This motherfricker single-handedly lost the battle. He put no scouts on the army’s flanks at all, and had no plan beyond “pikes out front, archers behind,” each line of which was literally just one line of guys. He had 70 orcs to stop the 5000 horseriders.
My ancestor
Also, why didn't he just send some guys to capture the beacons? the dudes on the dragons could have taken a bunch of them out easily
Did it matter? The rohrim still got fricked. It was the wraiths that ended the battle
The battle was lost because the author said so, nothing more, nothing less.
But he's right? Why ask a serious question about a fantasy scene as if the actor/character had a choice in their tactics? You know there's real battles that have taken place that you can talk about right?
>stop having fun
Considering that the books elude to the fact that Sauron is controlling his commanders it's actually Sauron's fault
His flanks were supposedly covered by the Corsairs and the Southrons. As you know, the Corsairs were hijacked and Aragorn landed in a suprise flanking manoever. The Rohirrim were also unexpected and basically hit the Orcs unawares from the rear when they were concentrating on breaching the castle walls. It will take a long time for scouts to warn the commanders to disengage from the siege and reposition thousands of troops 180 degrees anyways.
In the book, they did have screening forces on all the major roads. Rohan's forces achieved surprise by using a forgotten Gondorian road to sneak around Gothmog's scouts
>I am forgotten
>just wants to grill
>"I'll lead you through the pass if you leave us alone."
Honestly I can respect that.
Don't worry, steingruk's counteroffensive will break the puny horse-riders.
Mein Lugburz,
Steingruk...
The following stay in the land of mordor, where the shadow lies.
grishnovik
uglovich
snagillyn.
The rest, OUT!
[[high pitched screech that casts a cloud over the hearts of men can be heard for the next 72 hours]]
imagine having a fricking dragon on your side and still losing. this is why GoT is superior fantasy adventure
The nazghul didn't have dragons. They were riding what amounted to mutated flying lizards that had started out as small critters before Sauron fed them with all kinds of chemicals in an attempt to emulate dragons. The result was pretty terrifying, but nowhere near comparable to actual fire-spewing dragons, especially not the ones native to the rest of LotR canon.
Also, in the books, the call for reinforcements was sent through multiple ways. The beacons were just one, and the move chose to portray that as a simpler method of conveying what was going on to the audience. Others came from multiple messenger groups that all took different routes to make sure that the message arrived even if some were caught. Sauron literally didn't have enough fake!dragons to catch them all even if he had known their precise routes or the locations of the beacons.
Morgoth had a lot of real dragons but still lost.
Yeah, but Morgoth went up against elves that literally tackled Balrogs of cliffs.
>Morgoth had a lot of real dragons but still lost.
Morgoth fought the Quendi, Firstborn.
He only really lost when the undying host arrived. The Noldor were the only ones who really pushed him back before that.
how would drones impact the battle of minas tirith? would drone corrected catapult strikes from the orcs soften the defense substantially? would the oliphants be nothing but FPV magnets?
The general was almost certainly not an orc. He was probably some Black Numenorean like the Mouth or possibly an Easterling warlord. Numenoreans were probably the highest class servants of Sauron so it seems most likely to be one of them, but I’m sure there are figures of great renown amongst the Easterlings who could have made the position, too. Haradrim, maybe but I doubt it. An orc, almost certainly not. The movies pump the orcs up to high heaven but they’re weak, sickly-looking, cowardly midgets in the books who are absolute shitters and can only win via massive numeric advantage.
This guy gets it. Were there large numbers of orcs and trolls and other creatures in Sauron’s army? Sure. But they were expendable, either en masse or as beasts of burden or as shock assault forlorn hope. The bulk of the proper soldiers were easterling humans from Rhun, Khand, or Harad.
>Knokity knock knock
Gondorbros... The orcs have taken osgilliath.... maybe we should think about signing the peace terms while the rear end is still clean and stop provoking the red eye...
