The two generals face off across the plains, thousands of men arrayed before them, waiting for the word or signal that will send them into bloody conflict.
Hogwash!
Wars like that are unheard of in the Underdark. In the first case, there are no plains, and fielding (again, no fields) thousands of men would be a logistical nightmare.
Dwellers in the Sky Realm often ask how can so many dangerous and evil creatures live in the same lands without killing each other. The reason is, that they can't. Travel in the Underdark is long and arduous, so marching an army to their neighbor's doorstep would require more supplies of food and water than anyone in either the Shallows of the Deeps has on hand, and getting not only the army, but the supplies across miles of tunnels and caverns, very few of them smooth and easy to travel, would be near-impossible. Then, once you got to your enemies doorstep, they control the terrain, they know the lands and passages, and they're fully refreshed and eager to wipe out the invaders. Oh, and they're fighting for their homes, there's always a bit more tenacity when you're fighting for your home.
To understand war and conflict in the Underdark, look at the fall of Ched Nasad as an example. Ched Nasad was a drow city which existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. The dark elves had created an architectural wonder in making the city on top of a giant stone spiderweb of their creation. The strands of the stone web were the streets of the city and the web itself was the foundation. It was magnificent.
Then Lolth went silent and the duergar used that weakness to attack. First, they hired mercenary forces, with fire giants, to open up a hole in Nasad's defenses. Then the duergar artillerists entered the breech and fired stonebreaker acid shot at the main stress points of Ched Nasad's beautiful spider web. In short order, the spider web cracked and fell, dropping the entire city onto the vault floor.
Now looking at it strategically, the duergar hired mercenaries for the attack. Those duergar who followed the mercenaries didn't plan on making it home, and most didn't. Their clans will sing their praises for time immemorial, but it was definitely a suicide run. Also the duergar must have been studying the structure of the web for decades if not centuries to determine the location of the major stress points, because they immediately began firing the stonebreaker acid - they knew exactly where to target.
Afterwards, the drow city has fallen, but many drow will have survived. Now the duergar will need to conduct ongoing raids for the next couple of decades to make sure that the dark elves aren't able to rebuild. Once the dark elves abandon the vault, the duergar would need to move in with enough of a force to take, hold, and begin fortifying the vault. They, in turn, would suffer raids from the drow for decades as the drow try to stop them from being able to build.
In several decades, maybe a century, ownership of the vault may finally be settled, or the conflict may weaken the drow and duergar so much that a third party comes in and wipes them both out and the whole thing ends up being a big waste.
War and conflict in the Underdark consists mostly of shadow wars for leverage, resources, and influence. Lightning raids and marauders make up most of the battles, but no one side would ever commit a large portion of their soldiers to an engagement. Battles are quick, brutal, and usually deadly.
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