For sake of argument, let's say there was a Player vs Player tournament, in which all matches would be against 4 human opponents, with Land Size set to Large and all the other stuff set to normal and there were no 11 book starts allowed.

If you were going to play in such a tournament, how would you configure your starting wizard?

I assume a lot of people would go for Artificer + Runemage, which is indeed powerful, but if you don't get good heroes fast it can be a problem.

I'd think I'd probably take Halflings with 10 Death books and Conjuring Retort.

Another option would be Gnolls with Sorcery and Warlord + Alchemy.

And the third option would be High Men with Chaos and Chaos Mastery + Conjuring.

I wouldn't play humans in this game, but as a mental exercise, I'm thinking a possible build would be

Barbarians
4 Chaos
Alchemy
Conjurer
Channeler
Archmage
Chaos Mastery
+1 pick

Chaos books let you start with Hell Hounds, Conjurer/Channeler/Chaos Mastery reduce casting cost and maintenance, Archmage gives both the initial spell skill for casting and boosts further skill investment. Alchemy converts the taxes from quickly growing Barbarians into more Hell Hounds and also boosts Barbarian attacks.