The books may eventually go into production, but right now we have bigger priority items on the plate. Spellbooks as an accessory haven't been huge sellers and we still have stock of Spellbook packs 2, 3, and 4 available for purchase.
We don't have our sights on supplemental product right now, we're focusing on actual game expansions.
I am 250 thousand percent behind this statement. The book art is nice, but I'm way more interested in more Mage Wars cards/content.
You don't technically need the binders. They help when you're starting out and don't know your own spell books that well, buy after that they just make cleaning up after a game more of a chore.
I am actually quite fond of the physical spellbooks. I realize Academy decks are pretty small & would be an easily managed pile of cards, but you lose some of that tactical Mage Wars feel without them.
I enjoy the post match cleanup discussion where we talk about the tactics & strategies we employed that match while putting the spells back into our books. I'm fairly OCD about having all the spells in my books laid out just so & in a certain order so maybe I am in the minority here lol. Plus I'm fairly lucky in that putting the spellbooks back together is really the only cleanup involved for the game since I play on a dedicated arena table that always has a play mat & Plano full of tokens ready for some Mage Wars action.
I may be new to the forums here, but I've owned & played Mage Wars with self built custom books for years & have no desire to phase out the spellbook portion of the experience. To each their own.