HOUSE SHYEEL MAGISTER: an in-depth discussion

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HOUSE SHYEEL MAGISTER

The (House Shyeel) Magister is a great 2pt solo available to the Retribution, echoing the talents of other House Shyeel models, it fulfills an interesting role on the battlefield with talents not found in any other faction. I’ll say this upfront, the Magister is all about battlefield versatility if you take it to the table expecting only one thing out of it... expect to be disappointed.

Stats

Most Retribution models boast quite decent stats, and as may be expected by such a solo, his stats lie above the standard for the faction, making him no exception. With SPD of 6 he has a reasonably amount of mobility, and with a DEF/ARM of 13/12 and 5 hit boxes, while he isn’t going to hold off much (these stats sitting on par with the rest of the faction), he should at least survive long enough to make his mark on the battlefield. It is worth noting however, that his Force Barrier ability ups his survivability vs RNG attacks.

Most notable among his stats is his MAT of 7, putting his melee skills up there, with all but the elite Dawnguard, in our faction. With a magic ability of 7 too, this makes him as capable in melee as he is at magic – something worth noting, given he has two melee weapons.


Weapons and Attacks

Packing two Power Gauntlets, before other things are considered, the Magisters are already hitting quite hard. With MAT high enough to hit most troops with ease, two P+S 11s with Beat Back doesn’t sound to bad.

Recall, Beat Back allows you to move a model hit 1 inch directly away, and then advance 1 inch yourself. This is pretty cool, allowing you to reposition enemies, for other attacks or plans you might have on the battlefield. This is useful for clear chaff – attack one model, attack another, disengage. Note though that the Magisters Beat Back movement does not ignore free strikes.

All that’s none too shabby, but then the Magister is also carrying some extra melee prowess: (special attack) Combo Smite. That’s a MAT 7 POW 15 slam from a small based model. Now, being a small based model you aren’t necessarily going to be moving anything far, but ‘battle mages’ aren’t expected to be mixing it up heavily in melee, and here we have one slamming over jacks and cavalry with ease, killing multiple warriors with the collateral. That’s pretty fricken sweet. To keep it from getting too broken, beat back doesn’t work on this (special) attack.

So, just considering melee, this model brings a lot of versatility: need to clear a path – Beat Back; need to kill a couple of warrior models – 2 Attacks; need to take on a heavy – combo smite. It may not have the best answer, but at least it has an answer to everything.

Aside from melee, the Magister also brings some offensive magic to the table... this is covered in the next section.


Skills and Abilities

Before we get to the spells, the Magister has one handy special ability, a Force Barrier. Just like those found on other House Shyeel models, the Magisters force Barrier gives him +2 DEF against ranged attacks, and give him an immunity to blast damage.

The extra DEF is nice, pushing him over the threshold of easy to hit meaning most ranged attack based models will need to either aim or boost their attack roll, to confidently hit the Magister at range. This is important, as given his decent SPD and (magical) threat range, the opponent will only get one turn to shoot at him before he’s acting on the battlefield; and if they want to kill him before he gets there, then they are generally going to have to sink an disproportionate amount of resources into killing him.

Immunity to blast damage is quite a hidden joy. This means he won’t die to silly little things like deviating AOEs (some peoples favourite ways of killing solos); but it also means he cannot be cleared out like a lot of other models – most armies (casters) have access to an AOE (arcane blast, eliminator, rift) to clear out a mass of troops (among other things), and in most cases these won’t even touch the Magister.

What’s more, immunity to blast damage allows him to go toe-to-toe against a devastator, a slam each turn is a nuisance to such a warjack, but the only way it can get rid of a Magister is by making a Melee attack and dropping it’s armour bonus. Until you have immunity to blast damage, you never realize how many models/units depend on it.


Next up, and the most obvious ability of the Magister, is magic. Boasting a healthy ability of 7, these guys will hit most things with relative ease, so what can they do? They can Force Bolt and Whip Snap!

The Force Bolt is something seen before on the Battle Mage unit, a simple RNG&POW 10 that pushes the target either towards or away from you D3 inches. Oh, and it has crit knock down. So it’s like a Gun Mage Thunder bolt shot, though it’s effects are more versatile.

