History YMMV / MasterOfMagic

** The combination of Runemaster and Artificer can lead to some outright game-destroying strategies by bypassing the standard mana-generation methods. Artificer starts a mage with Enchant Item and Create Artifact and reduces the costs by 50%. Runemaster reduces the cost of all Arcane spells, including Enchant Item and Create Artifact, by 25%. These bonuses are additive, allowing for any item to be crafted at 25% of its cost. However, crafted items can be broken for 50% of their cost, meaning you can break an item for twice the mana you spent to make it. This effectively allows you to earn mana equal to double your Spellcasting Skill every turn by creating and breaking items, and gets even more broken with a high Sorcery investment due to being able to enchant incredibly powerful items for Heroes with abilities like no-maintenance non-dispellable Flight, Invisibility, and Magic Immunity. If a Sorcery mage gets lucky they might also pick up Time Stop. Time Stop is incredibly powerful, letting you be the only mage to take turns and removing all upkeep costs except for itself, but has a massive Upkeep of 200 mana per turn that is not reduced by anything. It also disables ''all'' mana and gold production as to not be maintained indefinitely, but this method still works - If you have a Spellcasting Skill of over 200 you can maintain Time Stop forever.

* GameBreaker: The infamous Wraith: or Shadow Demon rush, as well as some of the high end spells, especially Armageddon, that provides a nigh-infinite supply of mana. Or paladin rush. Or a fleet of catapult-armed ships under Flight, Eldritch Weapon (optionally) and Spell Lock (dispel is hindered even more with Archmage, Runemaster and[=/=]or Sorcery Mastery). Or the self-maintaining time stop. That is, once you get resources to pull such tricks...

** A certain combination of traits[[note]]Runemaster and Artificer[[/note]] allows a person to craft items at quarter price and then sell them for half price. That is, you spend 50 mana making a weak sword with listed price of 200, then break it for 100 mana. While it takes time to create a weapon like this and picking those traits cripples your spellcasting ability, it becomes very, very easy to very quickly start making items that cost thousands of mana (which you can do much faster than actually making thousands of mana), which means what little magic you ''can'' cast you can cast ''lots of'' -- and any heroes you get are going to be wearing some very, very nice equipment.
*** Best way to run this is to have five blue picks, which lets all your heroes have no-maintenance un-dispellable Flight, as well as "bastard invisibility" (the AI can still see you, but can't target you with ranged attacks although spells and spell-like powers still work) and Magic Immunity. If you manage to get another couple of blue books during play then things get even sillier. Also, once you have a mana reserve you can put ''all'' your mana production into casting skill and research, especially the former.

** Alchemy allows you to convert gold to mana; in the original game, it was at a one-to-one ratio, though it was nerfed in a patch. Generally, it is much, ''much'' easier to get gold than mana, especially in the late game; and there are many Life and Nature spells that raise gold income in a city -- creating a feedback loop where you spend small amounts of mana to get huge boosts to your gold income, then turn the gold into mana and repeat the cycle... Even post-nerf, Alchemy is overwhelmingly powerful.

** Life magic has a spell that doubles the income of a city and another spell that makes citizens euphoric, thereby canceling all rebellion within a city. Combining these two spells on all your cities and jacking up taxes to three gold per turn will essentially give you an unlimited amount of gold, to the point where you can build a city or massive army from the ground up in just a few turns. Then again, gold is rarely in short supply late game[[note]]Late game? You can ''begin'' the game with Stream of Life, and get it cast on your first city. Taxes through the roof, and you can burn gold for mana to maintain your enchantment, with interest, and your population is booming. Rinse and repeat as you build or capture cities. It's a completely degenerate strategy, worth playing once just for the lulz[[/note]], and food is more of a limiting factor on armies[[note]]Big cities can make you lots of food anyway[[/note]] than money, which is where Nature magic comes in ...

* HilariousInHindsight: Tlaloc is an anagram of [[{{Lolcats}} Lolcat]].

** Flying Invisible Warships are also an infamous game-breaker. Unlike every other ranged unit in the game, warships have infinite ammo. Flight allows them to move on land and means non-flying units can't attack them. Invisibility means that as long as they keep their distance, only units who can see through illusions will attack them; and AI enemies don't automatically approach invisible units. There are almost no flying units that can see through illusions, so a flying invisible warship can simply pelt the enemy with ranged attacks until they die, with most units having absolutely no way to fight back.

** Flying Invisible Warships are also an infamous game-breaker. Unlike every other ranged unit in the game, warships have infinite ammo. Flight allows them to move on land and means non-flying units can't attack them. Invisibility means that as long as they keep their distance, only units who can see through invisibility will attack them; and AI enemies don't automatically approach invisible units. There are almost no flying units that can see through illusions, so a flying invisible warship can simply pelt the enemy with ranged attacks until they die, with most units having absolutely no way to fight back.

** Flying Invisible Warships are also an infamous game-breaker. Unlike every other ranged unit in the game, warships have infinite range. Flight allows them to move on land and means non-flying units can't attack them. Invisibility means that as long as they keep their distance, only units who can see through invisibility will attack them; and AI enemies don't automatically approach invisible units. There are almost no flying units that can see through illusions, so a flying invisible warship can simply pelt the enemy with ranged attacks until they die, with most units having absolutely no way to fight back.

