An unchecked Gorgon Archer completely shuts down aggression, so my number one priority for beatdown and 1-2 big strategies is to eliminate enemy Gorgon Archers. I learned that from the other side of the equation, but seeing a Warlock with a Cripple condition and 4 Weak conditions instilled a healthy respect for the arcane creatures that inflict status conditions.

That makes sense Piousflea, although I don't like the arcane creatures (aside from maybe Huginn) for this build. My experience when I tried to make a blasting build without an economy focused opening was that I ran out of gas, and I just didn't have enough mana to do all of the things I needed to get done, so my experience parallels yours to some extent. I do have a melee option built into this build, so I'll have to experiment with doing that and/or playing Lord of Fire early. I can switch into blasting in the late game or at least after I have Lord of Fire out.

Losing a Fireball to a Block is pretty bad, so against face down enchantments I like to Fireblast and follow that up with Fireball. I only lose 2 dice of damage, it's 3 mana cheaper, and it's a much safer play against Block.

I'm not sure about Arcane Ring in this build because I'm trying to build up my mana generation as fast as possible. I don't improve my channeling as quickly if I take an action to cast the ring, and I want to set myself up to be flexible in later turns.

The Harmonize is on the Battleforge, and I cast the Moonglow Amulet from the Battleforge, so I start round 3 with 13 channeling, 2 mana on my Battleforge, and 17 mana, if I did my math right.

Against a Lord of Fire and Warlock beatdown strategy I would then start using my shield every turn, play Dragonscale Hauberk and Elemental Cloak from my forge, and use Teleport, Cheetah Speed, Mongoose Agility, and Force Hold (should be replaced with Enfeeble, see below) to prevent you from getting many attacks in. I'd take some damage early, but you'll need to remove my Dragonscale Hauberk and Elemental Cloak if you hope to get much damage through with Lash of Hellfire and Lord of Fire, which buys me time to get things in place to kite you. I don't know how consistently it would work out in my favor, but I think I actually have some pretty good options against that type of opening. That opening is somewhat similar to one of my Warlock openings, so I can definitely see where you're coming from.

Against your Priestess opening I'm somewhat less sure. I could build up armor, which would drastically reduce the damage your Royal Archers will do, but won't have much impact on Brogan. I would need to focus on attacking your Priestess while playing keep away with Brogan. This build has tools to do that, but I'm less sure how to deal with a stream of big creatures than I am how to deal with a bunch of small creatures. In retrospect, Enfeeble is much better for this build than Force Hold. They both prevent melee creatures from closing with me effectively, but Force Hold has an upkeep. If you don't have ranged support, I can probably kite you pretty effectively, but with ranged attackers backing up powerful melee attackers chasing me around, I'm less sure. Another possibility is to use Wall of Fire to control spacing. If I block line of sight to your Archers, things become more manageable.

I tend to focus on low creature count builds. The Wizard can set up a powerful slow army, but this build is supposed to focus blasting things rather than using the slow arcane creatures. I tried to get a blasting Wizard to work without the buildup time, but I didn't have enough mana to do everything I needed to do. Activating Voltaric Shield most turns eats up a lot of mana over the course of a game.

This is an extremely well articulated and thoughtful write up. It gave me more insight into the strategy of the Warlock and Beastmaster than everything else I've read on the forums put together so far.