As far as the IoP, if you really want a scythe you could pull an "incredible vanishing weapon" ability into it. 

One of my players has a custom IoP called a Hellfire Sword.  Narrativly these swords were made by the fallen during the rebellion against The White God.  It has a stunt folded into it that allows the sword to materalize in the players hand, but not "call" it to her if she's disarmed.

You could also play with the physical nature of the item.  Say two small hand scythes, similar to kamas, that link together as sort of a double bladed staff if you really wanna play it up haha.  If you have ever played Darksiders 2 you'll know where I'm getting this from.  xD

In the 3 scenarios I've GM'ed, I've never once had my wizards gas themselves out unless there is some other factor in the fight that's affecting their mental stress track.  In my experiences the biggest problem wizards have is when the enemies survive the initial onslaught.  If the casters take even a mild consequence, their next spells effectvenesa can be far less effectve, or even compelled into totally screwing up the spell.

Taran, to clarify I mean I don't really like the idea of saying "you can't tag/invoke that effect/mechanic with that aspect because it was created via declairation.  But you can do it with this other declairation because it was created via maneuver/consequence."

Splitting aspects into different "types" can get really muddy and convoluted fast, and I don't see it doing anything but bogging down the game.

I'm starting to see why this defense skill issue is never explicitly stated in the book haha.

This has kind of been my opinion. 

So at least one opinion that it should be a maneuver and one that it could be done with a declaration.

I suppose it's not too bad(concerning spell casters) as long as you make them roll for the declaration, instead of my original idea of having the declaration wrapped up in the spell.

I still think that you could also do this with mundane weapons, but narratively it's much more difficult to do.

I agree that if you're going to do this at all, it should be available to everyone, not just some special imaginary rule for wizards.  I'm kinda confounded that this whole idea apparantly stemmed from one spell example in OW that seemingly made it up out of nowhere.  It's well known and accepted that OW contradicts a lot of the explicit rules in YS, yet it seems a lot of disagreements on this forum are from cherry-picking OW.

I still think via declairation is dangerous.  9 times out of 10 I would tag for this effect over a +2 or a reroll.  Though I also think dictating what you can tag an aspect for, regardless of how it came to be can also go bad.

  I also think a lot of people aren't considering this would be far more deadly for the players.  Now suddenly a pack of mooks who you could easily trounce with maybe a mild consequence are dishing out moderate and severe consequences.

Yeah, that was brought up before. Steph Meyer's reply was "Who wants to be the King of cows?"

My brain automatically translated that to "I have no reasonable in-universe answer to that.  So I'll deflect it by answering it with a rethorical question." xD

Sounds like they would need to be adjusted a bit to fit canon.  Being that powerful, if they were organized as a court in the dresdenverse, they would rule everything this side of the Nevernever.  The Sidhe and posibly the Fomor would probably be the only ones able to keep them in check.

Power Level:
I told my players to come up with character concepts before we decided on a refresh level.  I wanted them to be able to make the characters they were interested in playing.  So we figured out everyones minimum refresh and ended up at Chest-Deep.

City:
Phoenix Arizona.  It's where we all live, so it was the easiest to come up with locations for.  The city is big enough where you can justify pretty much anything and anyone being there sooner or later.

Requirements:
No explicit ones.  Just that the players be willing to work with me on fitting their ideas into the narrative canon and game mechanics.  We got some great characters out of it.  A pure mortal who is basically a supernatural blackmarket dealer, A fire-dancing Pyromancer who is weary of her considerable power due to accidentally killing her parents with it when she was a teen.  A wizard of the White Council who has a long family line in it, and a history of falling to black magic, whiich he is determined to break, a scion of a denarian who was planted into the mortal mafia as a spy who begins to question her loyalties, and man who became inextricably bound to an dangeriously annoying trickster demon who is trying to find a way to breaking the binding.

Continuity:
I'm vauge about when my campaign takes place.  I just say "sometime during the war with the Red Court".  I don't do a lot of fan service in my games, no characters from the books have made cameos yet.  Though a certain knight of the cross is going to play a supporting role in an upcoming scenario of mine.

Phase 1: what do you want the spell to do so I can tell you the complexity.

Phase 2: complexity -lore = difference.  Make declairations until you meet the difference.

Phase 3: describe it like a multi-part evocation.  Decide power, roll dicipline, add to the power total, repeat until you meet the complexity.

I feel this is a decent way to express it.  You relate it to other easier to grasp mechanics like declairations and evocation magic.