The White Council

Re: Effective tactics? Nope, still a pillock!!!!

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

I just had a final thought on this. Sauron only lost a battle, not the war at Pellenor Fields, and his enemy paid dearly (though not as dearly as he did, obviously). Excluding the destruction of the ring (which LOTR made a large point of it being where he was out of his reckoning), his tactics were not unsound based on his tactical knowledge. He threw what he could at Gondor, while moving up other armies for a follow-up if needed. In order to hit them as quickly as he did (due to new intelligence of Aragorn, the heir of Elendil, living & doing serious scouting with a crystal ball), he couldn't physically move any more armies into position quickly enough. So what if he lost at Pellenor? His enemy couldn't afford what losses they encountered, but Sauron could. If the ring hadn't been destroyed he would have won at the Black Gate & ruled most of Middle Earth before another year passed. The good guys didn't win due to superior war tactics & Sauron's terrible tactics. They won due to superior wisdom in destroying the ring - the article that tactically would have given them a huge edge.

: : Back on thread, why was Sauron supposedly a pillock, all Karl is doing is stating that he was- let us hear arguments, why??

: ok, look at it like this. sauron has an absoltley overwhelming military advantage. We can't reckon the size of his military might, but suffice to say if as at the battle before the morrannon, where the west was out numbered 'ten times, and more than ten times'it is easy to say a v large army was at his disposal. Why then not procede to a massive invasion of gondor (instead of just an army from minas morghul with attendant easterlings),why not use everything in a final, huge overwhelming defeat? The russians did pretty much the same thing on the eastern front, they did use very good tactics but also the shear amount of troops available to them meant that the germans would have run out of ammuntion before killing them all. : Sauron appears was in a bit of a similar situation. If he had co-ordinated himself with saruman (by dominating his will), rohan would have been crushed fairly easily. after that the only stong realm left would have been gondor, which came exceedingly close to defeat anyway. : My thing is sauron should have won - only by being over cautios and not planning or using his resources effectivley (he did in the first age, why not now???) did he lose. : So therefore sauron = pillock