* CompleteMonster: Rjak. There's no use in diplomacy. He's Death Magic incarnate (what do you expect from someone who looks like a [[LordOfTheRings ringwraith]]?) and is always aggressive and hostile.
** Which is why some players play as him ''just to be sure he won't be against them''.[[note]]Even making a Custom character using his portrait will block him from being an opponent.[[/note]]
** Tauron probably counts as well. He's supposedly not even human; he's an otherworldly demon, according to his lore, and as the game's resident master of Chaos magic, an endgame scenario featuring Tauron is pretty much guaranteed to end in Armageddon.

** Alchemy allows you to convert gold to mana; in the original game, it was at a one-to-one ratio, though it was nerfed in a patch. Generally, it is much, ''much'' easier to get gold than mana, especially in the late game; and there are many Life and Nature spells that raise gold income, which an Alchemist can eventually afford to cast on every single city, creating a feedback loop where you spend small amounts of mana to get huge amounts of gold, then turn the gold into mana and repeat the cycle... Even post-nerf, Alchemy is overwhelmingly powerful.

** Alchemy allows you to convert gold to mana; in the original game, it was at a one-to-one ratio, though it was nerfed in a patch. Generally, it is much, ''much'' easier to get gold than mana, especially in the late game; and there are many Life and Nature spells that raise gold income, which an Alchemist can eventually afford to cast on every single city. Even post-nerf, Alchemy is overwhelmingly powerful.

** Which is why some players play as him ''just to be sure he won't be against them''.[[hottip:*:Even making a Custom character using his portrait will block him from being an opponent.]]

** A certain combination of traits[[hottip:*:Runemaster and Artificer]] allows a person to craft items at quarter price and then sell them for half price. That is, you spend 50 mana making a weak sword with listed price of 200, then break it for 100 mana. While it takes time to create a weapon like this and picking those traits cripples your spellcasting ability, it becomes very, very easy to very quickly start making items that cost thousands of mana (which you can do much faster than actually making thousands of mana), which means what little magic you ''can'' cast you can cast ''lots of'' -- and any heroes you get are going to be wearing some very, very nice equipment.

** Life magic has a spell that doubles the income of a city and another spell that makes citizens euphoric, thereby canceling all rebellion within a city. Combining these two spells on all your cities and jacking up taxes to three gold per turn will essentially give you an unlimited amount of gold, to the point where you can build a city or massive army from the ground up in just a few turns. Then again, gold is rarely in short supply late game[[hottip:*:Late game? You can ''begin'' the game with Stream of Life, and get it cast on your first city. Taxes through the roof, and you can burn gold for mana to maintain your enchantment, with interest, and your population is booming. Rinse and repeat as you build or capture cities. It's a completely degenerate strategy, worth playing once just for the lulz]], and food is more of a limiting factor on armies[[hottip:+:Big cities can make you lots of food anyway]] than money, which is where Nature magic comes in ...
** Many GameBreaker strategies are based on investing all starting picks in one spell school, which allows picking some high-level spells from the start. While it takes a lot of time[[hottip:*:though, in perspective, it's a lot less time than it would take to get a supply of Pikemen or Longbowmen on-line, let alone Paladins]] to actually cast this high level spell, once it's done you get unstoppable warrior (or some other overpowered thing).

** Which is why some players play as him ''just to be sure he won't be against them''.

** Black Channels. Elite War Trolls. Your trolls are stronger, cost basically no upkeep, and unlike most Black Channeled units, still heal because trolls regenerate. You don't get any XP with them, but that's why you do this on those you've already gotten up to Elite or Ultra-Elite...

** Life magic has a spell that doubles the income of a city and another spell that makes citizens euphoric, thereby canceling all rebellion within a city. Combining these two spells on all your cities and jacking up taxes to three gold per turn will essentially give you an unlimited amount of gold, to the point where you can build a city or massive army from the ground up in just a few turns. Then again, gold is rarely in short supply late game, and food is more of a limiting factor on armies than money, which is where Nature magic comes in ...

** A certain combination of traits allows a person to craft items at quarter price and then sell them for half price. That is, you spend 50 mana making a weak sword with listed price of 200, then break it for 100 mana. While it takes time to create a weapon like this and picking those traits cripples your spellcasting ability, it becomes very, very easy to very quickly start making items that cost thousands of mana (which you can do much faster than actually making thousands of mana), which means what little magic you ''can'' cast you can cast ''lots of'' -- and any heroes you get are going to be wearing some very, very nice equipment.

** Many GameBreaker strategies are based on investing all starting picks in one spell school, which allows picking some high-level spells from the start. While it takes a lot of time to actually cast this high level spell, once it's done you get unstoppable warrior (or some other overpowered thing).

** A certain combination of traits allows a person to craft items at half price and then sell them for full price. That is, you spend 50 mana making a weak sword, then break it for 100 mana. While it takes time to create a weapon like this and picking those traits cripples your spellcasting ability, it becomes very, very easy to very quickly start making items that cost thousands of mana (which you can do much faster than actually making thousands of mana), which means what little magic you ''can'' cast you can cast ''lots of'' -- and any heroes you get are going to be wearing some very, very nice equipment.