The Whip Snap is something new and different. It’s only RNG 6, but it hits harder at 12. That’s sorta cool; but it gets better... a hit allows a single friendly model within 3 inches of the Magister (could be himself), to advance 3 inches. Now, this doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a decently powered, accurate shot; and that movement could be a repositioning for a charge or slam, a clearing of a charge lane, and movement for a better ranged attack vantage point (the model can still aim), a Warcaster getting out of jail (free), a claiming of an objective... the list goes on.

The spells are talked about enough, and IMHO people focus on them too much over the Magisters other abilities... so I’m going to stop there.

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Summary, Synergies and Sample Tactics

As I have hopefully shown here, the Magister is (for your opponent) a horribly versatile model in our army. While he doesn’t leave a swath of destruction in his wake and isn’t a singular assassin model, in a faction full of such things he’s a whole other kind of terrible.

Hard to catch on their approach, Magisters have something for almost every situation.
If your opponent brings a tide of infantry, you can slam things across them, or pull one of our models into a better position to deal with them. If Jacks are giving you problems, knock them back, knock them over or pull them closer for the kill. If you’re need magic attack, you’ve got them. If you can’t make magic attacks, your melee is still a sight to behold.

I find they work best if you don’t build a plan around one of their abilities, just view them as 2pt in game enablers, and a spanner in your opponents plans... let the battle, not the battle plan, dictate what they do.



With that all said and done, here’s a list of Synergies and Tactics:

• While Vyros adds little to the Magister, his abilties really have the potential to add a ton to a Vyros army. Obviously, Vyros increases the threat of our factions Warjacks, and the Magister is perfect to push things that little bit further. There ain’t nothing wrong with pulling a target a little closer, or giving that aiming Hydra an effective +3 to it’s RNG... and Griffon solo killing missiles with an effective threat range of 16inches? Yes please.
  
  And if all else fails, a well placed slam should at least gain a few more focus points for/From Vyros’ feat... and knocked down models are perfect targets for strangle hold.
• Rahn has a natural (and obvious) synergy with the Magister. In a natural way their abilities feed off one another, allowing you greater flexibility in your approach to repositioning your opponents’ army, and just being a general nuisance.
  
  Rahns feat pushes the Magisters spells towards the ridiculous, but the extra movement abilities that can be afford to or by the Magister are beyond cool. Whip Snap and Telekinesis combine, allowing you to move models 5 inches before or after activating. And telekinesing a Magister give you an 11 inch slam threat range, something few opponents will see coming.
• The other three Warcasters don’t have any particular synergy with the Magister, but he is still useful to them - allowing the better set up of assassination, and compounding effects with movement spells like eliminator, locomotion, mirage and gallows. Note: a knocked down model in Garryths Feat cannot shake effects.
  
  Having said that, (as per Werecat) the benefits of Whip Snap with Garryth should never be overlooked, any movement buffs you can get on to that death machine will not make your opponent any happier.
• As has been said in the Battle Mages discussion, every model in our faction loves knock down, Nuff said.
• Similarly, most of our solos have a skill in assassination, a 3 inch reposition can be great for them, and in times of crisis, a distance of 1 inch can be the difference between success and failure... handy thing we have force bolt.
• Expanding on this, I will note Destor Thanes (and other cavalry) specifically. The 3 inch move is potentially golden for them. Not only can it help with an aimed quad-fire (four shots whoo!), properly set up cavalry charges can be brutal!
• It shouldn’t need stating that this sort of thing counts for jacks too.
• Magisters have quite a great synergy with Stormfall archers. Generally lacking in accuracy and damage output, the Magister can clump targets together (beat back, slam or force bolt), while being immune to the blast damage himself. He can also knock down higher ARM targets (or high DEF targets via collateral) to allow them to be better hit by Brutal hot or Star Strike arrows.
• Battle Mages bring more magic to the field, and while they don’t match up in terms of versatility, they back it up with quantity. Magisters work well with Battle Mages as they are inherently better at their job, this mean they are better models for hitting and force bolt pulling an enemy model into range of the Battle Mage unit. Magister also (on an individual level), have better chances of rolling a critical, and can knock down the target by other means... helping the unit hit.
  
