There are three types of magically generated minion, attack, guard and porter. The other tools at your disposal are the spells, armour, weapons and general items. The spells are not particularly easy to prepare and cast in combat. Weapons and items are placed in the hand slots on the inventory to ready them. They are activated by clicking on their icon on the main screen, and then selecting the required action, e.g. 'chop' or 'melee'.
Many items hold magic properties.
These come in two types, permanent, such as armour which increases the rate at which you regain mana, or limited charges such as swords with the power to generate bolts of lightning. I think I have faced. Not only do they move around to avoid falling into a predictable pattern they seem to learn which squares they are taking the most damage on and then avoid them. This may, of course, just be my imagination. I don't particularly like the way that you can train your characters up to high level near the start of the game.