Poll: Helm's Deep battle, minus the bomb

[Tiamattt]

Hey all, I bumped into a LOTR: the 2 towers rerun a few nights ago, and of course had to rewatch the legendary Battle of Helm's Deep for like the 20th time. And I'm sure all of you remember Théoden being quite confident when he saw how well their defenses were doing at first, right before the orcs blew up the wall and things started going downhill from there.

But then I thought to myself: Hm, what if the orcs didn't have a bomb/access to explosives? What if their only option was to try to climb up the wall and all those archers the hard way? Would they have still be able to breach the walls and push the good guys all the way back, or would the good guys be able to hold them off?

Discuss.

Sigh: can't edit the poll, 2nd choice was supposed to say No, the defense would hold till the riders showed up. Sorry.

 

[Nouw]

Considering the bomb went off and they still managed to hold out until the riders showed up they would have easily won.

 

[Eleuthera]

Movie version? With the added bonus of an army of sniper elves? They could probably have held out quite a while.

Book version? Helm's Deep was supposed to be impregnable. Without the bomb and with all the supplies in the caves, it would have been a very long battle/siege. But, Saruman outnumbered them quite badly, and I he could afford to lose a lot of "men". In the end it was the Ents that saved them, not the riders.

 

[Bertylicious]

Without the explosives then Saruman would not have committed to an assault but rather a seige as he'd have had no decisive mechanism for breaching. It would have neutralised the Rohan forces as well as Aragorn et al. but would have made no difference in the long run as the seige would have been broken by ents/Gandalf+riders.

Even if the Orcs & Uruks had been able to leverage some other decisive war engine or strategem to break through, or even merely overwhelm the Rohan with numbers, Saruman's forces had already been outmanouvered before the battle had even begun.

 

[Thaluikhain]

If they'd not had the bomb, in the movie they'd have needed a proper siege. That actually might have been to their advantage, they could have set up proper defences (contravallations) to protect from reinforcements. The Riders absolutely should not have won that battle, you do NOT charge blocks of pike front on from horseback.

Nothing to stop the uruk-hai uses trebuchets...they did not look like the jokes they had in the movie, real trebuchets would fire identical round stone blocks about as big as a person that would follow nice predictable paths so you could aim them. A castle wall wouldn't explode when one hit, but since the all flew much the same way, you kept hitting the same spot firing once an hour for as long as it took to knock a big enough hole in it.

...

Actually, if the uruk-ahi didn't turn into rubbish cannon fodder and had a proper siege going, the Riders wouldn't have been available to ride to Gondor, nor would Aragorn had summoned the dead.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Without the bomb, it would have just been a siege while Saruman would set the rest of his followers to burning down the Riddermark. Ironically, I'd consider the fact that the Orcs went for an assault rather than a siege to be their greatest boon to the Rohirrim.

 

[Scarim Coral]

The way I see it, the Orc would of won due to the fatigue rate built up from the human and the elf since they were fighting in the night and rain. Ok sure the whole life and death upon the human may have build up some adrenaline on them but fatigue would of still rise up. Even then how much arrows supplies did they had? Otherwise the elf would of ran out of arrows at some point or did they had ALOT of them store up somewhere in Helm Deep.
Before you mention the fatigue rate for Saruman side, don't forget that most of his army were Uruk Hai (there were more of them than Orcs) which are created to be a killing machine. This is kind of reinforce at the start of the film that had run a great length before to finnaly subcome to tiredness so I'm pretty sure fighting all night in the rain is a breeze for them.

 

[Goofguy]

I think the end result would have been the same, it just would have taken the Uruks more time. They already had no problems scaling the walls and breaching the gate, they had the numbers to keep pushing and tire out the defenders.

 

[Thaluikhain]

there is also the old school technique of underminding as well which would be quite successful at breaching the walls in potentially multiple places

Takes ages though, even though goblins seem to have a thing for digging.

 

[suitepee7]

the defense would have prevailed. wormtongue mentions that the fortress is impregnable, save for 1 drain (where the explosives were placed). even then, they needed a huge army. army part covered, they just needed to breach the wall. had the riders not arrived, i reckon saruman's forces would have eventually won, but they were there for a quick assault, not a long siege, so its still debatable.

(this is speaking from the film, been years since i read the books)

 

[Heronblade]

Depends, the urukhai had the manpower and equipment to take the walls in an assault if they were a bit smarter about it. I don't know whether or not they could have done so in time to turn the defenses against Gandalf and Co however. If they(U) are still outside of the walls when they(G) arrive on the flank, they(U) would have been slaughtered even more quickly. (at least, assuming they(U) still don't know how to hold a proper defensive pike formation.)

 

[MiskWisk]

With or without the bomb, the Uruk's would probably have won. They'd just have to take things slower and use more traditional methods. Of course, that isn't including the reinforcements for the defenders. Without reinforcements, the defence probably would have lost, bomb or no bomb.

Movie version? With the added bonus of an army of sniper elves? They could probably have held out quite a while.

Book version? Helm's Deep was supposed to be impregnable. Without the bomb and with all the supplies in the caves, it would have been a very long battle/siege. But, Saruman outnumbered them quite badly, and I could afford to lose a lot of "men". In the end it was the Ents that saved them, not the riders.

You could have lost a lot of men?

>_>

I know your secret now!

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, the whole "horse and the rider" scene makes it clear Helm's Deep is gonna get pummeled no matter what. The drain bomb simply knocks them out way sooner than Theodon had expected.

 

[spartan231490]

No, the Uruk-kai stood no chance without the bomb. Though, similarly, Theoden's people would have been screwed if the Elves hadn't shown up, even without the bomb.

 

[Erttheking]

Well I think the orcs would've gotten in anyway, they seemed to be doing a pretty good number on that gate, but the defenders would've had a better position so they could've bottlenecked them.

 

[madwarper]

Though, similarly, Theoden's people would have been screwed if the Elves hadn't shown up, even without the bomb.

What do you mean "Elves"? There was only ONE Elf at Helm's Deep, Legolas.

 

[Azrael the Cat]

'Elves' refers to the movies not the books - they didn't have time (in an already long movie) to introduce the wild men of Rohan who unite and join the Helms Deep forces at the last minute, so they substituted them for the elves, who the audience had already been introduced to.

Secondly, as for the necessity of the bomb. Keep in mind that these guys were Saruman's forces, and unlike Gandalf, he's pretty trigger happy when it comes to destructive corrupting magic. He probably built the bomb, and if he hadn't done that he'd probably have some other magic trick to pull out in order to breach the walls.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

So no bomb, and I'm guessing we should dismiss the Rohirrim and Ent trees as well.

If that was the case and the Orcs still went for a staight out offensive attack I think they would have won, although it would have taken longer.
The elves only had so many arrows (I think in the book the defenders had already run out of arrows when the bomb went off) they certainly didn't have 10,000, and once the arrows were gone it would have to be hand to hand combat one way or another, and although the defenders would have the advantages fighting in the castles with choke points etc. there just wouldn't be enough to offset the huge number of orcs. The defenders would have lost, but they'd have killed more than their fair share of Orcs before they were overrun.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Doesn't the movies establish Saruman to have destructive elemental magic? In the movie scenario, he probably could have assisted the siege from Isengard and not needed that bomb at all.