Personally, I doubt it.  I'm betting that Academy will only feature younger versions of all the Arena mages (that seems to be the trend so far).  I have no idea what abilities and training the alternative (female) Arena wizard will possess (if I remember correctly, the devs hinted that she will have some sort of time-based abilities), but since the male Arena wizard did have full elemental training and his Academy counterpart does not, it's probably a safe bet that the same thing will happen to the female version. 

There is actually a practical reason for Arcane Wonders removing the male wizard's elemental flexibility.  Since Academy come with less cards than Arena, there is no way to make a fire, water, or earth wizard without buying other (Arena) expansions.  And because Academy is supposed to be simpler than Arena and an introduction to Mage Wars in general, being given an ability you cannot make use of might confuse and annoy newcomers. 

Quote from: Ganpot on June 15, 2015, 10:35:41 AM

The only card I'm aware of which does this at the moment is [mwcard=MWSTX2FFA01]Devil's Trident[/mwcard].  If you know of more, please let me know so I can try to work around it.

I was thinking of [mwcard=MW1J24]Temple of Light[/mwcard].

Even without my variant, the effects on that card are bizarre...  firstly, there's an equal starting chance for stun and daze, when daze is usually much easier to achieve.  Secondly, that card is supposed to scale with the number of temples the player controls, and is also supposed to specialize against undead/non-living creatures.  Yet getting a bigger bonus to the effect die roll actually hurts the card, since it decreases the chance for it to stun something. 

So the easy thing to do would be to reverse the daze and stun effect numbers.  Honestly, that should probably have been changed even in the base game. 

Given 4 vs 4 takes as long is it does, and given you have 8 players, why not just play a 3-round 1-on-1 tournament?  It probably wouldn't take as long (1.5 hours per match = 4.5 hours total + a few minutes between matches).  At least, that's what I'd do if I had 8 players willing to play for 5 hours.

Honestly, I think a 4v4 game is more fun than a tournament.  That way, everyone gets to be involved at the same time, a lot more exciting and unexpected things can happen, and game takes on a drastically different feel.  It actually starts to feel like a war at that point, and flanking, battle lines, etc. become incredibly important. 

For example, in our game, the Forcemaster took the left flank and charged right into the nearest enemy Mage.  In response, another one of the enemy Mages tried to double up and overwhelm the Forcemaster, forcing him to retreat after being heavily damaged.  But in the meantime, the right flank was a 2 on 3 encounter.  Their Warlord tried to create a fortress of pike walls and ranged units in towers to slow us down, but we bombarded their bunched up forces with area attacks until they had to scatter.  Then the Forcemaster came back to the center of the field to mind-control the Warlord's Grimson Deadeye in order to temporarily gain map control, while our other two teammates rotated to defend the left flank from the 2 advancing enemy Mages.  Meanwhile, I (the Priestess) hurriedly patched up the Forcemaster as best I could. 

Quote from: Ganpot on June 13, 2015, 07:04:47 PM

[mwcard=MW1Q02]Bearskin[/mwcard], on the other hand, should be perfectly fine once frost cards start actually coming out.

Lol. So, in approximately two years time it may become playable? 

You joke, but the sad thing is, that estimate is actually generous.  Assuming the Siren doesn't specialize in ice magic (which is somewhat unlikely, since she already uses normal water and mind spells), the Cryomancer probably won't come out for 3 or more years.  Based on past releases and shared information, we already know Arcane Wonders' rough schedule for upcoming Mages:

1. Paladin vs Siren
2. Alt Wizard vs Forcemaster (artwork has been available for a long time online)
3. Shaman vs Illusionist (from episode 8 of Mage Wars Mondays)
4. Alt Necromancer vs Druid (based on previous releases)
5. Sorcerer vs Vampire (from episode 8 of Mage Wars Mondays; it's possible the Vampire Mage will come later on or be revamped/scrapped entirely)

Considering the recent releases have been roughly a year apart and the staff's attention will presumably be divided among Arena, Battlegrounds, and Academy releases for the foreseeable future, I'd estimate that Sorcerer vs ____ (the first expansion somewhat likely to contain a Cryomancer) will probably come out around November 2019.  So yeah... that's depressing. 

Back on topic, I'm surprised no one has mentioned [mwcard=MWSTX1CKC09]Giant Wolf Spider[/mwcard] yet. 

This topic was largely discussed already in your other thread, but I'll go ahead and reiterate my previous thoughts.   

