Reply To: Does magic have a place in large battles?

[Piyan Glupak]

Excuse me for being late to the party, but in my own rules, the most useful ability for mages is to to assist in communication with units or groups that would be otherwise out of command. The rules use a system similar to the “Player Initiative Points” of DBA/HoTT/DBR/DBM.  Flying units and fast-moving wide-sweeping flank attacks are much less likely to get bogged down due to lack of control.

There are other things that mages can do, for instance, cast magic at individual enemy units, make the enemy army temporarily closer to meeting the losing condition, reduce the number of groups or units that the enemy general can move in their next term to one, and so on.  These other functions of mages are rarely battle winners, and don’t tend to be worth the army points spent upon mages.