With the seventh season of HBO’s Game of Thrones at its halfway point, Westeros is at war yet again. In the last two episodes (episodes 3 and 4), the forces aligned with Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister have met upon the fields (and seas) of battle at last. Things have not gone entirely according to plan for either side.

In fact things have gone so wrong, so fast that I thought it might be time to convene the Ars Technica Board of Fictional Military Historic Analysis—with its charter members, Jon Nichols and Steve Skaggs, two special operations professionals now in the private sector—in order to dive in on the biggest blunders and curious command decisions from both sides.