I understand that you're opposed to making units of mages shooting all over the place. I remember the generals bodyguard of eastern factions in RTW had spears, sort of like jinetes. It would still be very far from ideal with a unit with a low number of projectiles, and i guess it would only fit for a few factions like VC where the general would be able to cast some kind of gaze of nagash or similiar multi-missile LoS magic... oh well, I'm not going to argue for this, just thought I'd throw it out there, you've probably thought about it already.

Cheers!