With yesterday's Wizard errata news comes a lot of new design space for future mages. No longer do the designers have to worry about every new Fire, Water or Earth school spell pushing the Wizard over the edge in terms of power level. And the female alternate Wizard will most likely follow suit in terms of training.
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Which means, there are a few creatures who suddenly appear to be homeless, namely the Elementals and the Golems. Sure, the Warlord can still play [mwcard=FWC02]Earth Elemental[/mwcard] and [mwcard=FWC09]Iron Golem[/mwcard] efficiently, but does he really want to? Both Warlords and their spawn points and other conjurations care about soldiers, and they also tend to be mana-deprived, so they have little incentive to summon these very expensive (not to mention Slow) non-soldier creatures.
Likewise, Fire Elemental, a longtime promo, is about to be released in the Lost Grimoire v1 set. And Magma Golem was a popular Fire Wizard spell on OCTGN. These would have been reasonably strong options for a Fire Wizard once legal in real-life Mage Wars. And while the Warlocks are still trained in Fire, both Warlocks are reluctant to run them because demons have more synergy with both Warlocks' abilities and are otherwise similarly priced.
It would be kind of sad if these non-demon Fire-school and non-soldier Earth-school creatures never really see play anymore because there's no longer a mage that wants to use them. Which got me to thinking...
Perhaps we'll see an "Elementalist" mage in the future after all. What would an Elementalist look like? In the past, it seemed a long shot because it appeared it would overlap strongly with the Wizard we already have. But with the Wizard changing to Arcane + Air training only, it opens up some options that could be exclusive to the Elementalist. For example, maybe the Elementalist will replace the Wizard as the mage that gets to choose its training from among the minor schools, and/or who is trained in "Elementals" and "Golems" (e.g. creatures and other spells with those subtypes). I'd imagine he would NOT be trained in Arcane, would have channeling of 9, and more conditional mage abilities (e.g. no built-in ranged attack spell and not as strong of a damage reducer as Voltaric Shield), less powerful (or no) spawn point/familiars, etc.
Here are some ideas:
Trained in a minor (elemental) school of his choice, plus Elementals and Golems. Or has training in Level 1-2 of all minor (elemental) schools, plus Elementals and Golems. Pays triple for War, including Novice.
32 Life. 0 Armor. 9 Channeling. 120 sbp's.
Master of the Elements: When the Elementalist casts an Elemental spell, reduce its mana cost by the spell's level.
Quick Construct: Once per round, the Elementalist may summon a Golem creature spell as a quick spell.
Obviously there should be at least one Elemental and one Golem for each minor school (e.g. currently need Air and Water Elementals and Golems). No Spawnpoint for the Elementalist (although s/he has access to Battle Forge, but pays triple for War, so... not an efficient use of sbp's), which means every creature is going to get hard-casted. Maybe include a reverse Lifelink-like enchantment or eqipment where s/he transfers damage to a friendly Golem or Elemental, since they tend to have lots of hit points and the Elementalist isn't particularly good with Armor. And s/he needs some ways to buff non-living creatures, since there are few good buffs that don't require living targets, whether these be "Elementalist Only" or have some other ways to discourage use by, for example, the Necromancer. (Perhaps the target needs to be an Elemental or Golem, or something similar to Zombie Frenzy, e.g. All friendly Elementals and Golems lose Slow and gain Fast until the end of the round?)
Other ideas?
