Military Mages

seconding this. do share, sounds potentially amusing

Strange and Norrell or how Powder Mage does it as your profile shows. Hidden among infantry, surrounded by bodyguards, and suddenly killing entire sections. Eragopn had a similar idea, where Mages duel mentally with each other, with soldiers protecting them. Once a mage beats his counterpart he kills the soldiers that were protecting the mage he just killed. Rinse and repeat

Warriors who learn combat magic from a military academy would be more like Gishes. Actual wizards are the engineers and non-combat types since university training does not prepare them for the battlefield.

At the end of the day, Einstein is better utillized in a lab while Jack Churchill fucks up demon nazi's with his magic bow and arrow.

Well I was gonna post a pic of Ol' Mad Jack but I can't find it
So have another WWII badass instead

>mages to integrate into a nation’s armed forces?
They don't. They'll quickly become absolute monarchs and rule with an iron fist.

If they didn't already why would being conscripted change that?

Pic related because these guys have psychic powers that allowed them to change the orbit of Phobos to possibly use it as a relativistic kill weapon against earth (seeing as this was already done between the Awoken and the Fallen)

>All these people who don't know jack shit about military history and think a few guys who could kill a couple dozen guys at once would make a huge fucking difference

This is kinda what Warmachine's point is when you strip out the warjack mechancial golems basically.

You have officer-grade wizards who are equipped with the most powerful armor and weapons that can be made for them, leading groups of lesser troops who they augment or annihilate with their powers, usually dueling other similar mages.

I'd like to know more about their bullshit psychic powers. Seriously, there's the light and the darkness, but this shit is just natural?

It's potentially all still related. When they attack you with their psionic powers it's Arc based. There's nothing that says only the Light enables you to access these elements. hell, even fucking thralls hit you with arc when they start trying to gangbang you with their claws.

So it's natural in the sense that they can naturally channel arc energy to do attack and do stuff like that.

My favorite was the blockade

This is why I believe fantasy settings where it's clear magic trumps mundane means of combat should be magocracies. They don't have to be that different from real world feudal settings, and in fact it would encourage monarchism and discourage republicanism even more. Kings and nobles would carefully intermarry and perhaps even inbreed to keep strong magical bloodlines as pure as possible, and weaker bloodlines would serve a knights, becoming respected warriors with privileges and authority over the mundane mooks who are rank and file soldiers, serfs et cetera. Which doesn't explain the combat role of these knightly mages per se (I stick with the airforce/artillery combo) but it would explain their social status. As power is centralized in later ages, absolutism would become the model in countries where the monarch's bloodline is particularly strong. As the monarch's bloodline weakens, noble parliamentarism becomes the new model.

It's not just about being able to kill a few dozen guys, it's about their very presence entirely changing the nature of warfare. To stay in line with the knightly theme, in Western Europe knights as heavy shock cavalry utterly changed how warfare worked and they were unique in that they were the only ones able to do this (trained from childhood, rich enough to afford good horses and the finest armor etc.). The same would apply to mages, who are the only ones naturally capable of waging war in the air, which is a huge fucking deal. Being able to attack from the air allows you to quickly harass the enemy and retreat, take down important targets or downright bypass an army to hit more vulnerable targets. And the only good way to counter them are other mages (unlike knights, who could be stopped by a very disciplined pike formation in theory).

Just look at WW1 to see how much aviation alone changed the way wars were fought.

In one of the more developed countries in my setting, they're trained separately from the rest of the army. Those of modest talents are trained in more broad specializations - shielding, artillery replacement, infiltration, illusion, healing, and so on. They can operate as a unit or be embedded with regular troops. The more powerful (and often more crazy) are the real "spooks" that specialize more. They may be embedded with regular troops, operate in a small group, or work alone. This country also has spent more resources breeding, recruiting, and training their magi; they also have a higher incidence of magical talent among the population.

While other countries might organize their spellcasters differently, they're often essentially analogous. Battlefield tactics when magic is in play tend towards "geek the mage", depending on what kind of abjuration is available on both sides.

The truly powerful are more like WMDs, although they're somewhat vulnerable to madness, burnout, and plain ol' murder. They might be brought out to break a siege or wipe the enemy's army from the face of the earth. This may lead to arcane fallout, demonic or fae invasion as the barriers between worlds are weakened, or political action or sanctioning on the part of allies.

