[Rune Son of Bjarne]

We are turning more to a tactical talk instead of the actuall topic: How many where in the battle

Before I return to this I would like to say a few thing about the tactics. . . Agincourt is not the best of examples, as the major problem for the French was the tactics or rather the fact that the heavily amoured nobility did not want to fight pessants armed with bows. (not much glory or gain in that)

Anyways even though dwarves are tougher in close combat than elves, pikes still make an excelent defence weapon and good for keeping foes at bay. . .together with a bunch of archers I think they would have the upper hand against the dwarves.

I think they where confident they would win, the question would have been how many casualties they where ready to accept.

Also I belive that the elves would have been armoured. . .as you said they normally fought from the safty of the trees, in the woods mobility and camuflage was key. If they knew they where going to the open, where there are plenty of unknown factors. . .surely they would wear armour.

Anyways back to the topic:

I always pictured the elves numbers being somewhere between 1000-2000, the men of laketown only a few hundreds. I cannot remember what the book said about the amount of orcs and wargs, but I always imagined them as being of same amount or maybe a bit larger.

But this is based on nothing, only loose memories, it has been years since I read the Hobbit.