I have a few thoughts/questions on this.
Intangible from Arcane Duels talked about this way back, rushes have a lower ceiling and will not win as consistently. You are right that this is a trend that is becoming more pronounced. But is that a bad thing? The game is moving towards longer, more complex games, distancing itself from fast-paced mainstream card games.
Would you really prefer the opposite? That rushes were the main strategy in the game? Run forward, throw boulders, games are over in 30 minutes, all books are the same because opposed schools doesn't mean anything when only a small percentage of your SBP ever sees play. Obviously a middle ground is best, but at least long games are the lesser of two evils.
The big downside of Ritual of Kallek is that it burns your SBP for a short term gain. If SBP is worthless, then the Ritual is amazing. If SBP is worth something, then the Ritual is not worth as much. Same could be said about Wispwillow, Mana Lotus and Remove curse.
Everyone is limited by SBP, when building a book you need to balance it so you can win the game after your economy has paid off, both against rushes (which you claim is easy) but also other economy books (which should then provide you with some challenge).
How does your multiple spawnpoint Necromancer do against a multiple spawnpoint opponent? More importantly, do you consider those games boring?
Theoretically it is possible for a game of Mage Wars to last indefinitely, if both mages resolve to just sit in their corner and do nothing every turn. But how often does that happen? I think this has happened once in my MW career, no one wanted to engage so we agreed to a draw and played the next game. Does it often happen to anyone else? What happens in those situations?
Eventually you will have to engage to win, in a game of two economy books you should see skirmishes across the middle zones and larger, more important spells to swing the game like conjurations and zone attacks. Sounds fun and epic?
The biggest issue is probably real life time constraints? I like to think that quality games take time, and Mage Wars Arena at its slowest is still faster than most grand strategy games. Although it would really help if OCTGN had a save function.
Finally, the take from this is that more people should play Domination, it's a really fun game mode!
I think you are somewhat misunderstanding rush in this context .
Obviously just running and throwing boulders will not work and is not a fun experience for any player. But that's not what rush entails. Rush implies aggressive play, which should be a perfectly valid strategy. I personally find games which involve few creatures to be far more interesting and tactical than games with large armies. As JackSmack said, the later often divulge into teleport wars. No fun for anybody.
I can't help but notice that you hardly ever play rushes yourself (at least in competitions), instead favoring the long game. So perhaps you're biased against rushes.
I think the game should have a balance between more economy based builds and more aggressive ones. In an ideal world, I'd see this developing:
Rush beats economy builds
Economy builds beat defensive builds
Defensive builds beat economy builds
Obviously those classifications don't really exist inside the game at this point, but that's what I would have liked to see in an ideal situation.
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