Battles (Full Spoilers)

[Durinax]

I was a bit upset by a lack of df betrayals, I think if they made the shadows overall armies weaker, yet had some darkfriends in the mix to kind of spice it up would have been much better.

Also on a side note was both the Sa angreal Taim had and the Sa angreal egwene lost?

[Vardar]

 

 

That's been the understanding, I assumed they came back, however it now begs the question, how did Maradon fall with 100 Ashaman? 

 

I think exhaustion is the only explanation. Dumai's Well was an all out assault to free Rand, not a prolonged defense. Channelers are highly effective, especially in the short term, but if you need them for a prolonged defense you're going to have to be rotating them, facing exhaustion, and attrition.

 

And not all Asha'man are as strong and talented as Rand or the named Asha'man. They can only do so much. I think Rand and the prominent Asha'man paint a distorted picture of how good they are in a fight. 

 

They are better than most at killing, but the Power of your average channeler, male or female, is not that great that 100 Asha'man would be able to hold back that amount of Shadowspawn. 

 

As Agitel said, Dumai's Wells was a unique situation, they only needed to kill with all their strength for a short amount of time against a fleeing foe with a fraction of the number. They didn't have to worry about anything but rescuing Rand. 

 

At Maradon, they weren't used just for killing. They were used for Healing, Travelling, scouting, relaying messages (via the beacons etc.) They were up against a force that outnumbered them vastly and were forced into a prolonged battle where they were on the defensive. The Shadowspawn were attacking, not fleeing like the Shaido, thus they had to protect themselves not just kill, which drains strength. 

 

I would say that I could agree that the Asha'man at Maradon didn't put up as much of a fight as you would expect, however, even if they had been written as good as realistically possible - without becoming totally overpowered - they still would have lost Maradon. 

 

 

I know they're not as strong, but still 100? Were there even 100 at Dumai Wells? Yes that's a different situation, but its' not like they rested after or anything, nor did they even seem exerted by what they did. Look what Eggy and her AS did against the trollocs. Yes they have san and angreal, but Maradon had walls that effectively funneled the monsters into one locations, making weaves more efffective, not to mention the battle before Maradon.

 

In fact, let's just back, before Itrulade was let into Maradon, recall the battle forcing the trollocs across the river, and how Itrulade was looked at funny by some officers for sending 1 channeler away to burn siege equipment, why would 1 matter if he had 100? No way he had 100, or it as forgotten at that point. 

[Vardar]

Few points that other people have mentioned that I want to comment on

 

1. Tied off gateways: didn't RJ retconn them and pretend like it wasn't possible?

 

2. Sharan male channelers: men who can learn are not treated like animals. If most people from the BT are learners, why can the sharan men not be learners trained by demandred and westerners?

 

3. Numbers being off: I place more blame on team Jordan for letting this happen. It is not just RJ's legacy, but it is something they have worked on for so long that they should have cared more and noticed these things.

3a. It is better if you pretend that the missing people wiped each other out early on. It also explains how the seanchan took over in Avi's vision; everyone paid the butcher's bill except them

 

2) Actually, did they expand upon that? I was lead to believe that all men born in those channeler towns are treated like animals, but sure there are men born outside the town who can channeler, sparker or non sparker, but that's assuming Demandred had time to go testing. Sure, Taim could have done it but that's getting to a stretch  now. He was able to send scouting parties to a hostile country? One where they kill and enslave outsiders?

[Durinax]

 

Few points that other people have mentioned that I want to comment on

 

1. Tied off gateways: didn't RJ retconn them and pretend like it wasn't possible?

 

2. Sharan male channelers: men who can learn are not treated like animals. If most people from the BT are learners, why can the sharan men not be learners trained by demandred and westerners?

 

3. Numbers being off: I place more blame on team Jordan for letting this happen. It is not just RJ's legacy, but it is something they have worked on for so long that they should have cared more and noticed these things.

3a. It is better if you pretend that the missing people wiped each other out early on. It also explains how the seanchan took over in Avi's vision; everyone paid the butcher's bill except them

 

2) Actually, did they expand upon that? I was lead to believe that all men born in those channeler towns are treated like animals, but sure there are men born outside the town who can channeler, sparker or non sparker, but that's assuming Demandred had time to go testing. Sure, Taim could have done it but that's getting to a stretch  now. He was able to send scouting parties to a hostile country? One where they kill and enslave outsiders?

I don't think they are treated like animals, afterall they ayyad are the ruling class, that includes men. It is just that they are executed at first sign of insanity I believe

[Lord Ingtar Shinowa]

Who was the most important person in the Last Battle at Merrilor? Lan, Egwene, Mat...?

