No, because that is the spawnpoint summoning the creature and not your mage.

Thanks for the clarification- I didn't know if creatures summoned by the spawnpoint were considered summoned by the mage, since it was the mage who summoned the spawnpoint. 

Translating Schenkgott might be gold to start.

In general I think I follow the following steps:

Step 1: Pick a mage.

If you are not familiar with the options, look up the mages and their respective tactics and strengths/weaknesses.

Step 2: Pick a theme/strategy/card around which your deck is designed.
It is very important that you choose a card or a theme which your mage will use as the main goal to kill the opponent. After you have decided what you want, you should try to include all cards necessary to support this strategy. Question yourself what is necessary to keep your strategy going. The trick here is to only add cards needed for your strategy. If you add every card that might be helpful than you will have way too many cards.

Examples:

Warlock, Sectarus: Include a battle forge, enough curses, something to increase the strength of your mage.

Beastmaster, Animal Kinship: You need enough cheap creatures to keep the kinship effects going. Probably a lair to summon them.

Warlord, Talos: Include many outposts so you are sure to summon talos. Try to get a good mix between level 1 and level 2 creatures. In the beginning you are short in mana so the small ones are preferable while after a couple of rounds it is probably better to summon more durable creatures. Include the dwarf panzerguard to guard outposts.

Step 3: Cover your decks weaknesses.

This is probably the hardest step during spellbook creation since it is not always easy to predict possible counters against you. With practice you will become better at this. After you have played with your deck you can always adjust a few cards to improve this.

Some (but far from all) common weaknesses:

Movement/positioning: Especially Solo/buddy builds need enough positioning and movement cards since every hit with your strong creature counts. Cards like force push/teleport/charge/Mongoose Agility/cheetah speed and even walls can help you with this.

Flying: If you don't have many flying creatures and don't plan to use many attack spells it might be wise to either include one flying creature, eagle wings, maim wings or gravikor. Especially druids and necromancers have problems against flyers.

Rushes: If you have a slow startup, make sure you have at least some (cheap) means to protect you at the start of a game. Common used cards are Defend, Intercepting creatures, walls, Brace yourself, and many more.

Mana drainage: Especially swarms have problems with mana and they can be drained even more easily with cards like [mwcard=MW1J21]Suppression Orb[/mwcard] and [mwcard=MW1J16]Mordok's Obelisk[/mwcard]. Either add more economy cards, a [mwcard=FWJ05]Mana Prism[/mwcard] or make sure to have some means to take out conjurations like that. (1 or 2 rounds)

Step 4: Include a backup strategy

Imagine that your strategy will not work for any reason at all. Think of a secondary tactic you can use if all else fails. Preferably this strategy uses many of the same cards as your main strategy but in a different way. This is of course not always possible.

Examples:

Spawnpoint is destroyed, no swarm possible: Include one or two very big creatures and change your strategy more into a buddy build.

Your deck is based on tainted or poison and you face a necromancer.

You want to use fire but the opponent is using too much fire protection for you to handle.

Step 5: Include some staple cards.

Not all of these cards are per sé necessary, but make sure you checked anyway.

- Dispel/disperse/etc... A must in every deck.
- Dissolve/Crumble/etc...
- Some Positioning/movement cards
- Walls
- Some fire protection: Without it, the adramelech can potentially destroy you.
- Healing: not every deck needs healing, but just remember bleed. Without healing this can be devistating
- Purify
- Armor: Every mage should add some degree of armor. Defences are very nice, but wall of thornes is unforgiving.
- Means against armor: If the opponent has 4 armor and you are not using spells like "Ghoul rot" your damage output can be very low. Keep in mind that there are cards like defences, Voltaric shield, healing, regeneration, ... that can make this problem even larger. Common spells: Dissolve, Disperse, Acid ball, Rust, or a creature that causes corrodes.
- Some attack spells: Every mage needs a few attack spells. Not every strategy uses a lot of them but reserve at least 8 spellbookpoints for attack spells.

Optional Step 6: Add a card you really want to try out but probably won't need

Since it's still a game designed to have fun, I suggest to have at least a few cards you will almost never use but are just very cool. Granted, it will not improve the strength of your deck in most situations. But if you ever do have the chance to use it, it can give you a huge boost and it is just super fun!

I'm printing this off and handing out copies to my little gaming group. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Know this is an older thread, but thought I'd share that I ran this book (with a few minor changes) this past week and I walked away 2 - 0 in a matter of 50 minutes- that's with set-up. Both games lasted all but 20 minutes. This book is killer.

Granted, if I play the same opponent twice with this build, I'll have to change up my strategy some as they surely wouldn't fall for it twice. But even then, I think this book has enough tricks that it would be hard to escape.

what Spell Tome set can I get additional copies of Acid Ball, and does anybody know how many copies I would get? I've already got 2 Core sets and don't think I need a third.

Hey everyone my name is Dashie. My wife and myself are new to the game and have played a few apprentice games and we are looking into starting to build our own books. We only have the core set so I was wandering what our next few purchases should be. What expansions should we grab and should we be buying the spell compendium or whatever they are called? Any advice would be great. Thanks.

Miniature Market has everything so cheap that after I started playing a few months ago, I just wound up buying a second core set and one of all expansions within a matter of a few weeks. I also bought two of the Academy sets with one to keep together for play and the second set to include with Arena (if you play with any regularity, the investment for everything is 100% worth it IMO).

Druid vs. Necro is my favorite expansion (coming from a newbie perspective). But then my buddy is having a lot of trouble finding one for a reasonable price since it seems like that set is out of print for the time being.

That's what I gathered after reading more about the Force Master- so this is good news for me. My buddy's favorite creature is the Holy Knight with defense (Can't think of his name) and the way we've played basically gives him unlimited defenses until a successful one. Thank you for the clarification!

Love it! Wish there was more. This was very short.

By the way, when will part V of the Organized play story be available on the website?

Agreed!

Two questions:

1) I've seen a couple druid decks with Raincloud. To what purpose does this serve as most vine creatures have Regen. Is raincloud in this instance worth the condition removal? Just curious if I'm missing something.

2) I've had great luck with the druid thus far but haven't gone against a warlock yet. My buddy indicated he's in process of building a warlock book. Don't want to turn down a challenge. Any advice on a an anti-warlock druid build to offset the fire weakness?