Position control is strong against slow melee creatures. Sure, Teleporting your Iron Golem 2 zones doesn't prevent you from running back over to it, but hindering might. Whether that's worth the action and mana is highly board state dependent. I think you're making too many assumptions about the matchup and are undervaluing position control.

In order to get much use out of slow melee creatures, you need to use position control and/or many creatures. Otherwise your opponent can maneuver around your creatures and use position control to fight you away from them. In my games, Darkfenne Hydra, Iron Golem, and Earth Elemental have been awesome when supported by strong position control, but without that support the other mage just forces the combat to other zones or moves your slow creatures out of position.

I didn't mean that the Warlord specifics belonged in this article, I just mentioned my concerns because you talked a bit about the differences for the Warlord in one of your responses. Mostly I wanted you to look more closely at the wording in the melee +X section.

Could you give an example of a combo play then?

I just want to point out that Nullify doesn't protect Force Hold very well. It only protects it from Purge Magic, not Dispel, which is the more likely choice unless you've stacked a bunch more enchantments on them. Dispel targets the enchantment, so Nullify doesn't trigger.

I like the idea of using Thoughtspores with Dissolve and Dispel, although I'd be a bit concerned that they'd get killed pretty consistently since they need to be at range 1 to strip my opponent's defenses.

The Forcemaster has fantastic position control options, and I got the idea for using a big slow creature to take advantage of that from someone in the BGG forums. Certainly an expensive option in terms of spell book construction, but it would broaden my attack options, which is something I was looking for for the FM.

I like the idea of a technomancer, but I'd also like to see an Elementalist with access to all of the elemental schools.

I'd expect pretty much everyone to run an Elemental Cloak. I don't think many people run duplicates of that. Many people also run 1 Dragonscale Hauberk. Right now, as DarthDadaD20 noted, there isn't a lot of variety in elemental attacks you really need to worry about, so people choose Dragonscale Hauberk over the other armor choices. I don't always, but it seems to be pretty common. Expect 2 pieces of equipment that grant fire resist. Once the next expansion comes out, that may become a bit less common, but we'll have to see. I'd go for 1 of each personally.

Nice topic. One of the major considerations I make in my play is how easily my opponent can make what I've played useless. This is why I like opening with a big creature before swarming for example.

I tend to think of different strategies in terms of mana investment and tempo. I'll use the Beastmaster for a few examples.

Opening with a pair of Mana Flowers is a small investment, but it puts me behind an aggressive opponent in tempo. I'm essentially 2 actions or 1 turn behind my opponent in applying pressure and defending myself. That's certainly a manageable position, but if you get too far behind in tempo, your opponent will just kill you.

The Lair is an expensive card, and a big investment. Playing the Lair is a pretty significant commitment to a creature play. That creature play can be a midrange play centered on Timber Wolves, a swarm of Thunderdrift Falcons, or something else, but if I'm not summoning creatures regularly, I'm wasting the action advantage I paid for. Using the Lair every turn will allow me to build a tempo advantage.

If I play a Lair, and my opponent makes summoning creatures weaker by playing Suppression Orb, Suppression Cloak, Mordok's Obelisk, Idol of Pestilence, and/or Poison Gas Cloud on the Lair, I'm going to want to destroy those cards so that I can take full advantage of my investment. At that point I'm committed enough to a creature play that I'll spend significant effort in a order to make it effective. If I was swarming, I would consider switching into a midrange play, or even holding off on using the Lair for a few turns if I couldn't destroy those cards immediately.

Playing a Steelclaw Grizzly is a significant investment, but a fairly safe one. It's hard to shut down a Steelclaw Grizzly long term with just one card, and it will generally take many attacks to kill it. Your opponent can mitigate the Steelclaw in a variety of ways, but doing so costs them resources, so that's fine.

I think beatdown is a misleading choice of term for trying to win as soon as possible. Rushdown is clearer. When I say beatdown, I mean hitting things with my mage, and buffing my mage so that they can hit things harder. Generally not a great plan by itself (except maybe for FM), but it can be a great followup to some sort of creature play.

Control is a term that basically means exerting influence on the board position to your benefit and your opponent's detriment. You can talk about control cards, which are generally cards that prevent your opponent from applying pressure to you or otherwise control the battle, whether though mana denial or shutting down a creature. Control cards tend to buy you time. There is also position control, which can be accomplished with cards like Teleport and Force Push.

Control strategies are strategies that try to build up an advantage over time and win in the late game. You're not trying to kill your opponent immediately, you're trying to setup a board position where your opponent will inevitably lose eventually. In terms of control strategies, the Wizard and Priestess have the most obvious control builds.

The Wizard can use Gorgon Archers and Stonegaze Basilisks to shut down their opponent's creatures with poison conditions and/or use Essence Drain, Mordok's Obelisk, Suppression Orb, Suppression Cloak, Drain Power, and Mana Siphon to prevent their opponent from applying pressure effectively. Voltaric Shield is nice for control builds because it makes it harder to effectively apply pressure to the Wizard. The Wizard also has the cheapest access to many control cards like Banish and Turn to Stone. That's not even getting into elemental school options.

A Priestess can use defenses backed up with Temple of the Dawnbreaker combined with attacks from Angel of Light, Angel of Lightning, Staff of Asyra, Temple of Light, and/or Pillar of Light to stack daze/stun conditions on their opponent's creatures. Stacking miss chances like this will prevent your opponent from getting damage through to you. You won't be doing as much damage as quickly as a more aggressive play could, but all of those failed attacks and missed actions will buy you the time to develop a dominant late game.

Wands are good for control strategies because they allow you to spam a spell that you would otherwise run out of. This costs you in the short term (you need to devote an extra 5 mana and an action to get the wand out), but you'll be able to Teleport (or whatever) every turn. This means that when your opponent runs out of answers to equipment, if you still have a wand left, you'll have a big advantage. You won't run out of that spell, and they may run out of answers while you can keep spamming it.

My favorite use of Teleport is forcing my opponent to face multiple Earth Elementals/Iron Golems, particularly in a zone with a Poison Gas Cloud. Toss a Force Hold on there, and your opponent will be in trouble, especially if Huginn is pocketing the Teleport so that the Wizard can toss a couple of Hurled Boulders in their face.