My tournament report from winning the championship at GenCon is now up on Arcane Wonders' Mage Wars page:
http://www.arcanewonders.com/arcane-wonders/gen-con-champions-tournament-report

If anyone is interested in discussing the book, I'm happy to talk about it here.

For reference:
Straywood Beastmaster
Attack:
3x Acid Ball
1x Geyser
1x Hurl Boulder
Creature:
6x Thunderift Falcon
4x Timber Wolf
Conjuration:
1x Deathlock
1x Etherian Lifetree
1x Lair
2x Rajan's Fury
1x Renewing Spring
3x Wall of Thorns
Enchantment:
1x Enfeeble
1x Jinx
1x Rhino Hide
1x Reverse Attack
Equipment:
2x Bearskin
1x Dancing Scimitar
1x Eagleclaw Boots
1x Elemental Cloak
1x Leather Boots
1x Leather Gloves
1x Mage Staff
Incantation:
1x Banish
4x Dispel
4x Dissolve
3x Force Push
1x Minor Heal
1x Purge Magic
1x Purify
2x Seeking Dispel
2x Teleport

Thanks everyone for all the offers of help.

The books I've played and enjoyed in the past:

1) Streywood Beastmaster Falcon Swarm Aggro - This book would use a Lair and power out 3-6 Thunderift Falcons to peck the opponent to death pretty quickly.  Damage can be augmented en masse by Rajan's Fury, while cards like Acid Ball, Dissolve, and Force Push keep the opponent's defenses in check.  My main concern with this book is that anti-swarm counterplay can be backbreaking.  It used to be I never saw many Mordok's Obelisk/Suppression Orb type cards, or Ring of Fire type cards, but they were scary threats.  To me it looks like Forged in Fire created much more support for Demon and Soldier swarm strategies.  Are other swarms on the rise?  Have people found them to be better than Streywood?  Are anti-swarm cards on the rise in response?

In particular swarming with the Aldremelech Warlock using Wildfire Imps looks somewhat interesting.  Bloodfire Helmet offers a very inexpensive mass pump for Demons, and the Flame -2 and teleport abilities offer great ways to beat Suppression Orb and Ring of Fire.  The Warlock is also in some ways better at beating down than Streywood, since Fire spells offer the best rate on Damage to mana and I often was splashing for Poisoned Blood or Deathlock to stop healing from happening.  On the down side the Imps lack flying, which exposes them to being attacked by all the other creatures in the universe.  Anyone have experience with this strategy?

2) Push You Wizard - Boring old Jet Stream / Wall of Thorns combo.  Max out on water spells to drop armor, air & force spells to push folks, and walls of thorns to shove people through.  Huginn for extra actions and seeing over walls, Mage Tower for extra actions, and a few Gorgon Archers and Whirling Spirits to spice it up.  Deathlock and a couple curses to stop recovery, etc.  The more wily the opponent the harder it is to anticipate what defense they are going to give themselves.  The new Rust curse looks extremely helpful, as you no longer need to guess "equipment" or "enchantment" before they armor up, and now they also need to guess "curse" or "corrode".  On the minus side, it seems like a Warlord with Harshforge Plate is a nightmare to keep stripping all the defenses off of.

3) Plant "Pit" Druid - This used to be my favorite book.  I would throw down a couple of Thornlashers wherever opponent is standing, and then slowly summon Vine Snappers until they found they didn't really want to be there.  (Often too late).  I would Dissolve their TP wands, and match them TP for TP to keep putting them back in pit.  Vinewhip Staff to give them stuck, etc.  Fortified Area for a big boost to the plants in combat.  If the opponent didn't have a good plan to get out of the plant pit, it was pretty much always the end for them.  I like this book because it is very good at attrition/economy, but also has a proactive game plan.  The down side is books with a lot of fire, and opponent's with hardcore mobility spells.  (Like, 4x Teleport and 2+x Force Push.)  Has the amount of fire spells going around your tables increased?  Have strategies moved away from a lot of teleports?  (Hah, fat chance, right?)

The Book I've Been Wondering A Lot About:

4) The New Warlord - There are a lot of powerful equipment in the game, and I think the meta has been to 4x Dissolve to stop it from getting out of control.  With Harshforge Plate, Armor Ward, and the equipment runes, it seems the dwarven warlord can actually build the equipment combos they want and have a reasonable chance of either keeping it, or bankrupting the opponent on mana if they want to destroy it.  I'm not sure what you do with an equipment Voltron, but it seems like either banking a ton of mana and then wanding out some direct damabe (Power -1!) or building a steady stream of tough support creatures could both grind an opponent down?

This conversation has not been data driven.  Instead, it has been driven by some people feeling that the Wizard is imbalanced, some people feeling like people were leaving the game because the Wizard is imbalanced, and one of the consensus best players saying the Wizard is imbalanced.

Having no stats is unfortunate, since in other hobbies it has been the case sometimes that the thing the crowd complains about is just okay.  Also, the crowd will always be complaining about something, regardless of whether there is something significantly problematic.

All I know is that the four varieties of Wizard are very good, but I don't know if that means they're broken or not.  (There are several other mages that seem very good in the post DvN meta.)

What you *need* to Dissolve depends heavily on the game being played, but:

* Veteran's Belt if you're going to ignore armor and accept 50% damage from your creatures.
* Mage Wand (Teleport) if you're trying to accomplish anything with creatures/pits.
* Dragonscale Hauberk and Elemental Cloak if you're trying to burn someone down.  (Other armor more efficiently acid balled.)
* Eagleclaw Boots if you have a push based strategy.
* Warhammer if you're in a non-moving creature brawl.  (50% daze on two targets is unacceptable.)
* Staff of Asyra if you're running a non-living/incorporeal book.
* Lash of Hellfire if you're running plants.

I think Wand of Dispeling might also be on the list for a curse based book, but I don't have enough experience there to speak to it.

Teleport already doesn't work to pull out a Turtle because of Enchantment Transfusion tricks.

I like the Fall Back and Mistform/Juggernaut ideas Boomfrog, good thinking on both.

I would like to see Obscured be more widely available.  It just seems like a good trait to make available to most mages since it messes with the Teleport game.  (It's why I suggested the Smoke conjuration in another thread.)  It doesn't make turtling any better, but it makes it one step harder to get someone in a pit.

I think you are underselling Armor Ward.  Sometimes it's a hard counter, otherwise they are always floating 4 extra mana which is a penalty on its own.  If you make them lose 4 on multiple Armor Wards, that adds up to a significant mana loss for their side, which could give you a game winning creature/pair of curses all other things being equal.  I think Enchanter's Stone could be flawed, but Armor Ward is awesome.  (Though, I wish it had cost 2Holy OR 2 War instead of one of each.)  Mana on the board trumps SP for most time stamps of the game.

Rather than give different mages different numbers of points, I think *if* a short term errata is to be made, I'd just like to see some number of "must have" arcane/water spells be made Novice.  If Teleport is one of those spells (I'm not sure it should be) Novice can be reworded to 1x Level instead of just 1 total.  I think this is the most elegant solution, and I think it cuts to the heart of the problem.

For the record, I don't feel like making Wizard's Tower Epic fixes much.  I usually don't play more than one copy to begin with.

Swallowing a spider to catch a fly is fine, until you have to catch the spider.

I do totally understand the wish that we'd hurry up a bit on addressing Teleport and Wizard's Tower. But a Priest book won at Bashcon, didn't it?

Not only did a Priest win at Bashcon, but they played a Warlock in the finals.  I don't even think a Wizard was in the top 4.