The six alternate mages would appear in 'themed expansion sets' if Arcane Wonders follows the same format as before. As for pairings of the mages... don't know...
* Paladin - Necromancer (with a dark vs holy theme)
* Druid - Siren (with anature/water swamp-theme)
* Forcemaster - Air Wizard (with a control and denial theme ...and a fear-condition)
I want a swamp druid and someone who got the PvS set mentioned a "swamp"-spell today on these forums...
If they plan to introduce the frost-condition, the might be pairing the Air Wizard with the Siren (Air and Water seems fitting for frost, no??), wich pairs the Forcemaster with the Druid in a control vs. very different control set...
...
More academy mages
I don't know if AW wants to make an academy version of every mage, but it is possible. Some mages however really seem horrible for academy. I don't see how a druid, forcemaster or even warlord could function in academy. I could see a necromancer work however.
- A forcemaster needs movement and very strong mind spells. There is no movement in academy
- A druid needs board control and rooted plants for balance. Without rooted, she is simply a better beastmaster.
- A Warlord needs his conjurations for his armies. You could have solo/buddy warlords, but then you lose most of the flavor of the warlords.
I don't know if they would want to expand academy for every mage. This will be extremely hard to balance and to keep the power creep reasonable.
I think I remember Laddin or someone else stating that for now there are no conjurations in academy, but that they might be introduced in later sets... They might be few and mage-only to not skew the balance and still make certain academy mages playable.
The Archmage set is a given, I think. It will probably include new ability cards for these 'epic' mages. I'm curious to see wich mages will be in the box, as there are 10 mage-classes to choose from. They set will have a bunch of cards of course and rules to build a 640 spellpoint archmage book. Extra terrain tiles would be nice too...
But realy...
I don't know. With all the stuff that will have been released in the second half of 2016, a bunch of people will need to digest all the new cards/combos/strategies/tactics...