Poll - Which door will you open?

I’ll give you the others but this one’s debatable

 

Really... show me the Dwarf equivalent to Legolas. Legolas is OP!

 

But he’s just one guy who’s Uber-survivable. Look at how the Dwarves were beating the Elves at the start of the battle of the Five Armies!

 

Gandalf > Legolas > everyone else. Gimli is so much his inferior that his role is comedic relief.

That is a horrible movie (which is besides the point, but I thought I would mention it).

More on point, that style of combat is favourable to the Dwarfs. Elves are better at hit and run / ambush tactics. Also a couple of quick points on that battle. It was hardly decisive and the Dwarfs had the advantage of having their cavalry present.

Besides, if you look at the all the movies collectively, Elves are always portrayed as being more capable warriors. The way other characters speak of them also indicates this.

 

You don’t like the Battle of Five Armies? I thought it was great!

I don’t think Elvish Cavalry would have made much difference - most of the Dwarf infantry were Spearmen! Additionally, the Dwarf ballistas were shutting down the Elf missile support which was a great boon, and the Dwarfs that weren’t Spearmen were churning out crossbow bolts into the Elf lines in return.

 

To clarify, I liked the hobbit book, it is simply the movies which missed the mark; and the worst of those was the third installment.

Cavalry vs. cavalry really evens things out. Plus fast moving cavalry, especially if they employ horse archers could harass the lines and take out the ballistas. Even the ballistas didn't make much sense. In reality they would only be able to knockout a very small proportion of Elven volley fire. Consider the reload time on a ballista vs the reload time on a bow (even in human terms, let alone Elven efficiency). Unless of course you are assuming that they have such a huge contigent of ballistas so as to compensate for this.

Now look at LOTR. What fate has befallen the Dwarven empire? The Elves definitely fared batter.

 

What was wrong with it? I thought the acting was good, the character development was good for the main characters, and before you say over-reliance on CGI, the locations were more ambitious than in LOTR. Where are you going to find a lonely mountain in this world? Mountains typically appear in ranges because they are situated on tectonic plate boundaries, so it’s not very likely to find one on its own far away from any others. Most of the characters who were in it and weren’t in the book were included to provide background for LOTR, which I thought provided a nice sense of continuity.

That’s because they weren’t ordinary ballistas. If they were then you’re right, they would have only been able to destroy a small proportion of the arrows. However, the Dwarf ballista bolts had chains on the ends that twirled around when the bolts were fired so as to catch a much larger number of arrows and shred them, hence the ‘Old Twirly-whirlies’. Also the Dwarves of the Iron Hills had definitely researched rapid-firing mechanisms for their crossbows to make repeater crossbows, so I imagine they would have been able to do this for the ballistas as well to improve their firing rate.

As for cavalry, the Dwarf Crossbowmen could direct their fire into the horse archers as they’re galloping up to fire at the ballistas. Mounted units are easier to take down with missile fire unless the mounts are wearing barding, and for the most part Elf cavalry never wore barding, certainly the Mirkwood horsemen didn’t. Crossbows have quite a long range, certainly as long-ranged as ordinary bows and possibly Elf bows as well at a stretch. Also the Dwarf ballista crewmen are as well-armoured as the warriors are, apart from not having shields. Dwarves are the best-armoured warriors in Middle Earth, certainly they are in the Strategy Battle Game if that’s anything to go by, so would be pretty difficult to kill with missile fire. The best way to kill them would be to directly charge the ballistas, and any good Dwarf general would place some of his Spearmen around the ballistas to protect them from charges.

By the time of LOTR Erebor had become a prospering kingdom once again. Where do you think Gimli came from when he went to meet with the council of Elrond? His family moved to Erebor to join Gloin once news had got out that the fortress had been reclaimed. Additionally, although this isn’t in the film, it is established in the lore Erebor was occupied by fighting a massive invasion army of Easterlings alongside the Dwarves of the Iron Hills and the men of Dale during the War of the Ring, while most of the Elves were leaving to go to the Grey Havens at this point. Khâzad Dûm, A.K.A. Moria, only fell because the Dwarves accidentally woke the Balrog, and the Elves wouldn’t have stood much chance against the Balrog either. Gandalf defeated the Balrog because he was a demigod of sorts, one of the Istari alongside Saruman, Radagast and the two blue wizards, the names of whom we still don’t know, so would have been similar to Heracles in a way.[/QUOTE]

 

Elves were the 'favored' children so it doesn't surprise me the way Tolkien treated everyone else. With the dwarves I dunno if you read the Silmariilion were created first but since they weren't the destined 'first' who were the Elves, they were kept asleep in the mountains. Like they got the short end of the stick. But civilization wise, they were fairly matched just obviously one underground the other above ground.

In the histories and the early wars the Dwarves and Elves did work together on some cities because Elves admitted they did not have that skill so while there was some bitterness since the Dwarves were forced to remain asleep while the Elves walked first.

 

Dwarves are probably the best craftsmen of any sort of structure, be it a building (Dwarf fortresses have remained standing for millennia) or a suit of armour (Dwarves knew the art of smithing mightily), whereas Elves are probably the best in the craftsmanship of weapons (Glamdring, Orcrist, Sting, Anduril).

 

Definitely with the armor with the dwarves. The Elves coveted Mithril but didn't have the skill to work it like the dwarves did. The mithril coat Frodo wore in LotR was literally said to be as expensive as the Shire.

 

The entire Hobbit trilogy felt stretched out. One book just didn't supply enough source material to justify a trilogy of long movies... and it showed. I'm not the only one with this opinion, the LOTR trilogy was generally well received, but the Hobbit series was not. This debate looks like it will play out the same way as our Star Wars OT versus PT debates.

I'm not debating the Twirly-whirlies functionality, merely the firing rate. Artillery simple put has a slower firing rate than that of an archer. We have seen Legolas demonstrate the Elves' capability of achieving an extremely fast rate of fire. If you discount Legolas because he is too OP, we can actually see a similar if not better feat performed by human archers of the real world...



I'm assuming that the Elves could at least come close to replicating the archery skills of the Huns. As such, even if we buy into the notion that the Twirly-whirlies function as they are shown to (it is a fantasy film after all, we can make some exceptions), they might be able to knock out one volley of arrows fired for every 5-10 that the Elves loose. Unless you have so many of the ballistas as to be able to fire them in waves as the others reload. We don't see that in the movie though, and it would become increasingly problematic to transport such an arsenal.

This is an interesting point. It really does have a huge bearing on the discussion we are having. As far as the movies go, Elves are painted in a much more favourable light. Elves are always portrayed as these highly skilled and stoic warriors while the portrayal of the Dwarves is always lesser, all the way down to the level of comic relief.

In the movies there isn't a single Dwarf that is portrayed to be an equal of Legolas... not even close. If the books are significantly different (I have only ever read the Hobbit), then things might play out a bit differently.

 

All great points. Like I said, I haven't read the LOTR books, so I can't comment on them. My argument is that strictly based on the movies: Elves > Dwarfs. I concede that in the books it could very well be different.

 

Errr, is now a good time to say I voted for the TARDIS?

 

It is a good time! (and I'm not just saying that because I voted for the TARDIS as well)

 

You would still be yourself with any of the scenarios.