Hi all!
In the spirit of annoying GM's everywhere, I ask any who wish to to post in an excersize in extreme freaky munchkinism.
Basic Idea:
Make a mage at Gauntlet
See what combination of crazy pyrotechnics, incredible killing spells, or awesome abilities can come out of these characters.
I'll post up my Perdo McMunckinPants a little later, whom I made for a PBP. I'm absolutely 100% certain that people will laugh at my measly attempts at munckinism.
Not actually all that terrible - I'm sure he will be topped, but just to start us off:
Tempestus of Tytalus
Stamina +3
Affinity: Auram
Affinity: Creo
Puissant Creo
Puissant Auram
Minor Magical Focus (Lightning)
Mastered Spells
Arcane Lore
Cr: 12+3
Au: 12+3
Penetration 4 (Spec: Auram)
Incantation of Lightning (Mastery 4)
Mastery Abilities (Multicasting, Penetration, Magic Resistance, Your Favorite) - last one can be varied depending on concept.
Casting Total of 52 for Incantation of Lightning.
Penetration ability is considered 4 higher due to mastery => base penetration 31+die without penetration multipliers and ignoring Aurae.
Throws 5 Bolts of Lightning every round and is unlikely to ever tire out.
Common variant involves the ability to turn into a bird (change house to Bjornear or take Skinchanger or Shapeshifter), in which case a combination of Virtues and Masteries are taken to allow for Silent Casting with no gestures required. Deft Auram is popular for this.
Wow. My Perdo Bear is beaten already. le sigh.
To add a bit of fun I suppose things that could be created from character creation (For Verditius Magi) and the like may also count.
You forget that Potent Magic is a common Mystery, so if you can find 1 virtue point...Hello and welcome to a +3 flat casting bonus as well as the opportunity to use a prop for a S&M bonus, capped at your Magic Theory score. Although this requires the magus to actually invent the spell as Potent spell, for a specific bonus. But that's doable since you could concievably learn this virtue during apprenticeship.
I can only find further bonus is the lad has a Talisman, but it seems kind of iffy that he has such an artifact just out of Gauntlet. But soon after...
He´s only used 7 pts of Virtues from what i can see?
Could for example add Strong Faerie Blood, which would allow you to raise the age a bit "for free"...
Or add Aff+Puis Penetration and Skilled Parens...
Special Circumstances and Cyclic Magic would be other possibilities, as would of course Flawless Magic be.
That's the best you can do? Seriously!
There should be XPs left over to get 5 or so in Rego without too much hazzle, always nice to have.
No, I offered an Auram magus and no-one's mentioned Concientia's Pneum Flask yet? For Shame! 
There's a +9 or so to penetration right there.
I was recently working on a Perdo based concept. It's hard to overpower quite as badly, because the spells are high level and you need a variety of forms to handle different targets.
Charged Items will soon be the order of the day then.
So, who's up next?
Unless this magus has some kind of intellego vim he will have a really hard time locating quite a lot of targets that can turn invisible or camouflage.
Rego expert with:
I would put my money on him in a challenge with the electrical powerplant mage. You do not need to bring the biggest cannon to the party to win a challenge. A rapier can be much more deadly than a broadsword. Besides, he is far less specialized and can easily have secondary tricks up his sleeve (other spells, other arts). Less blatant as well. So, it depends on what you want. For sheer firepower the Auram guy is way better, but for killing a specific target I am unsure I would go for the auram guy. Unless the target was a giant or similar. Then the auram guy wins hands down. But on a 1 on 1 I would think the rego guy gets it better. The auram guy is an artillery piece, the rego one is an assassin.
The only downside to this option is that a bird has amazingly small physical damage ranges, and so you can be pretty easily pulped by something with Second Sight-- like a jinn, who sees you for what you are and then makes with the smashing. The character makes a brief but spectacular appearance as a Tesla Coil followed by a pink mist and a burst of feathers.
-Ben.
duplicate post.
But let me edit to comment--
Really this depends on the nature of the saga. If your enemies are more mundane, then sure, the Rego guy is rough. The aurum guy is zap-tastic when your enemies are visible.
But there are demons who just jump bodies, ghosts who possess items, a wide variety of mentem options, Crusaders with relics, Fae who maintain external vis and just come back later, dragons with a storm aspect, priests who bring along enough mundane help to simply overwhelm.
So the exercise, while entertaining, just shows how you can create a magus very capable of handling an issue in one way-- killing it. There's a lot more to the world than just trying to obliterate what might be in your way, and when the magus develops a reputation for that method of problem solving, enemies are going to exploit it. ("Immune to metal? Great, let's use bone/antler weapons. He's a corpus specialist? Looks like we send in the trained attack dogs who go crazy at the scent of the caster. He b-zats everything with lightning? Right, then we rain down arrows from the trees.")
