[Illuminated One]

Bows of Botulf are good as mentioned, but the vine bow can be, too (edit: and fire bolas).
It has a short range, but that doesn't matter much since the spell has a very short effective range (precision) anyway, so instead of putting a mage into your frontlines and watch him die to a stray arrow you can put that bow on a bane. Additional benefit: thanks to the lower range your thug won't target the decoys the enemy has somewhere but the SC that's mopping up the infantry a few steps away.