Soo, the priestess apprentice is kinda reasonably clothed (by fantasy standarts), priestess is much more revealing, angels wear barely anything, is this a common theme in the church of Asyra that the higher "rank" you are, the more naked you become? And does Asyra herself walk around completely naked? 
Don't want to start another discussion here, just tongue in cheek observation 
So the dwarf is being thrown away by the orb? At first I thought he is in middle of jumping attack, but I can see it now.

Well, I have Grizzly in case I meet fire wizzard or warlock, in that case instead of doing raptor vines, i go for heavily enchanted grizzly, he is kind of plan B

Bridge Troll is great, but I don't think its a good fit for druid, when i include non vine creatures in my druid, I prefer someone without weakness to fire. My druid usually has Tarok and Grizzly. I already include lots of pushing and teleporting, so Grizzly seems ideal.

I think I'm gonna be a bit of a tool here, but have you thought about playing this out of Wizzard? You would loose one attack dice thx to demonic reward and one life(also ring of curses, death link and torment, but i dont consider them essential to the strategy), but gain channeling, shield, wizzard tower and training in arcane instead of dark, which would require a little tweaking, but basically you would loose some explosive power in favor of more options and survivability..
And yeah, the warlock lady is prettier than the old geezer, so probably stick with her

So, I'm with Wildhorn and zorro.
The thing is, Mana Crystal doesn't affect the game state in any way (well, it blocks one zone in its exclusivity, but I don't think that is important). It gives you mana, which give you more options, but it doesn't threaten your opponent, nor does it negate any of the threats made by him.
There were many different models presented in the thread, so I'll try to talk a bit about some of them.
In the model where each mage spends 5 mana each turn, mage who cast the crystal indeed has more mana, but you have failed to mention the effect of the 5 mana card, that the other mage cast.

If you look at the crystal on turn by turn basis, assuming both mages spend all of their available mana each turn, mage without crystal gains huge boost in round 1, because he spend his mana on something stronger and more expensive, than the mage with crystal, who in turn gets a small advantage every turn afterwards by having one more mana available and thus having more options.

If one mage casts a mana crystal and the other mage doesn't cast anything and moves forward, thus improving his board position (more zones to target, more space to run away etc) and then spends one mana of the saved mana each turn afterwards, thus simulating the channeling +1, both mages will have spend the same amount of mana by turn 6

The table made by zorro is the best representation IMO, because it doesn't omit anything and is perfect in it's simplicity, it just says how much mana has each mage available to invest into altering the game state by any given turn.

The meat of the argument is this : mana is more valuable in the beginning of the game than in the later phases. If you can get a stronger board position and advantage early, it is likely that your opponent won't be able to pull back, even though he has more mana.
It is as fas723 has written (or at least what I think was his point), if you can use the 5 mana and action to get decisive board advantage, then you are better of without the crystal. If not, then the crystal will give you the advantage in time. 

so the article says:
"Chance to cripple the target leaving it stuck in place. Against targets with Flame +x traits the odds of being crippled will not go up, while the odds of being burned will."
Does that mean that if the opponent has a flame +2 creature and i roll 8, there is still cripple? And if i roll 2, there isnt any? If so, then why? I thought the damage type +x affects the effect die based on the type of attack, not on type of condition.