First, I want to thank the developers for such an amazing game!
I thought of a priestess that focuses on creature-based crowd control (i.e. no further mana-spending required). The priestess is a great candidate for this because of the temple of light, the two legendary Angels and the staff of asyra. All these items give a fairly nice chance to stun or daze an ennemy creature, which helps to minimize your ennemies damage output and allows your mage to hold the upper hand in the long run.
Here are the opening turns i thought of:
Round 1 (20 mana to use):
-Temple of asyra (10 mana)
- harmonize on temple of asyra (4 mana)
- 6 mana left on mage
At a first glance, you might think its better to cast a cleric+temple of asyra to make use of the full action.
The reason why the above seems better to me is that the harmonize leads to your temple channeling 2 mana and thus it can summon a creature in round 2 (which is not the case without the harmonize).
Round 2 (16 mana on mage, 2 mana on temple of asyra)
- asyran cleric (cast by temple of asyra for 5 mana); remember: These clerics can put 1 mana on the temple per cleric up to 2 mana per round
- asyran cleric (5 mana)
- moonglow amulet
- 2 mana left on mage
round 3 (13 mana on mage, 2 on temple)
- temple of light (9 mana cast by mage)
- your mages full action can be used to attack rushing creatures.
- 4 mana left on mage, 2 on temple
round 4 (15 mana on mage. 6 on temple)
- Valshalla, Lightning Angel (cast by temple for 21 mana), remember the angel gets a benefit if your clerics die!
- use mages full action against rushing creatures
round 5 (14 mana on mage, 4 on temple)
- staff of asyra (9 mana)
- mages full action can be used to stun/daze ennemies now!
- 5 mana left on mage, 4 on temple
round 6(16 mana on mage, 8 on temple)
- Samandriel, Angel of Light (21 mana cast by temple)
Thats it! By round 6 you have 4 attacks per round which can stun/daze ennemies! If you like, you can add a stonnegaze basilisk for some more crowd control.
I havent played this build yet, so im not sure how well it works against someone who is rushing.
This opening turns might not be the quickest way to get creatures, but you will end up with 15 mana per turn and 4 creatures (actually one is the temple of light) which can crowd control the ennemy without any additional mana input!
Some additional thoughts:
You might want some nullifys and dispels to protect your angels against curses etc. Im not sure how vulnerable they are against enchantments and nasty battle tricks, but since they both have aegis 1 and many of your ennemies creatures will be dazed/stunned/crippled, they should survive quite well against other creatures.
Dont worry too much about your clerics. They are holy level 1 creatures, so its cheap to have a couple of them in your spellbook. Since they only cost 5 mana, they pay off very soon by channeling the temple. Even if they die after channeling only once, they did cost you 4 mana but survived at least one attack that did at least 6 damage through armor 1! Thats more mana efficient than a minor heal! In addition, if the clerics die after the Angel of lightning has been summoned, their death gives the angel a permanent +1 melee up to +4!!! Think of such an Angel with 6-8 attack dice combined with a 3 Hands of Bim-Shalla (which increase the damage and chance to daze of the temple of light as well) for another +3 melee. Now use a wand with battle fury, which costs you 5 mana per turn and allows your Angel to use his 8-10 dice attack twice per round (each attack has 7-8 daze, 9-12 stun!).
If someone played similar first rounds, im very curious how that worked out. I will write more, after I tested it against a friend
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