Using a Spawnpoint and or a Familiar is often a very good choice in Mage Wars. It gives you extra actions and usually helps a lot.

For Beastmaster the most obvious choice is the Lair.

15 Mana is a bit expensive - and a bit unfortunate as it leaves you with 4 left.
The most aggressive opening is to move 2 to the Near Center (NC) and then place the Lair in the Far Center (FC). If you go with a Falcon Swarm, you would be able to start hitting your opponent in his starting square from turn 3.

Summon at least one Falcon every turn and try to put on the pressure!
In this example vs the Necromancer it looks like running forward did not do much compared to the Necromancer who did get to use both his action and increase his channeling further.

Straywood Beastmaster with a lot of tiny creatures often has a small window of opportunity to optain the goal in Mage Wars: Killing the other Mage.

"Tiny creatures don´t work in Mage Wars"
There is a lot of truth in this, the tiny creatures are quite squishy - die fast and often don´t do a lot.
If your opponent has armor and even Veterans Belt the Birds won´t do much - unless you help them a lot.