[XXX]

 

 

 

That's been the understanding, I assumed they came back, however it now begs the question, how did Maradon fall with 100 Ashaman? 

 

I think exhaustion is the only explanation. Dumai's Well was an all out assault to free Rand, not a prolonged defense. Channelers are highly effective, especially in the short term, but if you need them for a prolonged defense you're going to have to be rotating them, facing exhaustion, and attrition.

 

And not all Asha'man are as strong and talented as Rand or the named Asha'man. They can only do so much. I think Rand and the prominent Asha'man paint a distorted picture of how good they are in a fight. 

 

They are better than most at killing, but the Power of your average channeler, male or female, is not that great that 100 Asha'man would be able to hold back that amount of Shadowspawn. 

 

As Agitel said, Dumai's Wells was a unique situation, they only needed to kill with all their strength for a short amount of time against a fleeing foe with a fraction of the number. They didn't have to worry about anything but rescuing Rand. 

 

At Maradon, they weren't used just for killing. They were used for Healing, Travelling, scouting, relaying messages (via the beacons etc.) They were up against a force that outnumbered them vastly and were forced into a prolonged battle where they were on the defensive. The Shadowspawn were attacking, not fleeing like the Shaido, thus they had to protect themselves not just kill, which drains strength. 

 

I would say that I could agree that the Asha'man at Maradon didn't put up as much of a fight as you would expect, however, even if they had been written as good as realistically possible - without becoming totally overpowered - they still would have lost Maradon. 

 

 

I know they're not as strong, but still 100? Were there even 100 at Dumai Wells? Yes that's a different situation, but its' not like they rested after or anything, nor did they even seem exerted by what they did. Look what Eggy and her AS did against the trollocs. Yes they have san and angreal, but Maradon had walls that effectively funneled the monsters into one locations, making weaves more efffective, not to mention the battle before Maradon.

 

In fact, let's just back, before Itrulade was let into Maradon, recall the battle forcing the trollocs across the river, and how Itrulade was looked at funny by some officers for sending 1 channeler away to burn siege equipment, why would 1 matter if he had 100? No way he had 100, or it as forgotten at that point. 

 

There were 200 AM at Dumai Wells.

[MasterAblar]

Who was the most important person in the Last Battle at Merrilor? Lan, Egwene, Mat...?

Mat I would say, but all of them were needed for the Light to win. Without Lan, Demandred continues to slaughter the armies of the Light and the Shadows armies would not have broken. Without Egwene the Sharan channellers would have ripped the Aes Sedai apart, and there's the balefire weakening the pattern to consider. But Mat was the indispensable individual I would say.

[Suttree]

So a bunch of us here have discussed the mysterious case of the missing channelers in AMoL. It really is egregious, just so frustrating as all these mistakes/issues start to get called out.

 

Dom

 

The first time around this bugged me, but I brushed it off believing I must have misread or lost track of a mention of where they were or something, as between Maria and the betas, Brandon could not possibly have done such a mistake.

But on my reread I've reached the point where Aviendha is briefly captured by red veils and she asks for circles, gets two small ones, that had to include AS sworn to Rand and two WO - and Sorilea speaks of going to find a few more and then asking off-duty Windfinders to join manage to get a third circle. Huh, what? It's all the WO channelers Aviendha had?

Brandon really made a huge error. The Shaido clan alone had over 400 WO who could channel at Malden - about 200 hundred of them got captured by the Seanchan.
It's a big clan, but still... with eleven clans involved in the LB the total number of WO who can channel has to be above 2500 and it's probably conservative. Brandon gave Aviendha a pathetic skeleton crew of WO at Shayol Ghul. Elayne has but a handful (the six with Perrin plus a few extras.. and they're forgotten in nearly all Elayne's tallies of her channelers in the book), Egwene has none, Lan has none, a few like Melaine went to lend their strength to Yellows in Mayene. Where the heck have the thousands of WO channelers gone? Brandon just went and deprived the Light of its biggest group of female channelers. There's no helping that now, but that's a really big error. None of the battles Brandon designed would have gone as they do with these extra 2000-3000 or more female channelers... that could easily double the number of women with Egwene, and added 500 for both Lan and Elayne and still leave 1000 with Aviendha! And if they were all with Aviendha, the battle at Shayol Ghul, the scale of it, the tactics etc. would have been nothing like it is in the book.

[shortkut]

I feel like RJ made too many channelers, especially with the Aiel. Every woman who can channel and some who can't are wise ones. Whenever RJ mentioned or hinted at the wise ones meeting to discuss something with other wise ones, it is either shown or implied to be a handful to a few dozen... Until we get to the shaido

[Lord Ingtar Shinowa]

That's true. Also, in the first book, Moiraine barely beat the five hundred or so Trollocs, but in the last one, the Aes Sedai kill thousands AND Moiraine had a ter'angreal. Why?  

