Thank you.

I would be interested in seeing what spells, and how many, a starting Altmer would have to cast, or even just could cast - before starting a battle.  Flesh spell, summons, a rune - even before destro spells

As for Aesthetics, I am always a little uncomfortable with the way the high elves look, with their skin and eye colours. But the character playstyle of a chessmaster (ever read TV tropes?) sounds awesome.

If not, check out http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheChessmaster 

Altmers for me have weird yellow diseased-like skin, and female bretons with their forehead wrinkles are just awful, so I go with nord. But then, I always go with nords :D

Oh yes, in playtesting my Archmage Gauldur build I have run Fort Amol successfully at level 1 before, but without Atronach Stone + Dragonskin there's no way I'd survive.  On Master, the two mages inside the prison kill me in about 3 seconds if I don't have any absorption.

True dat... those fetchers in Amol are tough on low level characters xD

This is totally amazing! I have so many thoughts about this, I would spend hours typing up my opinions and approaches to being a pure mage. My next playthrough was going to be an all magician type ( Mage is a title too low for my standards ) but life has been kicking my grass lately. Your presentation on this is superb of the finest quality. I'm sure they'll be alot of responses to this! Hope you have a surfboard because you're going to be riding a massive wave. Great work!

I swear I would have put argonians on the list twice, but only from roleplay/lore point of view, as argonain women are considered to be go mages in lore, while male are said to be good nightblades (so good with iliusion and destruction). But I have to say this list is great.

Mt next "planned" build is an Argonian mage, with some twist and turns. Histskin+Equilibrium.

As much respect as I have for the Highborn power, the Breton's Dragonskin or even the ever-awesome Dunmer Fire Resistance, I have always been a huge fan of Voice of the Emperor. That thing can shut down vamps!

It's like, "Stop! Hammer Time!" and if you attack only the one you attack will turn hostile. So there was talk of Fort Amol being a beast. VoTE takes that beast and de-balls it.

All hail the Emperor, all hail the Empire. I am Skyrim Come!

I don´t know, but I always liked Berserker Rage for mage. It can turn your squishy mage into ferocious killing machine. But yeah, Voice of the Emperor...it´s basicaly like "I challenge you to a duel and ya´ll just watch!"

True!  The "NPCs only" restriction seems limiting on the surface ... until you remember that around 2/3 of Skyrim's foes are actually people (including vampires!? - nice!).