mathematically spawn points cost you mana-efficency to gain a action-efficency. spawn points take 4.5 to 12 turns mana pay off but gain there action pay off on the next turn.

i have played with thunderbolt bound to wand and i'm never going to  do it again. the full turn action and the 10 mana is not the best choice.

i will say that mana denial does not work well with "ranged" for my experience. because if you do your job well they wont be able to attack you anyway so you may as well used the superior damage of melee attacks.

your assuming you want to use thunderbolt as a finishing move, that will cost you 10 mana and a full action (not that good as a finishing spell because you want ideally want a quick cast)
you paying 10 mana for 6 dice (+2 for ring+hawkeye) thats 8 damage
or you could have staff of arcanum, which you could attack with battle fury which would do 4*2 dice attack also.

why i would recomend you to not constly cast attack spells because you do need to always have enough mana to cast your drain power.

staff + magewand(battlefury) over magewand+ele wand

gorgon archer is one of, if not the best defensive creature mainly due to the "slow" traight not hindering ranged creatures as much as melee.

the Hydra is the 5th best creature in a 1v1 fight i have mentioned the maths before in previous posts (behind Earth ele, Sir Corazin, Lord of fire and Steelclaw). but in a real game he lacks viability because of him being slow and an agony magnet. so yes he can be good but it requires constant help from your mage (through teleport, push etc).

both the archer and the hydra give much better position control then actual game winning damage

if you just look at the arcane cards you see there aren't any big cards to damage your mage, which makes sence because nobody really builds a wizard to be a beat down mage with arcane only. he uses the best thing his schools are good at.

arcane: mana control, position control
air: daze/stun lock spells, push control
fire: superior damage over time
water: N/A (so far, wait till necro/druid expansion)
earth: creatures with best offence/defense stat combo (but also slow)

and you know the biggest fact to prove my statements is that the wizard has no 3x spell cost, so the play-testers of mage wars obviously believe that arcane is inferior (slightly) to dark,holy,nature,war and force to warrant say dark+fire to have holy x3 but arcane+fire to have no x3

an unavoidable attack from an elusive creature or an unavoidable range attack will only be stopped by forcefield

the golems will be able to kite because most wizards bind charge magewand.

if you can remember can you tell me the actions he took each turn to get to that setup.
because it looks like a 50+mana setup implying it would take 4 turns at least. I thought you would surely be able to tele in a the cat (or equivalent lvl 4 creature) in turn 2 to disrupt his tempo.

for other mages teleport any elusive/flying creature. use enchantment to achieve this (lord of fire + mongoose agility)

familiars don't have to have channel. just coincidence all the previous ones have.

rule book page 16 "familiars"
"often, these creatures can channel mana as well."

note often means they don't have to have channel

apart from the priestess who gets divine reward I don't carry any heals in my books. even then I only have lay hands and regular heal.

a full heal is really only as good as a strong attack (8 dice damage is common). there are some situation where I find it valuable.
1. you are going to loose but want to stall time for a draw.
 2. you have a swarm or other forms of damage that will kill other mage by the end of turn but he can kill you with quick+full turn combo. (note you can't stop both attacks with block/ reverse because the first attack will reveal both enchantments)

both these cases are pretty rare so I don't bother planning for them (apart from priestess)

relating strategy from table top games does more closely relate to MW then pure card games. it still has a resource management component (mana) that most table top wargames dont have (I haven't played all so forgive me if wrong).

if we assume mage wars also has its own form of "6 category's" I would suggest when you play to pick 1 based on your mage and play style to be your plan a. then go down to plan b,c etc depending on how flexible you are. using spells that can be used in multiple plans increases your book efficiency. eg agony can be used for "attrition", "control" and agro