It kind of makes sense that most people haven't heard much about Mage Wars.  I only learned about it through youtube channels and online lists of highly rated new board games.  Arcane Wonders is a small company, and can't afford a lot of extravagant advertising.  To be honest, Mage Wars is also a really generic name (especially for a game that, at the moment, more closely resembles a duel or tournament than an actual war).  I can easily see uninformed people confusing Mage Wars with Wiz-War, Summoner Wars, Mage Knight, etc. 

But I think the main problems with wide-spread adoption are portability, game length, complexity, and a lack of new content.  In short, people do tend to prefer shorter activities to 2 hour or more in-depth games (as much as that depresses me, since I've been trying for what seems like forever to get a group of my friends to play Battlestar Galactica with me).  That preference is especially true with intimidatingly complex games, which Mage Wars definitely is.  A lot of people I know have played one game and then refused to play any more out of frustration. 

People are also less likely to play a game of Mage Wars spontaneously, since carrying around the requisite materials is a lot harder than it would be for most regular card games (most only need two decks of cards).  Mage Wars Academy seems to be designed around fixing the portability and game length issues (and might possibly tackle the complexity issue as well, since it will eliminate typical board movement). 

For people who have already gotten into Mage Wars, I think the biggest problem is lack of content.  I respect Arcane Wonder's dedication to balance and quality, but the last new cards came out July 2nd, 2014.  The last new Mage archetypes were released in November of 2013 (if my info is correct).  You can't have such a massive gap in content and not expect players to get bored.  I am excited about Domination, but at this point I think the community desperately needs even more.  If Paladin vs Siren doesn't ship by the end of the year, I will really worry about the future of the game. 

This play variant is somewhat dangerous depending on the build. With 6-7 effect die rolls a turn in my zombie build, many players would be hard pressed to come close to matching me in effect points.  One could also receive effect points for minor effects, like daze, and save them for burn, rot, and bleed.

Yup, that is kind of anticipated.  But if you were rolling that many effect dies anyway, your opponent was going to end up with a lot of conditions regardless.  The only difference is that you have slightly more control over which conditions are given out, when, and to which targets.  But on the whole, this variant should theoretically provide a slight buff to condition-based builds.  That is part of the reason why I instituted a 12 Effect Point limit, so that players couldn't just hoard massive amounts of points for only powerful conditions. 

I'm also not sure how well this system would work with zone attack spells, since there are at least a couple with effect die rolls.

That's actually pretty easy.  Since a zone attack makes a separate attack against each valid target, the player gets 6 Effect Points per target (but can't carry over more than 12 points from any target). 

I've played a 4v4 game of Mage Wars (I was curious how it would go).  If you're still looking for advice about this, I can give you some. 

Coordinated spellbooks are definitely a problem.  For professional matches, I agree that a coordinator should be designated (or at the very least, the group needs to agree on Mages and some strategies before-hand).  However, that might not be ideal for more casual matches (since having to rebuild everyone's spell books before the game will just add to the already massive amount of time the game will take).  My group just used a selection of normal pre-built books (with admittedly mixed results). 

The real killer for team games is definitely the time commitment.  My group didn't actually finish our game (people had to leave), but we did play for a solid 4.5 hours (I estimate the game would have been over in 5.5 to 6 hours total).  Now, a lot of the people involved were not very experienced with Mage Wars, and we were playing with 8 people, but even playing with 4 people is still going to take a decent amount of time. 

That being said, I disagree with your idea of having simultaneous turns.  That sounds like a recipe for chaos and confusion, even with just 4 players (I shudder to even think of what would happen with 6-8).  I think a preferable method would be for each individual player to simply use all of their actions in a row.  Then a player from the other team gets to do the same.  The pattern then repeats until all players have acted.  However, every player can still use their quick-cast at any normally valid time.  Initiative gets traded between teams like normal, and determines which team goes first.  That way, the back-and-forth gameplay of standard Mage Wars is preserved in the team variant, without dragging the game out unnecessarily. 

For example, Team 1 consists of Players A, B, and C.  Team 2 consists of Players D, E, and F.  Team 1 starts with the initiative, so Player A goes first.  Then Player D goes, followed by Player B, then Player E, and so on.  The next round, Team 2 has initiative, so Player D goes first, followed by Player B.  On turn 3, Player B goes first, followed by Player E. 

Another way to save time would be to have individual life totals instead of shared team life.  If a Mage dies, that player is out, all active spells by that Mage end, and the team will inevitably lose unless they can kill an opposing Mage really quickly (due to loss of channeling and actions).  That will unfortunately lead to the end of most games being lopsided, but it will also massively cut down on game duration. 

