The idea of this build is to control the board via a combination of strong, tough creatures and crowd control (teleport, force push, tanglevine, wizard tower+surging wave for slam etc).
There are a couple creatures which work with this idea, but from my games I have the feeling that necropian vampiress and guardian angel is an awesome combo. Both have nice defensive stats and can heal themself without an action of your mage! Therefore it is really difficult to kill these creatures. The synergy with both is great because the vampiress can do alot of damage while the angel is great in protecting. Additionally, they are a ground and a flying unit, so hinder both ground and air units. The vampires can get the flying trait, so both units can attack flying creatures and cant be blocked by walls. If you give both creatures bear strength that’s 7+5 dices which in combination with wizard tower and good timing allows you to kill even tough creatures in 1-2 rounds.
A strength of the wizard is that he can easily include a couple teleports, tanglevines and other sources of crowd control in his build (force hold, enfeeble, surging wave for high chance on slam and moderate chance on push). This helps to lower the damage of your opponents strong creatures and to allow your own hitters to attack the opponent mage or to focus an isolated target.
I cant stress enough how useful wizard tower is! It gives you an extra action which can be used before or after a friendly units action phase. Therefore, your opponent cant interrupt between the towers cast and your creatures action. For example, this allows you to cast surging wave with the tower on a guard, which has a 5/6 chance to slam the target and thus removing the guard marker. Now, your creature can attack whatever you want in that zone unless your opponent had 2 guards. Without the tower, your creature would have to attack the guard and after that its your opponents turn. Therefore, he can use another creature to guard and your next creature has to attack this new guard. But, if you use the tower to remove the guard marker, your opponent cant react to that.
So what about the opening? I prefer to summon the guardian angel in round 1. The reason is, that the angel greatly increases your chances against a wizard/warlock throwing fireballs/lightning bolts. The intercept trait means that your opponent has to use an action to get around the guardian angel in order to hit your mage (he can use force push, restrain the angel etc). But still, this means that your opponent has to use an action per round to remove the angels guard marker or to push him, which lowers his damage output dramatically!
If the opponent seems to focus on damage spells, I cast defensive stuff in round 2 (dragonscale hauberk, rhino hide, nullify etc) and I often use the voltaric shield. In combination with the guardian angel this makes it very difficult to damage my wizard. Sure, casting defensive stuff slows down my own strategy. But, against rushes its often not important to build up your own stuff quickly. In most cases, its enough to survive the first assault, since most rushers put all one's eggs into one basket. If you survive the first rounds, rushers often dont have enough breath for a longer game.
If the opponent summons strong creatures or a spawn point I use my standard opening:
Round 1:
Guardian Angel + Mana Crystal
Round 2:
Arcane Ring + Mana Crystal
Round 3:
Necropian Vampiress + Mana Crystal
So after round 3, you have 2 tough creatures, 13 channeling and the ring to lower the cost of your dispels etc.
If there seems to be a fight in round 4, I cast two bear strength, which results in 7+5 dices from the Demon Angel combo.
If the opponent rushes with his creature(s) and doesn’t cast stuff which increases his channeling, it might be necessary to use round 2 for reactive stuff instead of arcane ring and mana crystal. But, since your opponent will not have increased channeling, it wont matter.
How does this build work against different kinds of other builds?
This build is strong against rushes, because the angel greatly slows down the opponent.
It is also great against slow builds which focus on building up channeling and summoning big creatures, because your Demon and Angel can protect your crystals well and your crystals/arcane ring/harmonize etc will allow you to keep up in a mana race.
Mana denial builds will also have a problem since your channeling is high enough to have enough freedom of choice to react accordingly.
Against swarm builds the Demon and Angel combo is great too since they often one hit small creatures. If not, a zap or a cast of the wiz tower will make sure that many of your opponents creatures die before they use their action.
Solo mages will have a difficult time getting around the guardian angel while protecting themself against the 7 dice hits from the vampires and the damage/annoying slam from the wiz tower.
To summon up, the vampire and angel combined with the versatility of the wizard and especially the wizard tower allows this build to perform really well against most common builds that are played these days.