If Sauron had deployed his Balrog to command the forces assaulting Minas Tirith the battle may have been different.
Instead he sent him to guard some random bridge in a random mine.
>Sauron had deployed his Balrog
Sauron had zero (0) balrogs under his command.
Yeah Balrog is wildcard evil, although you can play it on Sauron's side in BFME
Isnt that the orc who was allegedly modeled after Harvey Weinstein because he was so hated in Hollywood even before all the sex scandals came to light?
The story I heard was they made a nasty looking orc model and Peter Jackson kept saying "make it uglier" so finally they intentionally went way over the top and made the shittiest, ugliest, most deformed thing possible, and Peter Jackson said "perfect"
Although I heard that story before the Weinstein story broke, so who knows
He didn't really in the movies. The Witch King gave the order for an all out attack and to take no prisoners.
In the books Gothmog never showed himslef and probably, as some anon pointed out, was no orc.
The movies don't really show it, but Sauron's attack on Minas Tirith was premature. (In the books)Aragorn showed himself in the Orthanc Palantír to Sauron and basically went: Yo Black person, I'm here to kick your shit!
And Sauron went full moron and attacked everywhere, fearing that the ring is already in use against him.
Mordor attacked Minas Tirith, Lothlorien and the lonely mountain. Most likely aslo non yoked Easterlings, Variags and Haradrim in the east and south of Mordor. Tolkien never elaborated what exactly was going on in the rest of the world, but it would be cool if had left at least some throwaway lines.
I wouldn't expect Rohan to pull another 50,000 horsemen out of their ass after Helm's Deep
1 ditch haphazardly dug with some spikes strewn about it would have erased the cavalry charge
Black person these horses charged straight down a cliff in the last movie.
True, and they did so into pikes. However I'd like to seem them charge into a ditch that is 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep, with 3 rows of spikes on the side they are charging towards. Which would be easy to construct for Sauron due to the mass amount of expendable labour he has at his disposal.
No amount of plot armour is going to prevent them from getting spiked like picrel
Counterpoint: Those orcs could better be put to use constructing siege equipment than prepare defenses against reinforcements that are never going to arrive, since Denethor is too mind-broken to ask Rohan for help and Southern Gondor is currently busy getting corsair'd.
they had like a gorillion orcs at the battle, they could have done both
Sauron doesn’t care, he thinks Pippin has the ring and will stop at nothing to get it back. Sauron is often blind to his weakness and is convinced of his force’s overwhelming numbers.
>Black person these horses charged straight down a cliff in the last movie.
Which was pure movieshit.
imagine listening to those thighs. mouth of Sauron indeed.
What is yoshitsune in the genpei war?
>and had no plan beyond “pikes out front, archers behind
works for me in shogun 2
in the book mordor has thousands of orcs guarding the flanks
>Gets cavalry ambushed while laying siege to a city
Isnt this pretty much what happened during the Siege of Vienna where the Polish Hussars BTFO'd the Ottomans?
No.
The Ottomans knew that a relief force was coming and tried to take the city beforehand. The Ottoman commander, Kara Mustafa Pasha, sent his more experienced troops to rush into the city but that didn't really work out despite blowing huge hole in the impressive Viennese defenses.
The ottoman rear was guarded by the Khan of Crimea and the cavalry. Despite know very well where and when the Holy League would attack, the Khan did jackshit and just let the coaliton pontoon over the danube and form for attack on a hill overseeing the siege.
When attack finally came, it was beaten off first but the infantry led by the duke of Lorraine managed to mangle a large part of the ottoman fron line. While the holy league footmen fought all day, Sobiesky got all heavy horsemen(Hussars and nobles from the Reich) he had and then charged down the hill on the very tired ottoman forces.
The ottoman army disintigrated and ended the Siege. Tolkien obviously took pointers from the Siege of Vienna, but the real battle was a lot more complicated and a large part of the ottoman loss was due to everyone not doing their job.