  As an aside, against certain armies, a flank of blast immune models can be very fun.
• Finally, Magister go well with other Magisters. While Whip Snap movement doesn’t stack, everything else does. And being ale to move two models is great.
  
  One fun thing of note about magister pairings is SP6 + 3 inch charge + 3 inch whip snap move + 1/2 inch melee range, is a 12inch MAT 7 direction choosing slam, that few opponents see coming.
  Add a push (from a jack) and telekinesis, and I think losing a 2pt model is worth completely disrupting your opponents advance on one flank.

Let me know if there’s anything I’ve missed

DISCUSS.

[PG_Steampunk Jim]

Very solid. I must say that the benifits of whip snap with Garryth cannot be overlooked. Once the courtesan is released, the holy trinity of corbeau, Lanyssa, and the Magister will turn Garryth into even more of a death machine than he already is.

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good point, comment added.

[Namiriel]

I've had decent success running a team of two magisters and two MHAs.
-The magisters provide extra effective threat range, with the potential to whipsnap any part of the team or pull models towards the team.
-They also can effectively buff the offensive output of the MHAs through knockdown. Between the crit pull and the combo smite they can easily knock down high priority targets like offensive jacks, powerful solos or casters.
-Whipsnap can be used defensively to get MHAs who have just killed (or perhaps only seriously wounded something) a bit of breathing room to retreat from revenge. Whipsnap can sometimes be used after the MHA deals damage to get it quite far away. This is especially useful if people try feeding the MHAs something cheap so they can get rid of them.
-2 Magisters can get around things fairly easily, and slam it back towards your lines. First Magister whipsnaps the secon forward and to the side. The second Magister moves up (possibly with TK extending his range) to behind the enemy to slam it back to your battle lines. The Magisters usually get sacrificed, but you are able to remove a powerful piece with deceptive threat range.

Rahn has, IMHO, the most synergy with them. Obviously, theres the feat, and the fact that you can start taking more of them with his tier list. But TK and additional slams allow him to assist with what they really do: Knock things down, and extend threat.

The other casters all can benefit from extra threat, as this is one of the only charge extenders.

[Atavist]

These guys are MVPs for me. Two of them secured me a win against Menoth last night.
First Magister finnished off the last Horenhold hammerer tying up my Pheonix-node, Rhan feated, force hammered 2 light jacks out of the way through said node, and second Magister Crit KDs the Reclaimer and yanks him into LOS for the Invictors to polish him off with CRAs.
I love that I always get some sort of dirrect use out of them, unlike the MHA normaly winds up being a psychological weapon.
Two thumbs up for the points.

[Nutcase168]

For me the little guy is all about the combo slam. Slamming an enemy model into something of higher priority like a caster and then having the MHA come in is so very nice.

Our melee abilities are already high, but getting free knock down and them pounding with auto hits are great.

[Plebian]

Can they slam on the charge?

[FranzGrenstein]

They can combo smite on the charge.

[Plebian]

Thanks. Came up in a game yesterday, my opponent claimed that you cannot do special attacks when you charge or run. Probably should have posted in the rules forum, but thanks for the response.

[FranzGrenstein]

This if from memory, it's star actions you can't do on a charge (see the Phoenix tactics box), but star attacks can be done on the charge.

I think thats right.

[MetalStorm]

You can't do (*Actions) or (*Attacks) that aren't connected to a melee weapon on the charge unless the rules text of the (*Attack) in question specifically says that you can.

The Phoenix's (*Attack) doesn't so you can't charge and use it. As an example of a rule that does allow a non melee (*Attack) and a charge we have the Devestators (*Attack) Rain of Death. Although it's (*Attack) is not attached to a melee weapon the rules text for the Rain of Death specifically says you can charge and use the (*Attack) overruling the usual rule that prevents the Phoenix from doing the same.

Magisters Combo Smite and the Manticore's Combo Strike are both attached to a melee weapon and so can be used after a charge.

[DesertSpiral]

Actually the reason given for the Phoenix not being to charge and combust is that it has no target, and the charge rule say that you need to attack a target not just an area.