Title: War-Games
Fandom: The Hobbit
Rating: G
Length: 140
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Icka for encouragement & sanity-checking. Thanks also to the SCA for all kinds of things, including what a War is like.
Image is from this page: Southern Crusades
Summary: War-games were not at all the same as practice

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War-games were not at all the same as practice, though they certainly provided practice, especially in melee and formation work. Regular practice with various weapons and forms was useful and necessary, good for exercise, training, teaching, getting back into form or learning new after injury or a period of (usually forced) inactivity. But war-games, getting together with some usefully large number of other Dwarves (sometimes even Men and Elves as well) and seriously playing with bated weapons and real armor was not just useful training for when things were in deadly earnest, it was exhilarating, out and out fun. 'Kill' your friends old and new all day, drink and sing and tell tall tales around the fire late into the evening, then get up and do it all again. What better way to spend the long days of late summer?