Ok I'm relatively new with mage wars yet, but my 1st custom deck included the wizard with some heavy mana manipulation.. which I created with his story in mind. I have had some success with it and I think the best 3 card strategy from it that I could share is having a couple copies of Turn to Stone, Nullify, and Banish. By turning the big badies to stone your effectively taking the wind out of their sails followed by a nullify to prevent a dispelling of the turn to stone. Most books I have encountered have a very limited number of dispells, so if you can twart 1 or 2 that way you usually have them dead to rights... Unless they bring a dispell wand in which case a dissolve is required. The banish comes in handy should you need to remove them from the table in order to have time to remove the dispell wand. They are also nice for crowd management.so if you can make 2 turn to stones hold, your sapping 8 mana per game round from them.I think everyone who plays can imagine how much of an impact that would have on a mage. Try this out. I'd love to hear your own results with it.