I know on some other boards there has been some discussion of the game length and shorting it up.  As a general rule I don't think this is necessary as I believe 2 things to be true.  

1) As people play the game more, it will speed up because the fact is that it's a rich and complex (in a good way) game that will reward and encourage replay.  

2) Many people's assumptions on how long the game should take are based on limited plays and preconceived ideas of how long this game should take because it uses cards.  If a game takes 2 hours and you expected it to take 1 hour having never played it, that doesn't mean it took too long.  It might mean your playing a Mage Wars and not another game.

Still, I can see a desire to occasionally play a shorter game.  Sometimes I might only have an hour, and I want to get a game in and feel like it will finish.  As a Warmachine player, a normal game will take 2-2 1/2 hours.  If I only have an hour, but have a hunkering to play Warmachine, I can simply adjust the points level down from 35 to 25 or even 15.  To translate this to Mage Wars I see adjusting life totals as a better solution that adjust deck point totals.  Have any of you tried lowring both mage's life totals by X?  If so, how did it go and how much did you adjust it?  Does the lower starting total break some parts of the game?  Maybe no one has experimented with this yet since the game is so new, but I thought I'd ask.

to your third point, playing the wizard (me) vs. the protectress (my bro) I also initially felt like my deck lacked a lot of options for dealing with flying creatures, especially the legendary angel that's unphased by lightening.  Just remember two things.  First, there are plenty of ways to deal with those creatures using things like enchantments and incantations.  You can render the flyers worthless or lock them in place with some spells.  I doubt the warlock can remove that stuff as easy and the protectress.  2nd, I found myself being much more concerned about the flyers than I should have.  Get a few points of armor on your mage and he ends up being much beefier than other creatures in the game.  I'm not saying you can ignore them all game, but if your strategy is in play, then don't sweat a round or two of damage, especially with some nice heals in your pocket.  

Also, as the beastmaster, can't you pump your cheap birds with some enchantments to go after his flyers?

nice, I'm excited to try him.  I've not even really put him into play.  To bring this full circle, maybe he'll replace the Gorgon as my favorite creature spell.

Also, perhaps in the example you saw in the video they were referring to an attack that didn't hit, not just from a defense dice roll, but this could also occur from an attack that was negated by a card played or attached to the creature being attacked.