Why didn't they just link to Androl and have him drop a wall of lava on Demandred and his main peeps on the heights?   Why not open a gateway into a trolloc charge that brings the ocean into them?   Why not just setup a long ass gateway in the Gap/SG pass so no Shadowspawn can assualt you?

I'm with you on this. One of the things that bothered me about the battles in the book was the lack of creativity by both the light and the dark. I would think that Gateways would make traditional battle obsolete, Why mount charges when you can instantly flank your enemies? etc.

 

For me the worst offense was the failure of the light to use its unchallenged air superiority. They had Rakens etc. from the Seanchan as well as the horizontal gateways, and, with only a couple of exceptions, never rained death from above. Consider from a tactical standpoint:

 

Your channelers are probably your single most powerful weapon and they are nonrenewable. They must be protected. Solution? Lines of small arrrow slit type horizontal "invisible" Gateways above the batlefield. Down come fireballs, windstorms or whatever. The shadow responds by targeting through the Gateway, but they only have a small window to "shoot" through. Channeler steps out of the way and returns to business when the attack ends. Also if you place all of these in Mayenne, you can rotate channelers more easily, thus minimizing the exhaustion factor.

 

I was also flummoxed by Demandred's annoyance that these type of Gateways hadn't been considered during the Age of Legends. If people lacked creativity to THAT extent how legendary could the age have been?