I got into it with steelclawgrizzly back at the end of '12.  A local game store had botched my order and they refunded me the $200.  I purchased Mage Wars on a whim after steelclawgrizzly pointed it out, and we ended up playing 20 games over the next week.  We introduced it to our local gaming group and became the nexus of Mage Wars in the area (steelclawgrizzly is the nexus since I left to be with my fiancee). 

The same is faster than it was because of all of the cards that are available.  Combination mages are a possibility now (the warlock and warlord were originally quite weak) and it helped the quality of the game when they castrated the Wizard.  For about the first two years of our Mage Wars experience, we built our spellbooks to kill Earth Wizards first, which are now an extinct species, and everything else second.  With the extinction of the Earth Wizards, now you can build spellbooks without asking 'how can I kill two Wizard's Towers with Spellbound Hurl Boulders before they kill me?'

It is not that straightforward, as you still have to have mana to use the actions.  In general, I find that a spawnpoint saves an action every other turn, but at the cost of the summoned creature being deployed away from your Mage (with the exception of the Necromancer, since he carries his spawnpoint).  It really depends on your opponent.  If you are against a Warlock, forget about the spawnpoint, as he will destroy it with the ballista and the trebuchet.  The same applies for the Forcemaster, though she will just use Force Hammer.

I agree that is appropriate.  In my case, it does not matter if my books are posted because they change with each iteration (though some cards always stay the same).

I do not play that much right now, but in my old group with steelclawgrizzly, we would usually have 6-12 creatures in each discard before the end of the game (Beastmasters tended to lose more because of the number of small creatures, so it was not unknown for a Beastmaster to have 12 creatures in his discard while the Priestess or Priest would have only 6 creatures).  I regularly had games with steelclawgrizzly where we would run out of creatures to summon and we would be chasing each other around with what was left (two Steelclaw Grizzlies versus two Guardian Angels and two Knights of Westlock was not an unknown situation).  Depending on the iteration of our spellbooks, we could have stripped all of the enchantments and equipment off each Mage as well.

Why?  How?  If MW wants supers, they can make them as level 8's without paying any licensing (and base them off public domain characters without issue).  For example, you could have Victor Frankenstein as a level 8 Arcane creature.  While he would be rather fragile in combat, his special ability would be to reanimate any dead creature in your discard and return it to the arena with a Reanimation token (giving it Armor +1, Melee +1, Life +3, Bloodthirsty +1, and Rage +1).

I posted my idea of one in the Creative section.

Vampiress

The vampiress is a Necropian vampiress who survived long enough to develop the legendary magic of the elder vampires.  She possess trained in the Dark and Water schools and pays triple for spells in the Holy and Fire schools.  She possess a Channeling of 9 and a Life of 38.  She also possess +1 Melee, Vampirism, and Vampiric Flight (when she activates during a turn, she may pay one mana to gain Flying during her action).