Also, for balance reasons, I think it should be mandated that each team can only have one version of any single Mage.  Otherwise, you'd just see teams running with all Forcemasters and focusing on cutting a single enemy Mage to shreds before he/she could do anything. 

Having a card always do the same thing works better in random opportunity games like Race for the Galaxy or Magic. If you removed all randomness from attacks and defenses in Mage Wars, I would worry about it becoming too Chess like and deterministic. I often object to random outcomes in games, but the damage dice in MW are low enough variance that it doesn't bother me here, particularly with the level of control you have over everything else. Overall I think the random outcomes work well as implemented in MW.

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that Mage Wars should change the random nature of its combat.  It's far too late for an overhaul that large; that ship has long since sailed.  But I do believe that the game would have been better if it had lacked such randomness from the get-go.  I'm actually not that annoyed with damage being (slightly) randomized.  I can tolerate it, although I still dislike it.  I view it as far worse that secondary effects are random (Push, Stun, Burn, etc.).  Those things can have a far larger immediate impact on the game, and there aren't enough of them in most singular games to even out the distribution of successes and failures.  I think a small part of the reason people rely on Teleport so much is because no one wants to risk an entire game by betting that Surging Wave will actually push the target.  Even Jet Stream can fail miserably when you need it most. 

However, I also acknowledge that this particular issue is a matter of personal opinion.  There is no correct answer.  If I had to guess, card gamers are more likely to want a deterministic approach, whereas board gamers are more comfortable with systems involving luck.  I just don't think luck encourages a good competitive scene.  Furthermore, I think your fears regarding the game becoming too deterministic could just as easily have been applied to the decision to remove card draws and simply give players access to everything at all times.  Sure, as a result of that, players typically perform a standard variety of opening moves.  But the game still isn't anywhere near Chess-like.  If combat was less random, the only major thing I could see changing would be a more strategic use of cards (using Arc Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt to kill a dangerous creature with low health, etc.).  Players have so many options available to them that there will never be a single set of specific, optimal strategies.   

As for playtime, that's mostly a problem for new players. I've played 3 games in 3 hours on several occasions. Playing a single game is hardly as big a deal as you're describing for experienced players. Now, finding people to play with may be a much bigger problem than finding the time to play, but that's a separate issue.

True, play times can be 40-60 minutes.  But it's very dependent on which Mages are picked.  If you've got an female Warlock vs a male Beastmaster, then the game is probably going to be fairly short.  But god help you if you end up in an equally matched Priestess vs Priestess fight with no time limit. 

Without a random element introduced you get a "dry," predictable game where the only unexpected outcomes are from the players. Also, if damage was dealt directly without dice rolls and players got to pick which cards they would get to play every round the games would either be over the moment we saw the first card played or games would drag on til the last card is played.

Isn't the first part already largely true?  Two of the biggest parts of Mage Wars are constructing your deck and guessing what your opponent plans to do.  In both aspects, the players are doing all of the work, and all unexpected outcomes are already a result of their choices.  And if both players can objectively tell that a Deathfang is going to lose against a Timber Wolf without any outside interference, so what?  That kind of stuff already happens to a lesser extent.  But that doesn't matter, because that's not what the game is really about.  The game would always stay unpredictable because the core of the game is responding to your enemy's moves with counter-moves that you hope he/she won't predict or be prepared for.  The famous words of Helmuth von Moltke are very applicable here: "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."  If you are trying to turtle as a Priestess and your enemy drops a Deathlock, whatever previous plan you had goes right out the window. 

Finally, if you think that the random rolling of damage and the effect die are too much for you try calculating the likely chance you'll deal a certain amount of damage with X amount of dice. Now try to compare that to "60!" (or 60 factorial). This is the number that determines you getting the exact outcome you're looking for in a 60 card deck such as in magic.

This is kind of beside the point, but you're slightly overestimating how much luck is present in MtG.  Games like that typically have you start off with 7 cards (as well as a potential re-draw), so the likelihood of drawing the card you want is already (very) roughly 15%.  Depending on how many turns the match lasts, you have a decent probability of drawing at least a third of your deck by the end.  Considering you can have up to 4 copies of the same card in a deck (and it's assumed that players will include multiple copies of extremely key cards), it actually ends up being fairly likely that you'll draw a specific card that you want.  What you're referring to seems to be the odds of drawing a card at exactly the time you want it, which is admittedly much lower (and players therefore need to be flexible).   Regardless, I'm not arguing that Mage Wars isn't an improvement over MtG in this regard.  I'm arguing that it could have been improved further.