"How to use melee, the benefits of range, usage of terrain and abilities and what are those imps good for ?" Or something like that :-)

So lets start with the benefits of range vs. melee. In Mageknight, you have a big problem when playing agressive. The enemy will almost always get to hit you first. If he has a good range (more than you can move in one turn), its even worse. But just by sitting there and staring at each other, a battle won´t be won by either side. So what are ways to close in on an enemy without being slaughtered ?

There are a good many of ways, but i will try to point out some of them (actually just those that spring into my mind in the next few minutes, hehe).

One thing is adding throw-away figures that either distract the enemy or just form a living shield. Good figures for this are Imps because they are cheap, Freelancers because they are cheap and have lots of clicks, and anything with Quickness (read: Shades and Scouts) because they do not waste actions, are reasonably cheap and can even pose a minor threat to the enemies support figures so he cannot completely ignore them.

How to use the shields is pretty simple. Just move your formation of 3 freelancers in front of your really dangerous troops, let them be shot down and step up with the real thing as soon as his fighters have an action token next to them (ok, it ain´t that easy, but you will figure this out yourself).

Imps, Scouts, and Shades can be used to move into the rear of the enemy formations (by flying/running a flank maneuver) and deny shooters their ranged attacks. Ok, they may spin to your harasser and blast him away, but thats ok. He will usually need 2 of his rangers to kill one Scout or Shade, wasting an entire turn, and has to wait one turn, then turn around one turn, and then wait a turn again if he does not want to push them. At the very least, it will take them 3 full turns, 4 actions, and 1 click of damage to get back into their position. More than enough time that even dwarfs could get up and whack them over the head.

Another way to get in is using terrain, stealth, and fliers. Use blocking terrain or hindering with stealth to move up unhindered as near as you can get. Fliers are great for this too, because they ignore terrain during their movement, and have a speed of 10". They can easily fly around the enemy and attack from the sides or even behind.

Most of the time its easier to stay out of an enemies firing arc than ot stay out of his range. And it will get you much nearer. Of course this is much harder with those few uniques with a 180° arc, but if you flank on BOTH sides, it should be possible. Personally i like ** and *** Screechers/Ki Devils for this, but the Neophant can work well, too.

You should really consider which terrain you want to use and even roughly where you want to place it (if possible) when building your army.

If you dont want to denote too much points to this, or you are faced with a Magus or Queen or something to that effect (both can blast even stealthed figures and have a good arc), you can stil get up to them with some figures. Blade Golems, Seething Knights, Living Elementals, and many others have abilities like Toughness and Battle Armour that help you get there in relatively good shape and still have decent stats when lightly damaged.

Another kind of figures i like for this role is those that actually get better after being damaged (we call them push-spawn), namely Werecreatures and Worms.

By now you should have sorted out what formations you can use, which combinations of special abilities will be helpful, and so should have a pretty good idea how your army will look like. Of course, if you have more than 15-20 figures, there will always be multiple ways you can build an army along this guidelines, but thats just the thing that makes MKR fun at last :-)

That should get you some ideas by now. I will not do an in-depth discussion of this, but this shall get you started. Maybe have a look at Shatki´s Domain, he has some really good in-depth strategy guides.

There will be a fourth part, which will deal with my personal recommendations and "ratings" for all of the special abilities. Read through it for a good brainstorm, then make your own decisions which abilities you like to have in your army most.

General Stormfox

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