[CanUFeelTheLove?]

That's true. Also, in the first book, Moiraine barely beat the five hundred or so Trollocs, but in the last one, the Aes Sedai kill thousands AND Moiraine had a ter'angreal. Why?  

 

RJ definitely changed his mind about AS channeling as the books go on. In the first book Moiraine uses a staff - a regular old staff - to channel. She called it a focus. This is never done again by her or anyone. She got tired from doing the Mirror trick thingy when she grew huge in Baerlon. She got tired easily whenever she channeled. That changes as the books go on.

[McPhee]

The Seanchan have been bugging me since I finished the book. They did sod all. Seanchan is the largest continent. Their army on Randland was built to conquer it - 'at least twenty years' in the planning. They built ships and trained massive armies, all for The Return. When they landed, nations trembled. They were feared - their force seen as capable of conquering the entire continent.

 

Fast forward to The Last Battle. Matt mentions that the Seanchan are 25% of his force on the Fields of Merillor. That puts their force at a roughly equal size to each of the other three armies, who had been through hell and lost as much of 2/3rds of their number. Add in the army in Thakan'dar and I really struggle to see how the Seanchan were so scary. Randland managed to field a force as much as 12 times the size of the Seanchan force (actually, more if you count forces already fighting in the Borderlands and the masses that died at Maradon). And that Seanchan force includes recruits from Tarabon, Amadicia, Altara and Almoth Plain. I'm not saying they couldn't have conquered with the landing force, just from evidence of The Last Battle, it's hardly the sort of force you take to a foreign continent that you know very little about, prepared to conquer if they will not yield. Had there been no imminent threat of the Shadow, had the nations allied together, the Seanchan would have risked everything with a force that small, damane or no damane (also, did they know the Aes Sedai couldn't attack them? If they didn't, it makes The Return look truly desperate, rather than the glorious event it was intended to be).

 

Am I imagining things, or were they nerfed? I'm sure they were a force to be reckoned with. When the Sharans appeared and the Seanchan agreed to join The Last Battle, I was expecting an almighty showdown. A battle between two strong martial societies, between the two greatest armies in the world. I was expecting Matt at the helm of the Ever Victorious Army, aimed directly at the Sharans. Instead, I was treated to utter lameness. An army that we were told to fear a few books ago did... nothing. They spent most of Tarmon Gai'don sat around, posturing.

 

Initially, after finishing the book I was reading in to Tuon's comments about the Dragon's Peace, thinking to myself "she barely suffered any losses, she'll ignore the peace soon and sweep across the land. She has the forces for it". Then the numbers hit me - BS has reduced the Seanchan to insignificance. Even with their losses, the other nations retain enough strength to turn the Seanchan in to the ocean if they so choose. Left to recover, they'd have no trouble pulling it off. Give it 20 years and Andor could likely do it alone (with Black Tower assistance), especially if gunpowder technology continued to advance.

[Rhienne]

I think the Seanchan are one of many groups whose numbers just didn't make sense.  I think the damane in particular seemed to be massively reduced (and as far as I can remember didn't even do anything in particular during the battle?), as were most of the other groups of channelers. 

 

I think the Seanchan making up 25% of the armies of the Light seems somewhat reasonable.  They did send over an expeditionary force first, and if they had encountered significant resistance from the countries they invaded they could have called in more. The use of channelers as weapons of war plus there exellent training and exotic animals meant that they would have had a major advantage even if they were facing equal numbers (which they never were due to all the seaboard nations being in chaos when they arrived).

 

Even if 25% of the forces of Light is a plausible number, I agree that they didn't seem to have too much impact at the LB.  All that fuss about Mat and Tuon pretending to fall out, and then the Seanchan eventually coming back...and doing what?

[Julian Cook]

OK not going to post much about the battles but I will say they were written and planned really badly, too often the same action is repeated and the plans of the battle are well rubbish, for example take the zombie village attacking the dam. so we have a force that will live again after they die, why use them on the dam, when they could have been used elsewhere.

 

you have a guy sitting there opening gateways why not to by pass the dam and tie off the weave and then take the zombie village to the heart of the enemy.

 

the whole battle turned on Lan, not Matt not a plan but in Lan.  the last battle kind of sucked and from the many posts I have read others have also thought the same as me, why the hell can't you just get on with it, oh I remember you need to pad the books out to rip off the readers   

[XXX]

Can anyone tell my why the Aes Sedai would go to battle wearing skirts.There is even a line in the book that skirts are not meant for running..no shit then why wear them to go battle?Did they think they would stand and fight,drinking a cup of tea while at it?