I think it was Reign which described military wizards as forming a rock-paper-scissors trinity of sorts.

A mage throwing waves of acid around and ripping people's bones out is going to be completely demoralizing to regular troops and since they're massed he can vaporize whole swaths of them.

Special troops dedicated to mage-hunting can target the mages while massed troops will overwhelm small units like that, so specialists>mages>troops>specialists.

Or they can be used for more utility purposes, solving logistics issues like somebody else mentioned, using their magic to misdirect enemies (move the footprints, illusionary forces, etc.)

Another element which ties into both of those, a lot of magic systems mages kind of cancel each other out.

A D&D mage kitted out for battle can just as easily use all those spells to counterspell an enemy mage's abilities, neutralizing both of them.

Parma magica in Ars Magica makes wizards basically immune to each other's magic.

Black Company's magic also had a lot of wizards just disabling each other's spells.

And enough archers could theoretically deal with a flying mage same as pike squares ended the era of heavy cavalry for a time.

Depends on how high the mages can fly; if they can get above effective arrow range then archers will do jack and shit.

Except in a scenario like that you'd rapidly see magical knowledge expand among the nobility and nouveau riche thus weakening the power of a wizard-king. Ultimately the introduction of the printing press would see a revolution as magical knowledge, even if it's just very low level, seeps down into the underclasses.

Yeah, it highly depends on the setting and system.

Mostly has it right.

At a napoleonic level, you can expect artillery officers to be magically inclined, not because they can replicate it, but because artillery officers were highly educated and artillery was as a result one of the few fields where a significant number of officers were commoners.

Another one where you'll see casters is elite staff services, logistics and medicine. Napoleon's cartography service was basically a small group of engineering officers who were generally assigned to the marshalls' staffs. They were said to be able to fully produce detailed topographic maps of an area within the day. Except now they've got access to low key divination magic.

That said outside of 3.5 as-interpreted-by-autists, mages are both too weak and too highly educated to be risked on the battlefield outside of upper ranks.

At that range would their spells have any effect? You have to consider their effective range as well. Assuming it overlaps with the range of archers then they will be risking themselves in bombing runs.

Anti-aircraft guns predate airplanes.

The communications and intelligence gathering capacity they could bring to the field would outstrip any amount of sheer destructive power.

Shadowrun often goes overboard in that its corp mages are just too numerous. You'll probably see one wage mage worth their salt at most facilities unless you're literally hitting Aztech or Wuxing corporate office. An airport probably has one or two wage mages with a bunch of slaved spirits, at most. They're that rare.

Even assuming more common mages (D&D actually doesn't assume they're that much more common outside the fever dreams of threeaboos, but let's pretend), the problem is what qualifies. Depending on the edition you go from "something you don't really want to risk themselves in battle that much" to "potentially a god".

A 5e mage can replicate a napoleonic artillery barrage once a day at level 17, which is like one in a million at best. That's not going to be something you see on a battlefield outside a general staff.

Which still would not be enough of an advantage to dethrone mages as the most powerful and useful units in the setting, for various reasons including but not limited to
>Archers not being the only units in the army. Mages can simply avoid them and go after other targets. Armies that overstock on archers in an attempt to counter mages would find themselves very vulnerable to other sections of the enemy army (light cavalry for starters)
>Speed and manouverability. When catching an army on the march a squadron of mages could easily move in range, bombard the archers and retreat before they can organize a volley. Of course these archers could also fire individually, but then they lose the advantage of mass fire and have to rely more on individual accuracy (which is pretty difficult against a moving target that's also in the air)
>This does not detract from the ability of mages to perform reconaissance missions or attack vulnerable targets (such as farms, villages and even enemy forts, using the aerial equivalent of chevauchée tactics)

True, though they certainly have (highly flexible) destructive power in spades.

Gravity helps. Your fireball might not make it down to the ground intact; your enchanted/alchemical munitions? Less volatile or fragile.

>missing the point this damn hard

Whatever destructive potential they have pales in comparison to the impact they could have on logistics and intelligence, which is what actually won battles and wars. You're so fixated on "hur dur muh fireball" that you've failed to realize that a mage whose only use is as a flamethrower is a shitty mage.

I'd be incredibly interested in how a counter mage operative operates operationally in the operations zone.

