Darox's guide to the Ice Maganatuar

The Ice Maganatuar

Why choose the Ice Maganatuar?

The Ice Maganatuar is commonly seen as a pure base support race. While it is true that the Ice Maganatuar is a superb addition to any base, the Maganatuar can effectively hunt by itself or with others, and is an excellent tank with strong survival. The Maganatuar's only downfall is it's lack of end game Titan killing abilities, but a good mag can take an allied Titan killer and turn it into a real powerhouse.

The Maganatuar is also a hard race, so not only do you get an ego boost when using him, but because everyone expects mag to be a waller you look awesome when you kill minions by yourself.

List of contents

Stats and skills of the Ice Maganatuar
Buildings and units of the Maganatuar
Strategy
- Early game
- Mid game
- Hunting minions
- Supporting Bases
- End game

Playing without gold
Tips and Tricks
Conclusion

Stats and skills of the Ice Maganatuar

Stats
Health: 300
Armour: Fortified 2
Attack: 125-125 Normal
Speed: 365
Mana: 150
Harvests 25 wood per swing, max of 25.

Important things to note are the high move speed and fortified armour, both of which help the mag immensely when tangling with titans.

Skills
Frostbite: Slows a target by 50%, with a range of 600. Duration of 5 seconds. Effective for saving builders and catching up to minions. Not the most reliable skill, given its short duration, long cooldown, and status as an often punished ability, but can prove useful, especially on minions which are less likely to be dispelled.
Slow Poison: Slows titan's speed by a significant factor, making it harder for him to flee and lowering his damage per second. Easily one of your best skills. Is effective in all situations against the titan, and is the earliest form of slow poison available, making the Mag ideal for early minion hunting. Can be upgraded by Inner Cold (5 gold, 1250 wood)
Wind Walk: Renders the mag invisible and increases his move speed for 5 seconds. Very effective and cheap escape skill. Can be used as an offensive attack, as breaking invisibility deals an additional 200 damage. Requires Frigid Climate. (800 wood)
War cry: +15% attack bonus to all nearby units and towers. No gold cost, but the high wood cost means it should be low on your priority list unless gold starved. Otherwise, is a useful bolster to damage output of allies. Most effective on bases or during army attacks. Requires Battle Training. (2000 wood)
Arctic Endurance: Increases the Maganatuar's passive regeneration from 4hp/s to 6hp/s. Nothing special, but cheap and useful for recovering quickly during minion hunts and sieges. Requires Arctic Endurance. (5 gold, 1500 wood)
Fortification Aura: Increases the armour of all units and buildings within 400 of the Maganatuar by 10. Very useful and with a low gold cost. Massively increases the power of bases, is a strong boost to personal defense, and helps keep units alive when attacking titans. Requires Defense Boost. (5 gold, 3000 wood)
Abominable Snowman: Summons an Abominable Snowman for 180 seconds. Essential skill for solo hunting and a very effective hunter in general. Has high damage output and health, making it an effective tank. It is possible to have two Abominable Snowmen summoned at a time. Requires Arctic Wilderness Staff. (10 gold, 3000 wood)
Blizzard: Calls down 4 waves of ice that deal 150 damage each. Total casting time is around 1 second. Very useful ability for hunting, especially for final blows. Does rapid and unexpected damage, hits invisible units, and can be cast at a distance. Also effective for clearing out packs of mini summons and adding to base dps. Requires Northern Storms. (10 gold, 1500 wood)
Arctic Armour: Protects a unit by providing 5 additional armour and slowing any attackers. Long duration and the power of the slowing skill makes this an excellent preemptive escape ability, especially for golding. Costs rather a lot of gold however. Requires Arctic Armour. (15 gold, 1000 wood)
Polar Wrath: Adds 50 damage, 5 armour, 1800 hp, and spell immunity to the Maganatuar. Very expensive and high on the tech tree, but incredibly useful for base defense and survival. With this, a Maganatuar has nothing to fear from nukes or titan attacks while defending and can be far more aggressive, and is also more able to fight minions and titans. Requires Polar Wrath. (35 gold, 3500 wood)
Hypothermia: Reduces targets armour by 16 and reveals that target if it is invisible. Lasts 5 seconds. Very useful for taking out a titan quickly or to do an unexpected damage burst while sieging, as well as preventing ww escapes. However, this skill is expensive, short lived, and useless in a chase. Only get it after you have the essential skills. Requires Hypothermia. (20 gold, 2000 wood)
Icy Weapons: Causes a titan to miss 25% of its attacks for 10 seconds. Slightly useful, but often will just make the titan walk away or dispel the effect. Given it's high gold cost and requirements, this is something you should avoid. Requires Icy Weapons. (20 gold, 2000 wood)

Buildings and units of the Ice Maganatuar

Units
Pizzly: Basic harvester unit. Is slightly tougher than regular harvesters. Harvests 10 wood per swing, max load of 10. Has the detonate ability. Costs 145 food.
Abominable Snowman: Powerful summoned creature. With 2300 hp and 130-130 normal damage, this creature is the strongest non-unique unit available. Has blink.