Wouldn't you say that almost military battles are lost because of leaders fricking up and the opposing side exploits that? But anyways, a good post nonetheless. Learned something today.
a lot of is that, oftentimes in the past it has been bad luck or bad information.
before the information age, communication was a lot more difficult.
i mean even as recent as the gulf war, there were so many instances of poor communication which allowed things to happen that otherwise shouldn't have been possible.
Yes and no.
Great Generals usually were very adept at understanding their own weaknesses and knowing exactly what their enemey was doing and what the enemy plans were. Hannibal is a famous example. Before Cannae he had very good intel on the romans and their coming and goings. Only when the roman leadership stopped throwing men at him and started investing in counterintelligence, then they could tame their carthaginian general.
In the case of the witch king in Lors of the Rings, he made a lot of false assumption that often doomed campaigns outright. His liege Sauron was very scared of the a leader like Aragorn to use the one ring against Mordor.
So the attack on Minas Tirith happened quite hasty and without knocking out Rohan, as Saruman failed as a puppet.
The northern road to the Pelennor was blocked by another host of Mordor but as many already pointed out, circumvented.
When the horns of Rohan blow, the Witch King was not pleased. He falsely assumed that he had only to face the determined defendes of the city.
Once Aragorn arrived with reinforcements from the southern fiefs, the battle of the Pelennor started in earnest. While the human allies of Sauron were very good, they couldn't make up for the orc's crappy performance.
If Sauron hadn't jump the gun, he could have comfortably inch forward and take Gondor apart piece by piece. But that would require Sauron not thinking like a despot.
1st coffee shop in europe was in vienna after the battle from all the coffee looted from the ottogays
now this is the kind of trivia I like to read about
Why didn't sauron build a door at the volcano? It sat there a thousand years unchanged, Sauron's only weakness. Imagine when frodo and sam show up to throw the ring into the fires of the volcano only to show up and be all "well frick, there's a door now."
>b b but sauron never would have thought the ring would have been destroyed
>I bet he never expected to get his finger fricking cut off and losing the thing in the first place.
>welp better not learn from my mistakes. Just leave that shit unguarded even though it would take like a day to build a door or some kind of blockade.
Sauron is no military genius. In fact he was fricking moronic. He loses almost every battle and constantly get's tricked. He's a non-villian.
>Snoglbricks, i want you to ring the caldera of this volcano with a big ass wall
>no don't ask why
>of course nobody will notice it's fine
Meanwhile, anywhere else:
>hey why did he build a wall around that volcano after losing the ring
>better not learn from my mistakes
That is literally the point of his character
so he sucks at war and is a non threat throughout the entire story.
It's like star wars. Your big bad is completely incompetent and your heroes are just lucky slobs. No one is likeable and the stakes are incredibly low.
Give me a week and I could conquer Middle Earth.
>so he sucks at war and is a non threat throughout the entire story.
He's great at war.
He is in fact so great, that he can't conceive himself ever being wrong, or anything not going according to plan.
have you seriously never heard of hubris before?
>they could have done both
But why would he? there was no way that reinforcements were coming.
>b b but sauron never would have thought the ring would have been destroyed
>I bet he never expected to get his finger fricking cut off and losing the thing in the first place.
The latter would have just confirmed the former considering what happened to isildur who had every motivation and ample opportunity to destroy the ring.
Because he didn't need to. The Ring *did* corrupt Frodo. It would have corrupted anyone. No one would ever have actually managed to throw it into the fire.
But then Eru, being the cheating bastard he is, decided to just trip Gollum and that was that.
The battle was over, they were in the process of sacking the city. Thousands of cities have been sacked in this way, I can't think of any scenario where they've set a flank guarded, and even if the commander has tried I expect the men would go AWOL to loot. Orcs much moreso.
