Great thoughts - thanks for letting us know how you feel!  It is our desire to provide players with all the copies they need.

We have had to make some tough choices, because if we provide plenty of each card, then the variety of cards goes down. For example, in the base set, we provided everyone with a pretty good mix of cards, and out of 322 spells, 174 are unique.  If we instead included lots of copies of everything, players would have ended up with half as many different spells, or even a third.

We created the Core Spell Tome to immediately help players to get a few more of the most important spells.  In the future, these "Spell Tomes" will have some NEW spells in them, but also provide additional copies of past spells.

We want your opinion please!  Would you prefer these Spell Tomes to be keyed to specific Mages and schools of Magic?  In this manner, if you like playing the Priestess, you could get extra copies of all of her Holy Spells, plus a few new ones.  

Or would you prefer them to be keyed to a THEME.  For example the Creature Rush Pack has extra copies of all of the creatures for all of the Mages?

Also, these Spell Tomes should not be confused with a Mage Expansion Set. For example, our first Mage expansion set, The Forcemaster vs. the Warlord, will come with 220 spells, the majority of them new, and all related to the new Mages.  The only older duplicate spells in these sets will be a few Dispels, Minor Heals, etc. which each of them will need to help round out their spellbook.

Thomas Huzl is Good!

Klaxus:  The short answer is yes.

The ring grants the Melee +1 and Ranged +1 traits for all of the Priestesses attacks which deal light damage.

Essentially, that adds 1 die to each of her attacks, which could be a weapon that deals light damage (like her Staff of Asyra), or an attack spell like Pillar of Light.

Note that the Melee +1 and Ranged +1 traits have certain restrictions.  For example, Ranged +1 does nothing for a zone attack.  So if the Priestess casts Blinding Flash, the attack does not gain an extra die for each object in the zone.

Larry Fettinger of the InD20 group gives Mage Wars a nice plug in his pre-Gencon review yesterday.

See the video here, we're at the 9:27 mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_nIJIb0Vyk&feature=player_detailpage#t=567s

It will be an add-on with extra game board, spellbooks, dice, markers, status boards and color pieces.

Nice!  That's a great idea.

Damage Barriers work well too.  The Circle of Lightning spell will electrocute each creature who attacks you, damaging, Dazing,and Stunning them.  It works best against a rush of creatures.

Zone attacks like Firestorm, Blinding Flash, and Electrify are good choices too. The Beastmaster will think twice before stacking too many creatures in the same zone!

Wow!  Those are great ideas!

I can picture a legendary blademaster. He can parry melee attacks very easily - getting 2 Defenses per round with his swords.

Nightmare - very cool!  Love the concept:  He can peek into the enemy spellbook, to use their spells against them as if reaching into their mind to find their fears