by wtcannonjr
An update on the Complete Set discussion above.The previous discussion was based on the defined 'starter' spellbooks for each mage in Mage Wars. This has been updated to enable all 4 mages to have a complete basic spellbook with just the Core set. Yes, you only have 2 spellbooks to store them in, but I simply used a deck box for storing the other spellbooks. Since we were only playing two players at a time it only impacted the setup time as we switched cards from the deck box into the spellbook. This was done as part of the spellbook creation step.
Bottom line: Mage Wars is completely playable with just the current Core Set.
As you gain more experience with the game you may wish to add addtional sets to provide more flexibility in designing your spellbooks. This gives you the ability to place more copies of a spell in your spellbook and also increase the available pool of any given spell if both players are creating their books from a common set of cards.