Buildings
Shelter: Provides 150 food, costs 30 wood, has 150 hp, and gives 2 gold on death, but is otherwise identical to the standard shelter. Trains Pizzly.
Ice Wall: Standard wall. Gives slightly more xp to titans than walls of basic races. Can be upgraded to a standard second tier wall.
Crystal Shrine: Provides basic upgrades and allows further tech procession. Contains the Frigid Climate and War Cry upgrades, as well as health, mana, and wall upgrades.
Advanced Research Center: Provides most of the Maganatuar's abilities as well as unlocking further stages of health and mana upgrades. Costs 20 gold and 2000 wood.
Merchant: Standard Merchant. Acquiring this unlocks the final stages of health and mana upgrades, as well as the wall upgrades. However, often this money is worth spending on something else.
Deep Freeze: Super tower with the frost ability, which slows targets. This tower can be useful as an addition to another base, but is otherwise superfluous. Has no effect on your builder when carried, and is extremely expensive. Costs 90 gold and 2500 wood.

As you can see the Maganatuar is a one man show, having only a harvester and summoned fighter, as well as a complete lack of basic towers. It is your main builder that holds all your power, and he will need to get into the action regularly.

Strategy

Early game rundown
In the beginning, your focus is gold, and lots of it. Set up a shelter/pizzly close to the mine in order to reduce traveling time and maximize wood before the titan spawns. Set up walls to prevent any titan surprise attacks, you are most vulnerable immediately after the titan spawns. Focus on getting a shrine and wind walk as quickly as possible. When you see an opportunity, move in to collect gold. Note that gold is more valuable than wood and may be denied to you later on, so get all you can. Whenever you retreat from the gold mine, get to chopping wood. The Maganatuar has some serious wood issues, so you need to maximize your income when possible. After wind walk is researched, the first two health upgrades should be top priority.

While golding you must keep the following things in mind. You are tougher than most other builders. You have slow poison and frostbite. Because of this, if any other golders come under threat and they do not have fortified armour, it should be your duty to disrupt the titan's efforts with either of your skills. You should be bold about utilizing slow poison when the titan is focused on another player, as you have more health and better armour than most others, but you should never be suicidal. Take a swing at the titan when they are focused on another builder, then clear off.

Mid game rundown

The titan will eventually acquire a minion so now it is on to the mid game. You can either try to steal gold anyway, which is certainly possible provided the minion is not glued to the gold mound. If you have significant allied power, you can begin hunting it immediately. Otherwise, it is time to invest your gold in an Advanced Research Center. Since this is a gold building, clearly you should not stick it just anywhere. If there is a good, solid base, ask the owner of said base nicely if you can place your research center inside. If he consents, stick it inside, out of the way, and start pumping wood for the upgrades. Note that you should only do this if the base is indeed durable. If you cannot find a durable base that will accept your research center, take an empty and remote place of the map that can be walled off effectively. Empty wood camps and bases and the area at the top left of the map work well. Place at least one layer of walls to choke any entrances to the base, then begin pumping wood.

What you research depends entirely on your gold level. If you have less than 25 gold, do not make an research center and instead wait until you have at least 25 gold. If you have 25-29 gold, you will want fortification aura. This skill is particularly useful for hunting as it deals with the biggest problem of damage absorption, as well as helping keep minions trapped by walls for longer. If you have 30 gold, you will want Arctic Wilderness staff instead, because having two Abominable Snowmen is too good to pass up, and is the best minion hunting ability you have. With this skill alone, you can take down level 2-3 minions without too much difficulty. With 35 gold you can get both fortification and snowmen, and can easily take down any level 2-4 minion by yourself without any problem. At 40 gold, choices start appearing. You can either get snowmen and blizzard, which is a powerful finisher move and prevents minions from escaping, or you can get snowmen, fortification and either inner cold for better slow poison and bonus movespeed, or arctic endurance for improved health recovery.

At 45 gold, you do have the option of making a merchant, but without Spearlocs or racial upgrades merchant units are a bit of a waste. The upgrades provided by a merchant on its own have little use as well. Generally you want to avoid this path and instead focus on abilities.