Valid point, but at extreme range you would have limited accuracy with your dropped projectiles.

Assuming you're using D&D rules mages are hampered by spell slots and restrictions. Fly, for example, only lasts 1 minute per level.

Now I want mages as out-of-touch commanders treating war as a giant spectacle.

Depending on how explosive they are (or more likely what kind of "chemical" weapons they could carry) you might not need particularly high accuracy. But that's a fair point.

>missing the point this damn hard
>he says while missing the point himself
Do you realize what "true, though..." means? It means an admission of what you said earlier, with a caveat added to it (in this case to not underestimate their combat potential).

I would post a "the point, your head" picture, but I don't even think the two are in the same galaxy.

More importantly "they got fly" is fucking retarded. You don't fucking send your highly educated, probably noble-born specialist to commit suicide on the frontlines unless you've got that kind of cultural background (that said most of Europe did but even by the 17th century their troops were commoners with a cadre of noble officers), a wizard's best tools aren't actually damage (or even debuff) spells.

It's the same easy counter to people insisting that magic makes guns not worth inventing (forgetting that gunpowder was invented by people who though it was fucking magic irl to begin with): a self-respecting mage isn't going to go "well I can still blow everything I have on magic missile anyway", it's "finally something I can use to focus on more important matters than the ability to kill people with magic"

Fireballs don't work like that.

I'd think it would depend on just how strong magic is in the setting and the rules behind it. I mean, there's a pretty big gap between, say, Unknown Armies (where a mage is just some dude with a few tricks, and it's usually not even worth having magic at all) and, to give an example, Exalted (no comment needed). I mean, all of them would probably make pretty good guerrillas, but would they be that expendable? If magic is a bloodline thing, then I can't see them as anything but officers, or even a full on magocracy of terrifying god-kings if it's a rare enough trait. If it's a learned skill, then it would depend on how easy it is to learn. If a person can pick it up over a few weeks, shit, boot camp takes longer, make a mage army. If it takes years to get anything useful, and decades to get to any of the good stuf, then they'd have to be officers, nobody would be dumb enough to waste all that training except when there is no alternative.

It would also vary by the types of magic one could do. If it's just fireballs or lightning strikes, then that's probably limited to special forces or other irregular forces. On the other hand, even a highly limited teleport ability is going to break the back of most armies, and a full on portal ability would let, say, a single battalion do the work of several armies.

Anti-magic fields, counterspells, and shanking a motherfucker.

Rings of non-detection are now your best friend. That or something to protect you from mind magic is probably the signature of any self-respecting mage hunter.

>mind magic
Speaking of, keeping secrets gets a helluva lot harder. The enchantments to protect against telepathy are probably pretty expensive. Who can afford them?

I would say people at high levels of the aristocracy and governments would probably be able to afford it. Fantasy Talleyrand probably has one for each day of the week.

How do small countries or states manage to stay independent? Seems like the problems of staving off predatory imperialists are magnified when they have better mages, too.

This is SUPER important. You kind of need to talk about what type/kind of magic your mages are using- Depending on that their role will change.

By having vast reserves of money and more powerful allies in whose interest it is that they stay countries?

That's kind of how they tended to survive in the 18th century.

>Uber Panzermensch
That's probably the best way to look at them
Each is ranked at essentially the level of artillery/vehicle they replace with some specialists in between
Tank Man - Heavy Tank Man - Destroyers - Cruisers - Battleships
Each basically fulfills the same role and then some, sure they can throw out some impressive destruction but the can also build bridges, observation towers, and bunkers, Hell Katyusha turned a patch of dirt into tasteless gruel

So you would have the weaker mages essentially being walking tanks, hard to deal with but possible for the well prepared, with the more powerful capable of completely turning the tide of battle

He really shouldn't have done that to be honest.

Once a pilot has parachuted it's the honorable thing not to shoot him. You can bet after he did that a lot of people in parachutes were mowed down.

if mages must be highly trained BEFORE entering to a combat unit, they will be mostly like officer with a specialty.

if magic is very rare, they could be generals like jedis in star wars.

It's from Welch's list.
>2082. No matter how successful, our party has to be more than a wizard and 5 pikemen.

Maybe at the beginning of the story, but at this point none of the Nazi Ubers are vulnerable to anything manportable except the blitzmen and even then you have to catch them without a Halo field up.

