But RJ answered this - Edit 1
Before modification by Sidious at 15/11/2009 09:48:52 PM
Making a gateway is a nearly instantaneous process. Plus we've seen Lews Therin make up to six gateways at a time.
But Rand is the most powerful channeler in the world. How can you use him as a standard for gateways in battle? Most channelers can even Travel.
Over the span of a minute, he could probably make 36 gateways into a particular area - say 5 miles by 5 miles square.
And what good would this do? What does it help for Rand to hold a gateway open for five seconds? He could let a bunch of men through, all of whom would instantly be met by enemy soldiers, shadowspawn or channelers. Even Rand's biggest gateway has serious limitations for reinforcements. RJ's own answer implied that circles have limits too when helping their armies.
If disrupting a gateway is a difficult art - as RJ seems to indicate, how is a single defender going to move around fast enough to block 36 gateways opening all over the area being defended?
Why would there be a single defender? It's much more chaotic than you portray. There could be 500 channelers on both sides, each trying to weave gateways to a location to send more troops. As the gateway opens you have rival channelers sending destructive weaves through the opening, and other enemies trying to unravel your gateway or block it. Then you have your people trying to prevent all of this. It's mayhem. It's not unlikely that a man like Rand could open six gateways and hold them open, with five being decoys and only one being used. It's a whole different war game when it comes to channeling.
In fact, if he has to see what he's doing, he would probably have to Travel himself to get to gateways that are forming more than a few hundred yards from his current location.
Probably.
If an attacker spins 6 gateways simultaneously, to open at intervals of 1 mile from one another, I find it difficult to see how his opponent is going to block all of them. Especially if blocking a gateway is difficult to achieve, and requires a heck of a lot of concentration.
Why? What happens if there are hundreds of channelers like one would expect in the War of Power? Besides, most of it is trying to stop reinforcements from coming through those gateways, not actually stopping the spinning. There are only three known channelers who can do that, and I doubt they were present at every battle.
The only way I can see it working, is if some kind of defensive ward can be placed over an area, blocking it from the Pattern. And that this ward can then be attacked or penetrated by an opponent, if he is skilled enough. In turn, the defender can bolster the ward and repel the attempts to penetrate it by the attacker, if HE is skilled enough.
Even a simple warding can take days to unravel, according to Moghedien. Even if Demandred could do such a thing, he doesn't have the strength necessary to make a substantial difference. Rand needed an angreal to ward the Aiel encampment. So if Demandred could also ward a mile in every direction, it would not help him if Lews Therin could make gateways just outside that area.
Thus, the battle is taking place at many levels, as RJ indicated.
I think the battle has to do with forming many gateways, holding them, blocking them, preventing blocking, and destroying reinforcements. You could have people countering each other's weaves on both sides until you have a dozen people countering each other's counterattacks. It would be a messy thing.