Basically, try to follow this general tech tree.

Snowman
Blizzard
Fortification Aura
Inner Cold
Arctic Armour
Arctic Endurance
Hypothermia

If you have less than the required amount for a higher gold cost upgrade, you should get the next available cheap upgrade. Eg If you have snowmen and 5 gold over, get fortification before blizzard.
The important deviation to this list is Polar Wrath. Starting with nothing, teching straight to Polar Wrath requires 70 gold and 9750 wood and gives you a research center, Inner Cold, Arctic Wilderness Staff, and of course, Polar Wrath. If you manage to get this much gold before being forced to hunt, it is tempting to tech straight for Polar Wrath. After all, not only does it unlock your super ability, but it also gives you an excellent hunting skill, Summon Snowmen, in the process. However, you do miss out on some powerful skills, notably fortification aura and blizzard, by following this. The decision really comes down to personal preference. Both sides have advantages in base defense and minion hunting. Polar wrath is generally the safer option of the two, especially when solo hunting, but good use of spells, especially arctic armour and blizzard, can make up for this.

Hunting Minions

Once you have at least snowmen researched, or fortification aura if you have allies to hunt with, it is time to kill a minion or two. The best minion targets are solo minions moving around the map. Use whatever you have to lure them into a base type area, then sealing it with walls. If needed use snowmen/allies to distract/block the minion before you place the wall. Once you have properly sealed in the minion, join the battle. Your Maganatuar will often be targeted over any snowmen, so make sure that if you start being attacked retreat until the minion changes target. You want to let those snowmen/allies tank the damage, they have far more hp than you, but it is important to get into the fight, because your extra dps and slow poison really have an impact on the fight. Keep it up until either the minion is dead, or all your units are critically wounded. Always remember that your excellent armour does not reduce nuke damage, so once you get to 200 health, pull out immediately and get out of range. Minions often run from fights they thought were easy if you wound them enough, so it is important to use a finisher on them to help prevent this. If you have blizzard unleash it when the minion is on 300-450 health, especially if he just ww'ed as the AoE will catch him anyway. Make sure to place it so that it just covers his position, and covers the position behind him where he will run too. If you don't have blizzard, try to use wind walk as a final blow when the minion is on 250-100 hp. The extra 200 damage from wind walk will often catch minions unaware and you can collect your bounty.

If you can't get a minion into a base, but you have snowmen/allies, it is possible to take down a minion in the open, however it is more risky and prone to failure. The important things to note are that it is harder to escape when the minion is focused on you, and when the minion runs away, if you can't place a finisher, you can't miss a hit otherwise your slow poison will wear off and the minion will escape. To help prevent this, make sure your snowmen are in front of the minion as much as possible. Not only does this prevent them from blocking you, but it also blocks the minion and helps to catch him. If you have missed a hit, you can use frost bite as a means to catch up to the minion, but the long cooldown means you can only do this once during a chase.

If the minion is sitting on the gold mound and refuses to move, things get slightly trickier. The gold mound is a dangerous place to fight a minion. They have huge regeneration, unlimited mana, and it is much easier for the Titan to appear on the scene quickly. Only do it against low level minions when you have a lot of firepower. You can take out level 2 minions at the mound with dual snowmen and armour aura, but it is strongly recommended you get additional support and/or higher spells, such as Blizzard, Polar Wrath, and Hypothermia for anything over level 3. Use your judgment, but remember when it comes to fighting at the gold mound, it pays to overcompensate. The last thing you want to find out is that you don't have enough damage output to actually counter the regeneration of the mound.

Supporting Bases

If you are not hunting minions, you should be doing this. After the early game, your priorities should be hunting minions, then supporting bases, then golding. Whenever the titan is attacking a base, you should look at three things. How far away it is from your current position, how strong the base is, and how strong the Titan is. If the base is clearly strong enough to not be phased by the Titan, you can ignore it and grab gold. If the Titan has a good chance at beating the base, especially after a prolonged siege, you need consider the distance between you and the base, and how well the base will survive until you arrive. If it is too far away for you to even get close before the titan demolishes it, ignore it and use the time to get gold. If it is close enough that you might get there while most of the base is still standing however, you need to get there as soon as possible.

When you arrive, there are several possibilities. If the titan is half way through a siege and near the end of the walls, run into the base, wall off the entrance, then sprint inside and support the base. Make sure to be cautious of any minions hanging around and when walking past the Titan. If the Titan is hanging around outside the base healing, dash past him and get into the base to begin supporting. If the titan is into the towers and is on half or lower health, wall him in and, depending on his level/health and your skills, either flee or begin fighting until one of you is forced to leave or you kill him. If he teleports or runs, destroy as much of the base as possible and leave before any other titans show up. If the titan is attacking the towers and is still above 2/3 of his max hp, leave. You were too late to save the base.