Actually not as part of any nations but as peacekeepers.

Magically enforce ceasefire, sustain emergency infrastructures and enforce security to civilians in times of war.

In the middle ages it could've been like an order of hospitaliers given the grace of God to actually defend the weak and protect the innocent.

In more modern times it'd be like the UN but with less rape and more efficiency.

>Part 1

It really would depend on a lot of things. First, foremost, and above all: what are the powers available to the mages? As has been pointed out repeatedly, the ability to fly or to gate things would simplify logistics, intelligence, and positioning matters, to the point that warfare would probably look entirely unrecognizable to anyone, and what restrictions might exist would shape it further. After all, if a gate may be created between any two points the caster can imagine, then what's to stop him from opening one end inside a throne room, and the other inside the sun? Or one end inside a man's chest cavity, and the other in front of his waiting, grasping hand? Meanwhile, if there's just a limit of, "Anywhere a mage has been before," then war would probably become an exercise of hidden cities and explorers, whose entire job is to wander the land and visit new locations, until they find the enemy's city entrance and can gate in a regiment's worth of knights.

>Part 2

Additionally, how are mages distributed within the populace? Are they all noble by birth (as in Zero no Tsukaima), or can random plebs be born with magic? And can magic skill be bred for, or is every mage given the same pool of ability, with better mages just being smarter and more skilled? Or is it entirely random how much talent they have? For that matter, is it genetic at all, or just a rare talent you're born with but no more likely to pass down than anyone else? Or is it a learned skill, without any innate ability? Each of these presents a very different situation. If it's just nobles who have magic, then it doesn't even matter if bloodline control does or doesn't increase potency, because the mages would have the time and money to train their kids from birth, exactly like knights were. If it can manifest out of the commons, but is almost always passed down (like in Harry Potter), and can be bred for in degree (unlike Harry Potter), I'd expect them to seem a lot more disposable, with military service being both a means of social mobility to any "first generation" mages, and a method of chlorinating the gene pool of any withering branches, while still encouraging mages to intermarry (being likely officers, they'd be expected to, at minimum, be acquainted with other officer’s families, and there certainly has been a history of military families considering up-and-coming officers to be a prized catch).

>Part 3

If it’s purely random, I’d expect something closer to a spec-ops role, with mages being essentially drafted the moment the army knows about them, then trained and shaped into whatever role they can work as. As for a learned skill, it’d depend on how long it takes to learn, with more time taken causing them to move farther and farther away from the field (unless the abilities are purely offensive, in which case I’d expect a sort of genius breeding program, with the resulting children groomed from birth to be living WMDs, indoctrinated and brainwashed so heavily as to be closer to thrilled slaves than thinking beings, and likely regarded as nothing more than expensive weapons that can be occasionally used to breed new components for other expensive weapons).

>Part 4

Another factor, related but distinct from the above: how common are mages? Is it something where 1-in-10000 is considered unusually common for a country, or is there just one bloodline per nation, as a sort of wizard-king? Or is it just common enough that you could form entire regular corps out of them, but rare enough that they’d still be considered special (like in the Fire Nation army and navy in Avatar)? If they’re common enough to be disposable, they’d likely make for great shock troops or as specialist within mixed groups, but if they’re truly rare then they’d likely be used almost purely for defense, where the enemy wouldn’t be able to assault the actual target for fear of being slaughtered by the mages residing there (effectively making it a new form of siege warfare). Of course, all of these would change depending on what magic the mages have access to; if gating is common enough, then I can’t even imagine how they might wage war, while something like summoning and binding might all but force the development of automatic firearms, just to keep up with the endless hordes of disposable summoned demons.

>Part 5

At the end of it, the only verdict I could possibly give is that, depending on how they work, mages might or might not be able to render war as incomprehensible to us as we’d be to Richard the Lionheart. It’d all depend on specifics, what the rules behind their magic are, and just how many mages you can field. Maybe they’d be most like elite military groups like the Delta Force, or even Pararescue if they have both high population and limited flight or teleport. Maybe they’d be most like actual artillery, able to drop a few hundred D12s in damage at a mile’s distance, or even functioning as direct fire platforms, functioning as a living low-inclination cannon that shoots lasers. Maybe they’d be able to function only as intelligence officers, much like how the ancients consulted with oracles and court wizards (such as Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizibeth I’s advisor and unofficial court wizard), using their scrying and magically aided intelligence-gathering abilities to locate enemy strong points, or even to predict troop movements. It really all depends.

