the NK was supposedly defeated before, knowledge of the past is knowledge as to how to defeat him. Knowledge of the past is knowledge as to how to rebuild the wall.

@Inkblot NK's previous defeat didn't seem to be among Bran's bits of historical knowledge, and he was defeated without that knowledge anyways (via an absurd plan that required NK to behave foolishly, but still). A new Wall was never going to go up while the war was ongoing, if this Bran even could figure out how to do it. Pursuing Bran as he did was essentially the only thing that made NK's most recent defeat possible. Maybe we'll learn more in the final 3 episodes, but killing Bran as priority 1 really doesn't make sense for now.

@Upper_Case: Yes, and humanity over the course of its existence has made quite a few repeated-discoveries. History is what gives us power. It is the ability of preserve knowledge from one generation to the next that gives us the ability to build on that knowledge rather than spending a lifetime rediscovering it. We don't know how the NK was first defeated. But as far as I understand it, the Children of the Forest were involved, since they are gone, I don't see how humans could defeat them by themselves now.

@Inkblot Except that they did defeat NK again, on Sunday night (apparently, at least). The point is that Bran's knowledge of history was not an edge here, as he (seemingly) knew nothing of the previous victory over the NK, and transmitted none of it to anyone, and the living won anyways. Bran's abilities may well be extremely useful after humans won the war, but didn't seem very valuable in actually winning it. Which makes him as an at-all-costs early target odd. Again, we may learn more. But with what we know at this moment, it doesn't really make sense.

@Upper_Case: Do you know about the predestination paradox? If Bran had told all those people who would die, that they are about to die, and to those who survive, that they will survive and how everything will go down. Do you think that all those people would have laid their lives, just like that? Do you think that the pressure of doing this or that would be fine with Dany and Jon? That they would let all those people die? Knowing how the battle will go down is not the same as being able to tell that to others. [...]

[...] Yes, they did not use Bran's knowledge of the past. Nobody showed that to us. All that we know is that nobody tried to use dragons to kill the NK, which means that Bran already looked into that. He sat there, and said nothing, because he knew what will happen. We do not know how far the powers of the NK extend. Can he also see into the past and future? Probably not, since then he would have seen his doom and prevented it. For all he knows, he might be just pushed back, and Bran will rebuild the wall. There are countless ways that this can be justified. I don't have all day, though.

@Inkblot As I've said, we may well learn more. And if we're going to grant canonical relevance to all events we can imagine, then there are no limits. But at present, most of the soldiers expected to die, the NK seems defeated, no special knowledge from Bran seems to have been at play, and only the NK's fixation on personally killing Bran made the victory possible at all. Bran seems not to have been strategically decisive, the NK seemed to feel differently, and the show hasn't given us enough information to reconcile those. Leaving the fixation difficult to justify.

@Upper_Case: How can you tell that the knowledge of Bran did not include the fact that the NK has to kill the three-eyed raven in order to gain their knowledge, or some other mystical MacGuffin? The NK didn't just come to Bran and kill him, he slowly approach, it was ceremonial. There was meaning behind that. Bran actively contributed his knowledge by pointing out that this will happen.

@Inkblot We may learn more. If the structure of the plot requires Bran to be killed by NK at the earliest opportunity, the plot can demonstrate that. It hasn't yet. At present it seems like a bizarre obsession counterproductive to what we know of NK's ultimate goals. That you can imagine the possibility of a baroque explanation which isn't in the existing canon doesn't change that. The best we can say is that it doesn't make sense yet. In three weeks, we'll know.

This is an interesting answer, but doesn't really answer the actual question, which is why the army is outside Winterfell and not inside it from the beginning. It isn't asking for a discussion about whether the tactics and formations were the correct ones. Also, asking and answering your own questions as an "answer" is pretty poor form.

@NathanGriffiths - The question was a bit loaded. The general answer is, that's just not how war is fought, and down to the actual walled parts of Winterfel isn't large enough to hold that many troops. They also mention in E1 and E2 that they don't have enough stores to feed that many people. The main question gets into strategy and tactics, "why don't they just start in the walls", etc. My answer covers all of this, why certain units aren't suited for Sieges, where you would want them etc. Not sure what you are referring to for "Asking and answering your own question" unless you mean OP.

I will say I found one specific thing about the battle particularly odd -- one that was mentioned by McFuu as well. Why didn't they start firing their trebuchets again once the remnants of the Dothraki riders had returned?