Like all great generals he was fricked by the higher ups in the backline with ridiculous orders and demands
also the battle was won but then the author gives them invincible ghost armies
The author didn't, Jackson did. In the book all the ghosts can do is be spooky and lower enemy morale, it was still a pretty close fight after Aragorn and some adapted-out character I'm blanking on showed up with normal human reinforcements
>Mordor still hasn't taken Osgiliath
>day 578 of the three-day Special Conquest of Middle-Earth
>He put no scouts on the army’s flanks at all
He did in the book and there's no reason to think he didn't in the movie.
There's not a lot you can do when Rohan magic horses can gallop for 3 days straight and still be fresh to fight. That would kill a horse twenty times over. They could literally out pace your scouts back to you.
Was this orc supposed to be a badass? Really he just looks like a typical troony and does a pretty mediocre job commanding.
he was modeled after harvey winestain, although beyond that I'm not sure his backstory. probably is an orc boomer whose previous exploits have gained the respect of the orc millenials
He's actually a really good commander in the books. He only fails for three reasons.
1.Could never have predicted that Aragorn could summon an army of the dead and take out his corsair flank
2.Could never have predicted that Rohan was shown a secret path that hadn't been used for over a century
3. Could never have predicted that The Dunedain got off their asses and intervened in the battle
Eh, still a brainlet move to not set up a picket behind his forces while they lay siege. Although overconfidence has been the downfall of IRL commanders before...
He didn't think he needed to. he has several patrols and groups ready to intercept Rohan should they come from the main roads. He made every right decision and got crewed over by three separate unpredictable events
he's one of the witch king's lieutenants and just mentioned offhand in, iirc, one single line in the books, the movies give him a bigger role so that the army has a 'face' in the narrative.
He is peter Jacksons representation of Harvey Weinstein, who almost sank the trilogy. no shit.
How are people saying the Balrog wasn't under Sauron's command? You can see him here leading a large contingent of Sauronian troops!
The Balrog were a servant of Morgoth, not Sauron.
Kek! Who the frick is Morgoth? Never heard of that cat!
Morgoth is the devil. More or less. He was the enemy of the elves while Sauron (one of his lieutenants, an equal to the balrogs in most respects) had more beef with men. pic somewhat related.
He existed a long time before the elves. He is the child, one of many, who sprang to existence from the thought of God. God was never threatened by him of course.
Makes me wonder, as Sauron was 2nd to Morgoth. Did Sauron know there was a Balrog down there? Maybe there are still others that are hiding or trapped in deep dark forgotten places, I wonder if that was the last one.
That may have been the last depending on how you read letter 144. The beginning of the fourth age may actually be defined by the passing of the last holdovers from the first and pre-first legendary shit. I THINK in the book it is hinted that Gandalf had some idea of what the dwarves had found in the tunnels under Moria and Sauron is more likely to have known for sure given the place was swarming with orcs who he was allied with. I'd say the odds that he knew and just decided to leave it the frick alone, like he did with shelob, are pretty good but also unconfirmed.
I wonder if he was bored hiding in the cave for however many tens of thousands of years between his escape and eventual death by gandalf
Maybe he was shitposting on a palantir the whole time.
That makes sense, I guess by the end of the books Shelob is still alive though?
Shelob survives the books but probably not for long. Sam left her badly wounded and blind. Then again there are still dragons and shit like that but they are a far cry from their predecessors. Spiders like shelob used to be common and were nothing compared to ungoliant who even morgoth was afraid of (and was damned near eaten by).
The thing is that Morgoth never really liked sharing power. So it's incredibly plausible that without Morgoth that his servants wouldn't listen to Sauron and that Sauron wouldn't know where all of Morgoth's secrets were.
The nazgul were supposed to be providing recon flights, but they spent all their time fricking around doing nothing instead.
Orcs may have been shitters but their choir section was top-notch:
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Sauron DID have one point of constant nagging concern and that was the disposition of the One Ring. He knew that if the Ring was mastered and used against him he could very well be defeated. Most of his native power was invested into that thing so obviously he would fear it being used against him.