The Way We War

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Gimli used an axe (obviously). Thorin used an axe at the Battle of Five Armies and Azanulbizar. When speaking of Thorin's condition in exile Tolkien used the phrase "the axes of his people were few." The dwarves whalloped Glaurung with "their great axes."

Well, as for the Thorin thing, that could be a very nice way of Dwarven phrasing, a saying, if the axes were something specific. It would only emphasise that Thorin was not doing very well, he "did not reach the status of nobility" in the exile, beside that his men just were small in numbers. Of course, here I am unleashing my imagination.

As for the other occassions, Glaurung - that could be one of these occassions when the "special forces" with axes managed to do something.

And in either case, we have the evidence of the Battle of the Five Armies, like Morth pointed out - I believe the equipment of a regular soldier - i.e. not the elite, but also not the random "armed civilians" - could have been like the one described there.

As for the missile weapons, I would believe the Dwarves would be capable of using bows at least, like Kuru said, and I think it's not necessary that they would be bad in it - but one has to bear in mind that the primary fighting condition for a Dwarf would be underground. And, except for some really large underground caverns or long corridors, not mentioning the darkness, the missile weapons are not really built for that.