I had forgotten about this book, but as we've reorganized the home office, I rediscovered it and the game. I think the book manages to capture and enhance the original spirit of the game which is saying quite a bit. I've played the game for hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours, but 75% of the book's insights are still new to me. Master of Magic can be won with many, many different strategies and styles of play (part of what makes it a great game). These authors have obviously looked at the game from every angle with every strategy and obviously pestered the good folks at the developer to get all kinds of detail about how the innards of the game actually work. This should be required reading for anyone looking to develop a turn based strategy game (computer and otherwise). If only the computer players in MoM weren't quite so dim at the end of the game, this book would be even more useful

Whether you are just discovering this game or have been playing it for years, this guide is a must-have. It contains information on all aspects of play--spells, skills, races, combat, urban planning, etc, and discusses computer-controlled elements such as treasures, random events, and monsters. The book does contain some debatable rankings and recommendations, but the wealth of helpful information overshadows these few flaws. The authors also did a fantastic job of considering various play styles and game settings when writing this book. This guide is an excellent resource that deserves a place by your computer!

This is an excellent strategy guide! the master of magic strategy guide is an absolute must for the beginning player. It goes into battle tactics, Race comparisons, charts, and stratgies for winning! If you like MoM, you'll love this

Even though the "Master of" computer games - Orion, Orion II and Magic - are no longer published, they are constantly on the classics list of many players. This book is as thorough and well produced as any guide you'll ever find, and a perfect complement to an excellent game. Very detailed and explanatory. When the games fade from your hard drive (years from now), this book will still be on your shelf as an example of "how it *should* be done."

"Titus Andronicus" is the most notorious and least performed play of Shakespeare's. T.S. Eliot once called it the worst play written in the English language and not even the loyalist Shakespeare scholars have stood by it. Not until the movie "Titus" came out, have I heard anyone mention it. All I knew before I finally saw it was that it was extremely over the top violent. In fact, when the rare times it had been performed to modern audiences, many audience members started laughing at how absurd and over the top violent it was. I am a very serious moody theater person but even I couldn't help laugh at some of these scenes. However, I am very curious to suspect, as Harold Bloom did, that Shakespeare might've wrote "Titus Andronicus" as a spoof on his contemporaries. The play's content, plot, and characters are exactly equal to Seneca's plays. Seneca's plays however were never performed and we have no evidence that Shakespeare read Seneca's plays. So perhaps it was a jab at Kyd or Marlowe. The movie "Titus" seemed to use a lot of parody at many times. When I saw it the audience was laughing. I think it is safe to say that that theory may be correct. Although even if it was a parody, the play is still flat and doesn't do much for the audience. There are moments though where we can see Shakespeare developing as a dramatist. I couldn't help but think of "Macbeth" and "King Lear" during parts of Titus' monologues. Actually "Titus Andronicus" at best is a great study on the audience. 'Titus' was well received and performed in Shakespeare's day. Shakespeare was delivering to the audience, giving them a bloody Revenge tragedy that was popular in Elizabethan times. I am very surprise in an age when we make films that can depict a man cutting his face off and feeding it to his dogs("Hannibal"), that 'Titus' wouldn't be more popular. I imagine that Shakespeare was trying to shift from comedian to tragedian and wrote a little experiment called "Titus Andronicus." 'Titus' is worth reading for those who want to read all of Shakespeare but to the average reader, I would say pass and read "KIng Lear" or "Macbeth." To give this play more than three stars would be an insult to Shakespeare's masterpieces.

On a superficial first reading, 'Titus Andronicus' is lesser Shakespeare - the language is generally simple and direct, with few convoluted similes and a lot of cliches. The plot, as with many contemporary plays, is so gruesome and bloody as to be comic - the hero, a Roman general, before the play has started has lost a wife and 21 sons; he kills another at their funeral, having dismembered and burnt the heroine's son as a 'sacrifice'; after her husband is murdered, his daughter is doubly raped and has her tongue and hands lopped off; Titus sacrifices his own hand to bail out two wrongfully accused sons - it is returned along with their heads. Et cetera. The play concludes with a grisly finale Peter Greenaway might have been proud of. The plot is basically a rehash of Kyd, Marlowe, Seneca and Ovid, although there are some striking stage effects.

Jonathan Bate in his exhaustive introduction almost convinces you of the play's greatness, as he discusses it theoretically, its sexual metaphors, obsessive misogyny, analysis of signs and reading etc. His introduction is exemplary and systematic - interpretation of content and staging; history of performance; origin and soures; textual history. Sometimes, as is often the case with Arden, the annotation is frustratingly pedantic, as you get caught in a web of previous editors' fetishistic analysing of punctuation and grammar. Mostly, though, it facilitates a smooth, enjoyable read.

Now that the film "Titus" is about to open, I thought I had best hear a recorded version of the complete play to keep my mind clear during what is bound to be a perversion. Of course, many consider "Titus Andronicus" a perversion anyway; and to tell the truth, I do get a little queasy during the various mutilations that make the deaths at the end a relief rather than a shock. But accepting the play on its own terms, you will find the reissue on tape of the 1966 Caedmon recording of (CF 277) possibly the best directed of the entire classic series. Howard Sackler has a bunch of professionals on hand and he lets them (with one exception) tear up the scenery. Poor Judy Dench, who has so little to say as Lavinia before the plot makes her say no more, can only make pathetic noises for most of the play until her final death cry. The evil brothers, played here by John Dane and Christopher Guinee, are not only evil but sarcastically so--and this works on a recording as it might not on the stage. Perhaps Maxine Audley's Tamora is a bit too Wicked Witch of the West now and then; but her co-partner in evil, Aron the Moor, is brought to life by Anthony Quayle in a role he made famous on stage, going even further in the outright enjoyment of his ill-doing. Yes, this play can easily raise laughs and takes an Olivier to keep the audience in the tragic mood. (Reports are that he did it so well that some audience members became ill and had to leave.)

Which brings us to Michael Hordern's Titus. Hodern is a fine actor but not a great one. He suffers well but not grandly. I am surprised that his Big Moment--"I am the sea"--is lost among all the other images in that speech. But anyone can direct someone else's play. This recording, soon to be rivaled by one in the Arkangel series, is definitely worth having for Quayle's performance alone.