Ethnography provides plenty of examples of what could best be described as play war: either with non-deadly weapons or, more often, battles involving thousands on each side where the number of casualties after a day’s ‘fighting’ amount to perhaps two or three. Even in Homeric-style warfare, most participants were basically there as an audience while individual heroes taunted, jeered and occasionally threw javelins or shot arrows at one another, or engaged in duels.
