How to best play Magna

[Frog-Whisperer]

Magna is definitely the trickiest wolf to play in my opinion. Not necessarily the worst Fang, but definitely more difficult to master than the more straightforward Thane, River, and Fang. I feel that the problem with her ability (although it definitely is a good one), is that unlike Thane, reflects are not direct damage. You could burn all six shield cards in your hand but your opponent might ony roll a sword and two shields, and if you don't have any attack damage left over than nobody wins. Her stats are stacked in such a way that investing in anything comes at the cost of pretty much neglecting everything else.

This isn't a guide but I'd just like some different opinions and how you personally play Magna, with a few builds that I use/have seen used.

#1: Bruiser Magna: I see a lot of people in multiplayer go for this option, but I'm definitely not a fan of it myself. The starting amulet is either scratch or watch, and they spend the entire game only levelling fight and body. I don't think that makes particularly good use of Magna's ability, because at most you only have 2-3 shield cards to burn and your hand is difficult to cycle. I'm also not a fan of playing Horace this way, as many seem to be.

#2: Scholar Magna: Another populat one, and one I used to use a lot, is playing Magna the way one would play Thane, i.e. totally maxing out wits, and maybe putting one stat into either fight or body or both stats into one of those alone. My problem with this one is that it completely neglects spirit, and I've won too many games thanks to teleport for me to comfortably sacrifice it.

#3: Clan Affinity Magna: I've not tried this for Magna too much, but this is how I play Horace and it seems to work every time. I'm a huge fan of the clan affinity dice, I use it to awesome effect on Sana, Amber, Zosha, Horace, and Twiss. If you're playing a two-fight Sana, you can outfight a 5-fight Zosha during the day, and likewise if you're playin a two-spirit Horace, you can escape a cursed-lands Lightning Strike with the right combination of card burns and rolls.

With Magna it helps because so much of her ability in combat relys on burning away your fight dice, so the added +3 bonus definitely helps a lot.

With this build in mind I like to chose the affinity dice amulet, and then upgrade every stat at least once. I usually go in the order spirit/wits/fight/body, but I could see an argument for questing for fight twice and ignoring body

[Tei]

I use resist for a lot of the same reasons it's good on any combat focused hero. Being tankier lets you leverage your fight more often and sooner. Wolves have gold and wits issues so drawing items to reach whatever your acceptable combat strength is less consistent than most other heroes. Resist pushing your reflects back isn't a big deal because you're going to put auto-shields on regardless, you can justify the roll based shield items more easily and you can just use one less shield item if you want.

I feel like you need to be smarter and more flexible with equipment on Magna. Battle armor is kind of an auto-equip on everyone, but it can work against Magna more than others by limiting her offense a bit too much. War hammer usually gets beaten by heavy flail and bastard sword because of her low spirit. Iron pike, king's guard armor and tower shield get more value on her than other heroes.

Stats are kinda up in the air. I grab wits first and third 9 times out of 10. Other than that, it depends on what the other players are doing and what items I got my hands on. I've been sticking with 2 spirit on the low spirit heroes a lot lately, and it works just fine even without a magic ring. Plus, I like to use moonstone on Magna.

Regarding Magna vs Thane, Magna is better when being proactive or using her body as an obstacle. The situation where fights end in stalemates because of too many reflects isn't a problem when you're the one already standing where you want to be. Thane is better at being reactive because his power shuts down the typical strat of burning as many shields as you can to stand your ground.

[hellomidnight]

I love Magna, she's one of my favourite characters to play. She's like an Amazon or a Valkyrie.

I've found the best way to play her is to start her off with Onyx (+2 gold in battle) and Think (+ 1 Wits), and go for fight and wits quests. She doesn't need extra body.

Because of her passive and high body, she is best equipped with offensive equipment rather than defensive equipment. You need at most one piece of defensive equipment (leather armor is a good choice as it helps her with perils).

The onyx is great for her because she's strong enough to kill Banes right from turn one, especially if she's got a couple of shield cards in her hand. And she needs the money because the trickery deck is where the majority of shield cards come from, so she'll be drawing mainly from there. With a couple of towns, high wits, and a couple of pieces of offensive equipment, Magna is pretty unstoppable.

[Yozh]

I like #2 Body/Wits