Hmm...
Mage Wars is about killing your opponent. If you use a time limit, time is up and nobody is dead (even if close) there can simply be no winner. Tie. Besides both knowing the hurry no decision was made.
For the simplicity and matching mainidea I would say the one who is closest to being dead loses for being so deadish.

As said, I really hope and I am willing to believe AW has a secret masterplan for wizard. I would love to see him as a flexible trickster rather than a brutal attacker with tower-autoinclude.

And what about Idol of Pestilence? During the Upkeep Phase each living creature receives 1 point of direct poison damage. Is that poisoning targeting all living creatures in the arena (not working on banished - I see the wording of banish is making that exception though) or just applying them directly? If it is targeting all living creatures (regardless of LoS for it is affecting the whole arena) it would never be playable as long as a necromancer is on the board. If immunity is making him an illegal target, the spell is illegal. Completely logical and intuitiv is that he is targeted and just ignores that damage because he is immune.

Sorry of I am totally wrong on how i think direct damage works.

Anyway I would also say ig there is a flame immune creature standing in front of you as a guard, thematically you are as safe a you can hide againt a melee fire attack. The guard is attacked because of guarding and lauges at it. Then he is normally allowed to hit back.
Let me compare it to a security guard with kevlar-vest standing in front of a superstar. As an attacker you cannot shoot that star. Sure you can shoot at his security agent. That will not affect him for he is immune (by his vest) against bullets. If he gets shot he is then definitely able to shoot back with his own weapon using the sand kind of bullets.
Playing that way as also Borg has mentioned is incredibly thematically perfect.

Please note that I don't want to shoot any superstar, neither should you do

I just realize that amazing combination of spiked pit and poison gas cloud. Or tanglevine and the cloud. I just wish there would be a way to stop that easy teleport out of all such problems. I have not really seen domination or academy cards, so maybe blur and cards I don't know will help out there. Well nullify and jinx work...

I totally agree about WT is too much a topic. My idea was not a realistic one as I mentioned. Making him usable for all Mages would destroy Mage Wars quite a bit. As Ballista does a bit in it's actual version.
Making Ballista with its power Warlord only and reducing Wizards Advance in any way (or doing this by errataing the tower) could change the Top Tier MageList. That brings this Topic back to the question by the way

Maybe adding a conjuration that tuns Light Damage to all crits?!

Something like that.
Zone exclusive, cost 7mana, 5life, 2armor, aegis1 on conjurations zone, all dealt light damage gets all critical.

.... Even the mage I see as the weakest (the forcemaster) has plenty of competitively and non-competitively viable ways to play. It's more a matter of someone (or multiple people) taking the time to develop how to play a mage than it is the mage's inherent abilities.

Wow, so you really think forcemaster is the weakest? That means you think there is a good way to play the malakai priest? I would love to see that ! For my opinion his holy avanger is very situational and there are not strong enough light attacks out so far.

Too the topic

Wizard tower: spellbound would fix it in my eyes, too.
Wizard hinself: I also don't understand that AW starts acadamy with him. Feels unlucky. But making him pay more for untrained schools could fix it. The point really is, that he can use nearly all new cards and strategies coming.

TopTier and the domination of wizards are 2 topics in 1. For tournaments aggro wizard seems super efficient. But for creative fun play without time limit others are way better. Looking at late game strategies