Give me a list of rules, and I can start to speculate on tactics and countertactics, along with strategic use and considerations. As is, it’d all depend on what rulebook you’re playing by.

>If it can manifest out of the commons, but is almost always passed down (like in Harry Potter), and can be bred for in degree (unlike Harry Potter)
If that's the case, these mages become the new nobility, pure and simple. Those still born out of common stock just get to marry into the new nobility as well.

Exactly like I said in the rest of that sentence, where military service is used to weed out the old nobles who aren't good mages, while allowing new mages to become nobles and marry into it.

I hate how Bioware shits on tevinter so fucking much when they are a billion times more interesting than Orlais or Ferelden and especially the Qunari.

Fucking Qunari are cancerous and need to be purged.

Yes I mad.

Don't worry, Orlais was interesting until we actually got to see it. I'm sure they're make Tevinter nice and stupid too.

According to Wikipedia the Japanese were already shooting at the parachuted pilots.

"Japanese pilots then attacked U.S. airmen as they parachuted to earth."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_J._Baggett

I thought the qunari were kinda interesting. If they don't simplify their culture too much and make the women more imposing then I think it'd be a neat thing.

powerful, but temperamental, civilian contractors who are paid handsome sums to fling fireballs at their enemies

or professional battlemages who are often officers, high int means they are rather indispensable, who apply precision pressure at important places

can we get a bump here

Depends on the magician, but in the time before WWI I guess they would be used as tacticians, buffing your own soldiers and transmitting orders. I think the the latest aspect is underutilized, battlefields are a clusterfuck and when you don't have radios it fucking sucks.

In the campaign ive been doing anyone is capable of magic but getting to the good stuff thats high level takes decades of study.

Magi can also be preists of gods and powerful inately magical beings such as dragons angels and titans where people pray to them and the gods then grant magic powers to their preists through them.

Though all magic can also be learned secularly though its harder since you dont have a powerful being to guide your training.

the only limit on the number of magi a nation can have is how much money they have to spare for magical education

Depends on their rank and powers.

The recruits would be better and more survivable than standard red-shirts. However the higher in rank they get (and the more power they get), military mages go from glorified grunts to living tactical weapons. The Mage-General and Archmage-Warmaster would be the equivalents of a super weapon.

Of course that would also depend on the specialization. There would be a difference between a mage that is a pyromancer and one that is a necromancer or a cryomancer. Hell, even a muscle mage would become the military equivalent of The Incredible Hulk in a fantasy setting.

Also it must be remembered that military mages would be used depending how bad a situation is. If it's a bunch of rebels, then these require the recruit ranked ones, whereas a Dragon or Daemonic Entity would require the higher ranks to fight.

Codex Alera, which describes Romans in alternate dimension with elemental powers (everyone has them).

The most powerful guys are called Knights and depending on their elemental they do various things:
- Air: scouting, air supremacy, summoning storms and thunderbolts
- Earth: either engineers or guys with Big Fucking Maces/Swords (shock troopers)
- Iron: master swordsmen (shock troopers)
- Water: healers
- Flora: master archers and land scouts.
- Fire: psychological warfare and big fucking explosions

While many of those are useful in battle, the most important of their tasks are utility in nature: making ships of ice (in one case), repairing roads, setting up fortifications, destroying bridges.

Depends on how magic works.

In my setting, the majority of mages are ritual casters only so they do a lot of support work. Healing, mending, engineering, stuff that isn't fighting but needs to be done. When they do need to fight, most mages enchant their gear up to the rivets and play a heavy infantry role.

Only about one in a thousand mages can concentrate in the middle of combat and cast fast enough to be useful in combat. Most commanders distribute them on the regimental level. Smart commanders bunch them into strike teams to sway the battle at just the right moment.

Well, in this case, I'd see most mages of some skill used like specialist troops, such as snipers are IRL. Not something irreplaceable, but costly enough to train that you wouldn't want to waste them, with the most experienced being most likely rotated out of combat into training roles.

Of course, this assumes a varied but generally moderate level of ability; if the high end mage priests are capable of, say, thinking with portals, then your guess is as good as mine.

