silentstep:

poorquentyn:

warsofasoiaf:

I’ve answered this before, but I’ll go into some more depth.

Militarily, your biggest thing is that you need equipment. Your enemy does not tire, and since they can raise the dead, you must minimize your own casualties as otherwise, you’re just delivering fresh troops to your enemy. You need obsidian arrows to handle the Others, and fire to handle the wights. The Others need careful preparation, but they are beatable, and a skilled general can achieve victory without Valyrian steel or dragons.

What I would use is a fire line. Flaming arrows themselves are very difficult to light before they are nocked, as they will burn your hands. Instead, you want longer arrows which extend much further past the bow than a typical arrow. To fire, you can nock, then step forward, light the end (probably with cloth soaked in oil tied near the head) at the fire line, and immediately release before you singe the hand that isn’t your draw hand.

When aiming, you want to fire at the largest wights you can. As we see in Jon’s chapter, wights that burn tend to hit their flashpoint very quickly, so the larger the burning wight, the bigger chance you have to have that wight catch other wights aflame. This means firing at bears, shadowcats, and other large fauna. I don’t know how the famed ice spiders react to fire, but I’m gonna guess they’re not fans.

Your sharpest shots need to have obsidian arrows, and they are watching for Others. When an Other is spotted, let the cry go up so that any other archers can clear a shot and burn wights so that one doesn’t absorb the shot meant for an Other, as we see in Sam’s chapters, wights are not vulnerable to obsidian. 

Given the arrogant nature of the Others (see the first book’s prologue about taunting Waymar Royce), I would say that the first large-scale loss of one of their own where others of their race can view it, I’m honestly not sure how the Others would react to us insects killing one of their own. The wights are almost certainly nothing, the worst emotion that any Other would probably experience to a human general obliterating even an entire wight army would probably be minor annoyance, but killing one of their own? That might cause them to revise their strategems, or attempt to bypass me entirely.

Thanks for the question, BeachBum.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

SLAL and I spent a while discussing the latter point at Ice & Fire Con; the Others’ arrogance (from what we’ve seen of them) could prove a significant weakness. 

I keep wondering if wildfire could be utilized somehow… maybe as landmines?  Little sealed clay pots of it, thrown by slings into the enemy lines to explode on impact?  (Does it explode on impact?)