Treasure discussion! Learning so much from your points of view, specially the different ones...
To avoid being misunderstood: I don´t think Wounded prey is a bad ability. It adds something, but it does only sometimes, and you cannot rely on it. That´s why I think it is not very good either.
I mean: i don´t like the idea of playing swarm everytime just because they benefit from wounded prey. You can find it unusable too many times.
I agree that simply modifying your rival´s play is an advantage, but nowadays many mages pay little for that, either with nonliving creatures, or small ones or whatever. I think this will go worse as long as the pool of creatures grows. Well, it´s an asset, but I think it´s not a huge one.
I do think something good of WP: in cases when, for whatever reason, your rival comes with a big living buddy, wou have a big asset for free. I mean: when creating the book, you may find yourself searching for reinforcments agains this or that particular build (metachoices). Well, against a very efficient strategy (Cervere, Grizzly, Alendell...) you have a very good tool in your very mage card. And you can find yourself against a rival that simply didnot think of an alternative.
In that case WP may shine, but unreliability puts her behind many other abilities, in my opinion.
That doesn´t mean I think Jokthari is a crap. For example, I consider +1 ranged far better than +1 melee, mainly because it is much more difficult to escape from.
