Vehicle of the Week: MagiThe Magi has a... colorful reputation among BattleTech players, to put it mildly. It's widely regarded as the CGR-1A1
Charger of Star League vehicles for the sheer ridiculousness of running a vehicle that big that fast on a standard fusion engine. Unlike the
Charger, which has over two decades of being the go-to punchline for older players, the Magi isn't as well known, and it doesn't have the family of variants to redeem it. Okay, it was also spared the undeniably wacky CGR-1L "upgrade" in that family, so the Magi does have one point in its favor in that particular contest.
To understand this beast, you need to look at the Magi's history. Actually, you need to look at its history in TRO3050U, because its history in TRO2750 reads more like a summary of a soap opera focused on military procurement than something intended to convey what the SLDF was trying to actually procure. The Magi is Killosh Industries' response to a requirement for an infantry support vehicle in the Periphery territories in the early 28th century, although the SLDF's satisfaction with what they got was apparently mixed. Killosh went bankrupt before Amaris launched his little coup. This isn't a line-of-battle unit like the Manticore heavy tank, which operated in that same role during the Reunification War. It's not intended to backstop infantry forces holding the line against BattleMechs. The Magi's job is to be big, hard to kill without bringing real heavy weapons to bear on the problem, and extremely intimidating to anyone thinking of doing something nefarious. It was not, at any point, to run around trying to support foot troops against genetically engineered men the size of a brown bear in hyper-advanced poewr armor, or at least it wasn't until ComStar decided to try it. I'm not sure there's really a good reason other than the Magi's toughness and notably, the Word of Blake even introduced a new variant when they returned the Magi to the urban pacification role. After the Jihad, between the white elephant nature of its size, the usage of the vehicle as an instrument of oppression by the Word, and the fact that honestly, it's a bit of a challenge to find roles that smaller, cheaper units can't do just as well (or better), the Magi was finally retired.
And there was much rejoicing.At 70 tons, this is an urban patrol vehicle on a scale only a Lyran or an SLDF procurement officer could love. The Magi's beating heart and biggest albatross is the massive Magna 350 fusion plant that eats up 44.5 tons. Adding in the controls and structural tonnage, that leaves all of 15 tons for armor and weapons. For scale, let's compare that to the 40 ton Myrmidon's raw numbers. On a 200-rated fusion plant giving it the speed to pace a Magi, the Myrmidon has 21 tons of armor, weapons, and turret mechanism. This is what it means to be the SLDF. It means that where local yokels invest in Crown Victorias or fancy up-armored Hummer equivalents, or even a 40 ton tank, you bring a 70 ton whale of a vehicle to bear because you have that much money and that kind of industrial infrastructure underneath you. That incredible size might even be one of the Magi's selling points when you start talking about the SLDF's goal of reminding Periphery populations to behave. The armor is quite tough, especially without the distraction of a turret, 9.5 tons of ferro-fibrous arranged 44/43/40 with CASE making the Magi a notably tough critter. That's another selling point. The kind of low intensity conflicts the SLDF was trying to deal with might fry one of those piss-ant 10 ton APCs the infantry jocks were riding around in but that's not much of an accomplishment even for civilians with improvised weaponry. You're not going to kill a Magi quickly unless you're willing to bring some serious weaponry to bear. The IEDs are just going to annoy the crew. That's probably also why they were tracked. Tracked vehicles are harder to disable than wheeled ones. Sure, you can drop a building on a Magi, but it'd better be a big one. Small buildings are just going to annoy the crew. When you remember that you're looking at an urban suppression unit, the incredibly light weaponry also makes sense. Three medium lasers (one mounted forward and one on each flank) and two machine guns with a half-ton of ammo aren't going to make 'Mechs half the Magi's size blink. There's just not enough concentrated punch to do anything quickly but that's not the Magi's job, either. If the SLDF wanted to pound someone flat in an urban area, they'd drop a lance of
Victors in. The Magi is a different tool for a different purpose. Against disorganized mobs, a Magi is intimidating and scary, and if they need to bring lethal force to bear, they can do it without having to worry about accidentally dropping a building in the process.
The Word of Blake looked at the Magi and said, “Yeah, a super-sized armored car is nice, but we need more.” They got more by building their own new Magi for the first time since before the fall of the Star League. Considering that Killosh went out of business, it's not clear where the factory line actually is, but this is definitely a factory-level refit or a brand new model considering that the first thing the Word's techs did was replace the engine with a 350 light fusion engine, freeing up an incredible 10.5 tons. The next stop was their local BlakeShack for a C3i module to take advantage of the speed and armor. Two more machine guns and a half-ton of ammo were added, with all four MGs mounted in an array. Finally, the remaining six tons went to an infantry compartment large enough to move a Level I of battle armor (medium or lower under TO rules) or a full-sized Level I foot platoon with plenty of room to spare. Since this was intended to move BA, my suspicion is that stuffing regular infantry in might result in the Word's answer to the Galleon Clown Car, but the rules don't actually stop you. Overall, this is a much more flexible, genuinely useful variant and while the Word intended it as an urban combat support vehicle, the Magi (UCSV) could be pressed into service as a heavy C3i spotter or BA taxi in other terrain. Don't confuse it for an IFV, though – any increase in firepower other than the machine guns comes from the rest of the Level II using its C3i data.
Okay, so I've made my argument that this is a ludicrously over-sized Hogarthian exercise in urban pacification instead of a bewilderingly pointless procurement decision because the ferro-fibrous armor was shiny. What do you do with the Magi when you're not
oppressing the locals proclaiming the glory of the Star League? The Magi is big, tough, fairly sporty, and not very well armed at all. That usually means you want to play spotter. Until they figure it out, your opponent will probably have better things to shoot at, and once they do figure it out, that's where that ferro-fibrous armor comes in handy. Besides, at the end of the day, the Magi is there to work with the infantry, and under SLDF doctrine, guess who owns the field guns? For the Word, this goes double, but you may want to get the BA into ambush positions first.
References: The
Master Unit List is a great first stop, revealing that the FRR was apparently desperate enough to take some Magis from their ComStar
sugar daddies benefactors.
The Word of Blake is the only faction represented by a Magi on CamoSpecs.
