I don't see mention of this elsewhere, to my surprise. Academy Druid and Elementalist are coming this year. I noticed them as pre-orders on Miniature Market. I assumed they were announced at Origins? No mention on here or BGG though...

Yes please! WHERE?

Not a playtester or anything, but my take on the Mage Wars situation is that with the four Academy releases this year, there will then be 10 Academy mages just like there are 10 Arena Mages (without variants as noted above). based on the illustrations on this website, I'd say we have an Academy Necromancer, Druid and Paladin coming this year. Siren is likely but perhaps the illustration is not visible (or maybe it is...)

Once all Arena Mages got their Academy boost, the Arena playing field will be more level and then the Arena expansion floodgates will open. Perhaps AW and/or playtesters want to even everyone out with Academy expansions as much as possible for the full-on Arena onslaught. So far the Arena boosts have been very good for lesser-used mages like Warlord.

Thanks for the clarification guys! The wording itself doesn't say target, so that's that!

So what happens when Harshforge Knight walks into a zone with an enemy's face down trap enchantment? Doesn't the trap enchantment target Harshforge Knight with its attack? Or is the intent that Harshforge Knight just can't have enchantments attached to him but the wording didn't exist to express this? I have to imagine he wasn't meant to work as a "minesweepeer" in arena.

I hope that was a soft announcement that the Spell Tome Expansion for Wizard and Forcemaster is (finally!!!) coming soon (Essen?).

I myself believe people will buy anything that says Force on it this holiday season because... Disney.