I think turning the Wizard into a "trickster" is impossible st this point without making a completely new Mage. His abilities are (1) cheap access to spells, (2) a built-in Ethereal ranged attack and (3) built-in damage negation. This makes him predisposed to (1) having an unprecedented flexible toolbox of spells including answers to opponent strategies, (2) unrelenting firepower (Hawkeye gives him a 4-dice attack that he's never without that crushes Incorporeal objects and can target flying creatures and ignore guards; a choice of Elemental school means an abundance of his choice of attack spells) and (3) resilient defense with the ability to use defences and armour as normal plus ignore damage that does manage to get through. All this with no triple cost to rein him in to a focused strategy, so while there are a lot of mana denial and "trickster" spells in the arcane school. The Wizard has no incentive nor need to use them. Instead, he can go all-out control/undo and/or all-out attack and/or all-out defence/tank as well as or better than his opponent.
Compare to other mages, whose ability cards dictate (to some degree) what they're best at:
- Straywood: easily best at summoning Level 1 creatures (and not bad at melee); not good at attack spells
- Priestess: best at healing and good at just staying alive; not good at DoT and susceptible to Poison Blood/Idol
- Arraxian Crown Warlock: designed for "buddy"; great at curses and fire spells; struggles at healing, and rather predictable (e.g. countering fire and curses is how to deal with him).
- Forcemaster: terrible at creatures (eg limited to buddy or solo); doesn't have much diversity within in-school spells, so tends to have a smaller spell book due to requiring a lot of out-of-school spells
- Bloodwave Warlord: good at Command Incantations and needs to use his built-in commands well on several creatures or else he's basically a Mage with nothing but handicaps (triple arcane, none of his abilities directly help him win); a Wizard makes a better Warlord
- Priest: abilities are so specific that he's pretty Miche required to have a strong non-legendary holy creature plus a bunch of other creatures to try to get the former to "avenge"; and he needs to use attacks that deal Light damage, which means as many Staff of Asyra as he can afford. If you aren't doing these things, you should play a different Mage.
- Johktari Beastmaster: good at getting her creatures to kill enemy creatures... so only "good" if your opponent cooperates. Katarah finally lets her run'n'gun... but it's still worse than Arcane Zap. In other words, a Wizard is a better Johktari Beastmaster.
- Necromancer: immune to most DoT, and this gets a lot out of Arena-wide DoT; pretty much must use Undead creatures, which means he can't buff his creatures very much (since most buffs need a Living target).
- Druid: Must use plants/vines. Pays triple for 2 Schools. Kill her tree and she goes from very strong to very weak.
- Anvil Throne Warlord: good with Equipment; good with Commands (see other Warlord). Thus, he wants to Battle Forge and/or Buddy, and that's about it.
- Adremelech Warlock: All her abilities are about curses, fire and demons... so she needs to Ignite things, summon Demons, and get at least a curse or two out there. She could speciallize in one of these three more than the others (and there's some choice as to which you choose) but it's one (or more) of these 3. Otherwise, another Mage might be better.
Tl/dr: all non-wizards are forced into one of a few strategies; if you play a Mage and don't use those strategies, then you'd be better off with a different Mage. That is, except the Wizard. He can do any strategy, because his anilities (1) let him do so cheaply, (2) give him an advantage on offense, and (3) give him an advantage on defence. No need for "trickery." Thus, it's too late to figure out how to turn him into a "trickster" unless you give him a completely different ability card.
