www.ditl.org

Teaos wrote:One of the most important things though is tactics. Which the Cardassians and Breen would have a natural advantage of over the Klingons.

The Cardassians and Breen can have a tactics party all they want. The Klingods will just show up with a sledge hammer and crush them all!

Tactics wont win the battles if the klingons maintain even half of their sense for war!

The Klingons can bash away all they like and while they are charging the front line trying to get maximum personal honour in a glorious battle the Breen will slip past the line and destry Kronos and and other major infastructure that tickles their fancy. They did it to the Feds.

The Klingons don't seem to allow their lines to be as sloppy as the Federation does. In addition, they have stationary defense stations, each able to have a number of warships attached. As Seafort said, their fleet and ship-to-ship tactics don't seem to possess the idiocy of the hand-to-hand tactics - or lack thereof.

History teahes us that brute force and numbers only go so far for you and good tactics usually wins the war. Hanabal, Hitler, Alexander the great. All of these people were usually out numbered by quite a bit and fighting enemies who like the Klingons were reasonably trained but due to their superior tactics they had resounding virtories time and again untill they finaly got defeated.

The Klingons dont have a massive number advantage. Maybe 2 to 1.

Boush could take on any Klingon warrior!

Teaos wrote:History teahes us that brute force and numbers only go so far...

Human history, you mean. And as Seafort said, and I seconded, Klingon strategy and fleet tactics seem to far outpace their ground-pounding tactics. So where is it proven that C-B alliance strategies would be that superior to those of the Klingons?

Teaos wrote:History teahes us that brute force and numbers only go so far for you and good tactics usually wins the war. Hanabal, Hitler, Alexander the great. All of these people were usually out numbered by quite a bit and fighting enemies who like the Klingons were reasonably trained but due to their superior tactics they had resounding virtories time and again untill they finaly got defeated.

The Wermacht is a pretty poor example of good tactics overcoming superior numbers - they generally had equal or superior numbers in their victories, and once they were faced with a serious numerial disadvantage (ie the Red Army) they quickly came unstuck. Your other examples are valid, but the fact that you're using two of the greatest military commanders who've ever lived to give examples of skill defeating numbers says something about how difficult that is.

I agree with seafort on this. Plus as also said the klingons didn't empty their space for the war. Only 1/3 of their fleet was sent and even then that was more then the cardis could handle. They still have 2/3 of their fleet waiting back home so an attack would be very costly for anyone to try. By the way, the breen strike on earth worked only on moral and its total damage amounts to little. The breen also lost almost the entire fleet that they sent. Moral isn't the biggest thing to a klingon and in fact the forces stationed in klingon space would be happy for such battles as it would be their only chance to gain glory.

Teaos, you're acting like the Breen are these uber-strategists, while the Klingons haven't a clue about warfare.
We've seen the Breen use moderately inteligent tactics in space combat.
We've seen the Klingons use moderately inteligent tactics in space combat.

The fact is, the Klingons have the advantage of numbers, industrial capacity, size, experience, and possibly power. The Breen would need to be very good strategists to overcome all of these factors, and its unlikely they'd be able to do it.

The biggest problem is that if the whole of the empire went to war then the cardassians would be knocked out within a few months. Then it would leave the breen on their own.

I'll bet on the Klingons - the Cardies always struck me as a lesser, declining power, and technogically and industrially inferior to the Klingons. Of course this is all just my reading of it, there is, as far as I'm aware, no canon source to say one way or the other. The Breen's weapon would grant them one devastating victory, and some weeks of ascendancy, but after the Klingons figured out a countermeasure you would have a lot of vengeful Klingon on the case. The fact that the Klingons seem to use many of their vessel classes for centuries, and the fact that their culture is so martial, could mean that, like the Russians who they where originally an allegory for, they could have vast numbers of mothballed ships and militarily experienced citizens who know how to use them; They could probably put together reserve fleets in a matter of weeks.
In addition, the Cardi/Breen would have a torrid time if they tried to take Klingon worlds by ground assault. If they bypassed Klingon worlds, or devastated them from orbit, they could well very soon have long supply lines which would be vulnerable to the Klingons cloaked small raiders like the BOP.
They could win a campaign with limited goals, a disputed star system, for example, where cool Klingon heads (a rare commodity!) might decide a peace treaty was more economically advisable than a drawn out conflict, but a total war? The Klingons.

Even without the whole of the KE, the Cardies were pretty hard-pressed to defend themselves without Federation assistance. Since this is our little hypothetical scenario, I presume we leave out that sort of assistance. And again, I'd like to see where it was ever suggested that the Breen a/o Cardassians were so able to out-strategize the Klingons as far as fleet actions are concerned.

The TOS Klingons certainly seem more cunning, pragmatic and capable of grand strategic planning than the the later Warrior Code Klingons might appear to be at first glance. But we also see their Machiavellian politics, alongside all the"you have no honour" blurb. I personally don't buy into the theory that just because a race has a strong warrior ethic and code of personal honour they are somehow incapable of tactics. The fact they are a major empire at all, instead of just a no go planet like Chalnoth, or nuisance pirates, like the Naaiciscans, suggests they are no dunces.

Yeah, the TOS era Klingons were actualy competant.
But you're right that TNG era Klingons must have some graps of tactics. It's possible that they're simply lacking when it comes to ground combat.