The way to get around that would be to have a very clear limitations and counters to magic. Maybe they need expensive reagents that make them reliant others to gather it for them? Maybe they're only allowed to cast through wands/staves, which are made of a rare material that the local baron has exclusive access to. Maybe the advent of firearms makes them far more vulnerable and not as omnipotent as they once were, much like it did with knights?

Even less than decades of study will lead to massive class divides. Education in pre-modern society was relatively tightly controlled. There was only a very small sliver of society with access to anything beyond the most basic of literacy.

>finally something I can use to focus on more important matters than the ability to kill people with magic

This. When your fireball that took you a decade to master and perfect is suddenly just as effective as a grenade that any mook can be taught how to throw in an afternoon, than it becomes obvious that you've become outdated and your role needs to change if you want to stay useful.

the top level ones would be this if magic didnt come down to study but for low level magi theres plenty of people to fill up the ranks
it doesnt really lead to class divide. the major issue is over heretical and non heretical magic and means by which magical eduaction be sped up

>it doesnt really lead to class divide. the major issue is over heretical and non heretical magic and means by which magical eduaction be sped up
Access to anything as expensive as higher education definitely would. The highest literacy rates in the west in 1800 were about 60%. It was significantly lower just 200 years before. There was a strong class component. Dirt farmers don't have time to go to elementary.

There was a book I read with premises like this. One side had water wizards and the other had fire worshipers.

They summoned fog and smoke banks and moved them around the battle field almost like chess pieces. Some of them had forces in them some of them were empty. Like a complex magical game of statego.

Human bombs.
Drop a couple in a city and watch it burn.

most of those who get magical eduaction end up in the preisthood which is fairly humble
the next largest eduaction for magic comes from a private magical insitution run by a noble family thats fairly nice to the peasantry
the other 2 major sources come from military institutions that look for anyone who has the interested no matter there social standing so the divide isnt really there

Depends on how powerful they are. I could see them potentially feilded like artilery pieces.

Or if they have more subtle, information gathering powers, I could see them being the military intelligence branch of the armed forces. Even just flying to survey would be a big tactical advantage.

Keep in mind, though, that literacy rates are not only tied to socioeconomic class, but also to both the general economy, the society in which you are looking, the general level of technology, and more. As an example, most (if not all) medieval and pre-medieval monks would have had at least basic literacy, while King Charlemagne never learned to read, despite being a king. Equally, it's been shown that literacy rates vastly accelerated after the invention of the printing press; people didn't suddenly become richer and have a lot of leisure time, but books became cheap enough that they could be purchased and read by those who already had leisure time (which was everyone, seeing as the medieval church made every saint's feast day a holiday, meaning about one in three days was going to include some free time). As well, literacy rates in early America were, by some estimates, higher than those in the old world, likely because the lower general population density meant that people would need to turn to the bible on their own for religious matters, rather than simply walking down the street to talk to a preacher or priest.

If there were magic users and they could make things like golems, there wouldn't even be a working class, there'd just be a lower class.

yea but you still need people to control all those golems if they arent autonomous and maintain them and the education for the golemancers if
the casters will probably also run out of mana depending on your setting

Depends on how expensive golems are to build and maintain.
If a skilled human worker works for a gold piece a day, and a golem costs 100,000 gold pieces to create and 1,000 gp in maintenance every 20 years. it might not be cost effective.

Field radio operator here. Can confirm. Comms run everything. And comms are always down.

No user, the parachuter is the one who shot down the plane.

Unless I'm the one misreading your post?

He might have been confused, but his point would still stand (except for what the other user posted already). I mean, it's only a no-go to shoot down people parachuting from a damaged aircraft because they're no longer an active threat. By making a kill from his parachute, he would have disproven that assumption, and possibly made all parachuters viable targets.

Except, y'know, they were already gunning down parachuters before that, so it didn’t really make any difference there.

You can head shot the lower tier panzer men

I'd suggest, in addition to the other options, the Moontide Quartet by David Hair.

It basically runs on the concept of a magocracy ruling one continent invading another continent periodically during a "Moon tide" when a land bridge is exposed to the open air. Customarily these invasions are Crusades, and they are led/run by magi. There's healing magi and logistical stuff, and there are also battle magi who just obliterate the foot troops of opposing forces.

Yeah with a sniper shot to the eye or a fucking rocket launcher