[Ironhawk]

Yeah, thats fair. But the real question is: why are you only getting close range battle spells out of early research? There are plenty of low level spells that are quite useful. Fire Flies, Lightning Bolt, etc.

Sounds like you are trying to use Death mages for something they weren't intended for. Death is a very strong summoning path. Its battlefield attack spells are pretty wimpy, compared ot the battlefield kings of Fire and Air. With death, you should be doing one of two things:

1) Sitting in a lab summoning something
2) Spammnig skeletons via Raise Skeletons in battle

There is of course a great deal of subtlety in using any path of magic. I list the above generalization only because you are new to the game.