 

MAssive Aes Sedai fail again.

[Entreri]

Top battles:

 

1/ Lan vs. Demandred

2/ Perrin vs. Slayer

3/ Lan vs. 2 Myddraal

4/ Demandred vs. Gawyn

5/ Demandred vs. Galad

 

Lan was more pivotal than Mat in the Light vs. Shadow. Without taking out Demandred, the Light forces were doomed at FoM and I think Mat mentions this in his PoV. 

 

Rand vs. Shai'tan sucked, same with Rand vs. Moridin, Mat vs. Fain.  Grandael vs. Teams was good. 

 

What the entire series lacked was a prolonged epic Power battle...I was hoping Moridin or Demandred would provide that vs. Rand. 

[XXX]

Ya that is true,for a series built around the ability to use the OP, we did not get an epic mano on mano OP battle with AoL age weaves thrown around.

 

Obviously from the light side only Rand had the knowledge,so it could have been him against Demandred or Moridin or even Lanfear or a combination of them against Rand.LTT was supposedly the greatest fighter with the OP so he could have taken them on.

[EmperorAllspice]

Haven't read the book, but I'm kinda going out of my mind right now...

 

Demandred doesn't get to use any brilliant battle strategies... or anything? :( :( :( (whimpers)

[Agitel]

Haven't read the book, but I'm kinda going out of my mind right now...

 

Demandred doesn't get to use any brilliant battle strategies... or anything? :( :( :( (whimpers)

 

It's said he does. The overall battle-wide tactics are left pretty vague, though.

[XXX]

Why would they not carry the horn from the very beginning and blow it at every battlefield. I guess it would have made it too easy.The horn was a foolish addition by RJ in the first book and then he did not know wht to do with it.

[Mats Spare Hat]

Forgive me if I'm recalling incorrectly...

Does anyone else find it more than a little weird, to put it nicely, that when we see Olver blow the horn, the heros appear at Merrilor - comparatively nowhere even close to the location of the hornblower?
 

[Knivy]

He was there, or relatively close.  He was on the hill or whatever the Shadow was based on opposing Merrilor.  IT confused me at first, because I missed the transition of him and Faile there, but it happened.  But perhaps it was spread out more due to the weakness of the pattern ect.

[Mats Spare Hat]

Oh woop, yeah I gotcha.

Forgot about the extra gateway. My mistake.

[Mysoulisbrown]

The point I would like to raise is about the Green Ajah - and how disappointing they were! All through the books they have bleated on about being "The Battle Ajah", talking with a glint in their eye how they will be the first in line to deal with the Dark One's forces at The Last Battle. They have a sea of warders between them, and their Ajah headquarters are decorated with weapons and scenes of battles. So yes, they have made their point. So for almost three thousand years they have prepared for this, and what exactly did they prepare? Pevara shows that the Red Ajah knows some pretty nifty fighting moves to handle men that can channel, multiple weaves cast at once to both incapacitate and silence a man. "What did you think the Red Ajah does with its time? Sit around and complain about men?" Brilliant quote and helped give respect to an Ajah that most people thought was full of bitchy women who loathed anything with a Y chromosome.

So here was me thinking the Greens would come into their own in the Last Battle. Now the thing is maybe they did? The air was said to be sizzling with the exchange of weaves during the battle. But never once were the Greens mentioned. All the sisters seemed to be warriors, regardless of Ajah (with the exception of the Yellows in Mayene). All seemed perfectly capable of "lobbing a fireball" or calling down a lightning bolt. If we take this as standard fighting fare - where were the Greens? Where were the nifty fighting weaves and tactics that they had presumably perfected over the millennia for just this occasion? Not a single mention was made and does beg the question - what on earth was the point of the Green Ajah? All mouth and no talk?

In my mind I had all sorts of attacks playing out - three Greens on horseback converging together at a gallop beside the front line, linking together instantly, and using the combined power to chuck out an awesome killer weave (not a fireball in sight thank you). Then dropping the link and straight away galloping away in different directions so that each could channel and defend from incoming weaves. This tactic could then be played over and over to create destruction in enemy troops over a large area. Or even better, a long line of Greens, some sending out killer weaves that no other Ajah has even thought of, whilst others defend against incoming weaves, with trained methods to disrupt the weaves.

I truly thought they would bring something jaw-dropping to the Last Battle, but was totally disappointed at the continuous lighting bolts and fireballs that were lobbed by each and every sister no matter what their Ajah.

Egwene kicked ass in the Last Battle - the Green Ajah? Not so much....

[Lord Ingtar Shinowa]

Well, its a bit difficult to train killer weaves when one cannot kill men. But yeah I agree that they should have done somethiing crazy.