However you arrive, you will need to begin supporting the base. As a mag, there are several things you can do to assist. Firstly, you can wall. Although this is costly for you, it has two advantages in that your wood supply is much more compact, and that you are more resilient to any nukes. Secondly, you have a couple of useful supporting spells you can use without putting yourself in any danger. War Cry, Fortification Aura, Frostbite, Blizzard, and Hypothermia are all effective when used during a siege, and any one of them can easily catch a titan before he retreats and render the base unbreakable. Finally, you can start beating on the titan, making the most of your decent damage and your slow poison. Not only does this deal a great deal of damage and reduce the titans attack speed, this often distracts the titan as he tries to take swings at you. Obviously this will put you in the greatest risk, so you need to be cautious of certain things. Make sure you always have the path behind you cleared, never go out with less than 300 health, and always be careful of nuking. Of course, if you have Polar Wrath activated, you can act without fear of any of this.

End game rundown

By this stage, the Titan and any surviving minions will be too strong for you to handle by yourself. You definitely need Polar Wrath by this stage, as you will be too fragile without it. At this stage, you will want to be predominately supporting bases, and keeping your offensive as a counter attack for when titans have been wounded by a siege. You can however take direct offensive action in two ways. The first is when you support an ally with a group of Titan killers, such as Balthasar, any hunter with bones/expert, and super builder forms such as Morphling Beast, Tauren Champion, or other Polar Wrath mags. The best Titan killer is clearly Balthasar, but enough hunters/super builders, as well as army unit backup, can stand a chance against high level minions and even threaten the main titan. In these fights your role is predominately to use your skills to buff your allies and debuff the titan. Hypothermia is particularly good at this point, as well as War Cry and Fortification aura. You should also try to keep slow poison on the Titan as much as possible.

Playing without gold

If the titan grabs a minion right off the bat and the gold mound is locked down, you will have to work harder to achieve success. You still have slow poison and wind walk, and these skills combined with allied forces should be enough to take down a low level minion and open up the gold for you again. If you don't have any suitable support however, you are pretty much resigned to base support. You still have roar and slow poison, and because you won't be spending anything on upgrades, you will have huge stocks of wood to spend on walls. Remember especially early game to not be afraid to take a few shots at the titan while he is sieging or retreating on low health, but don't over extend yourself and watch he doesn't suddenly use heal. If you see him on 200 or lower hp, try for a Wind Walk strike but again be wary of healing spells.

If you don't manage to kill any minions or steal any gold in spite of them until the gold penalty, you should always get Polar Wrath as by this time the game will almost always be in the end game stage.

Tips and Tricks

Here are a few tips as well as some tricks specific to the Ice Maganatuar. The most important one is that it is possible to have two snowmen summoned for a period of time. Because the cooldown is 120 seconds and the duration is 180 seconds, you have a 60 second window where you have two snowmen, and you should always have both when hunting, especially when you are going solo. It also pays to let the Snowman with the lower duration tank any damage.

When golding, if the titan is attacking your corner of the walls and someone else goes up to the mound to begin mining, take a swing at the titan. You will often get him as he turns around and he will limp towards the mound. This is a good way to help keep your fellow builders safe and infuriate the titan.

Teleport staffs are very useful. You shouldn't spend any gold that you need for important upgrades, but if you have any excess a teleport staff is a good way to spend it. Not only are they a powerful escape tool, they also let you react to titan attacks on remote bases much more effectively. If you can upgrade this into a Teleporter, all the better.

If you placed a research center in the open and it has been revealed, all is not lost. If a minion comes to destroy your research center, you can use this as a perfectly set up trap. Keep both snowmen next to the center and quickly wall off the area as the minion enters. If you finish him quickly, you may even manage to save your research center, as it is quite solidly built. Either way, it will net you a cool 45 gold, which will more than pay for the center should you lose it.

Conclusion

Overall, the Maganatuar is an excellent supporter with some formidable early-mid game offensive power. Although not as powerful late game, the excellent support provided by a Maganatuar in both sieges and hunting is always useful.

Pros
Fortified armour and good movespeed
Powerful summons
Excellent buffs and debuffs
Effective finisher spells
Nearly impossible to kill with Wrath

Cons
Has wood issues especially when researching higher tech upgrades
Has no basing ability and very limited end game solo capability
Is much less effective without gold
Higher priority target than summoned/army units or hunters.

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