So, yeah, you can chase this route, but what we'd also want to see are the accompanying flaws, because I'm going to tailor stories based on those flaws so that there are opportunities to use the powers the magus is good at, but there are appropriate challenges and obstacles, too. This kind of design is fine for saying, "I want to explode things," but it requires the discussion about "So if you want combat to be mostly a non-issue, that means we shift the focus of the game somewhat. What do you prefer the saga's orientation to be?"
-Ben.
Triple Hit Downside!!! 
Other munchkin alternatives, let's see....
ReMe. Totally control someone, including "Kill yourself" or "attack your friends" or "leave everything in your possession to me in your Will". More or less the same combo of abilities as the Auram magus, only centered in mentem. Silent casting or invisibility a must. Add a pair or trio of Intellego mentem spells for "added fun": it will blast through 90% of the usual plots by your SG.
You can effectively control France without much addo. Just be careful qabout those pesky inquisitors messing up with your plans. But then do some handywork with PeMe and the quaesitor might not even remember that he was supposed to investigate you. That will be later in your career, since you are likely to start small, messing up with village priests and local potentates before moving to the Big Board when you are older.
Cheers,
Xavi
Without seeing the associated flaws, the exercise is infinitely less useful, because a SG is going to tailor material based on the character's design.
-Ben.
Air's Ghostly Form is CrAu 5 and creates a fog or heavy mist, which might well allow you to spot invisibles.
Auram Guy was intended to be topped, and designed in under 10 mins.
He was also intended to illustrate the problems with the original question. 
As for Rego-based assasins, I assure there are further tricks in Projects 
Nice!! Looking forward to it.
I believe the ultimate munchkin character at gauntlet to have
the three PeVi spells for magic, fairies, and infernal, level 10 mastery 4 each (= 5-fold casting) [no need to smite angels]
another PeVi parma dropping spell (based on MoH, Concientia's knife)
some spell to blast mundanes (sleep or PeIg), or whatever, killing mundanes is easy anyway, mastered for multicasting
other useful non-attack magic for the rest of the xp (disguise, traveling, social etc)
affinities are a waste of xp, since you can take strong parens + gild trained (GotF) = 150xp + 30 lvls of spells instead (affinities become useful at higher levels)
flawless magic (for all the mastery)
mastered spells
life boost - for those monsters that need some extra penetration (getting fatigued doesn't matter, because high level monsters don't run around in groups)
intellego magic is not needed if you play a Pralician (free major virtue, because ex Misc), but you also get the useless hedgie focus
as for the auram guy: if he was a Craft magus, he could quickly produce those lightning bolts as charged items with an even scarier penetration.
An excellent munchkin, though I forsee a weakness against Hermetic Magi: the Parma dropper needs to penetrate, so does the Call to Slumber.
Not a major weakeness though.
Charged items have better penetration than I feel they should have, and like several other of the Ex Misc traditions in Societates the Rusticani are just so off I'm forced to consider them poorly done.
Apologies to those whose work it was, but some of those traditions are just too good or too bad. In general I prefer the latter.
EDIT: Sorry, I forgot
Affinities are used above because that'll allow you to ignore that officious SG who insists that you stay within the Art cap on p. 32, treating it as a hard cap rather than the suggestion it clearly it. 
Ladyphoenix made a Criamon on the path of Strife that scared the undead out of me. This monster maga was doing some ungodly +20 attacks (I think it was at +27 or something terrifying) and had the parma dropping spell and could chomp a demon under might of 30 in like one or two rounds. When I saw the sheet I shuddered in fear of being the ST.
I lack most skills in munchkinism, but I am in awe of number crunchers! 
I'm not sure how successfully munchkin it really is, and it's definitely designed for general utility rather than killing things, but I've had the following idea for a Spontaneous spell specialist kicking around in the back of my mind for a while:
That gives you Artes Liberales and Philosophaie scores of 5 +2 each, with specialisations in ceremonial casting for additional +1s', a Stamina of +5, each Technique at 5 and a few Forms at 5, meaning you're casting ceremonial spontaneous magic as a casting score of +26 (+2 for loud words and gestures) before roll, aura and Life Linked Magic, for any Technique/Form combination. You can therefore reasonably reliably get a level 15 spell in any Te/Fo combination.
The Cautious with Artes Liberales virtue by a strict reading of the rules I think means that you can do this without any botch dice under standard circumstances (although I'd understand an SG who didn't like that interpretation). This means you can add Life Linked Spontaneous Magic to the combination with less risk of accidentally killing yourself. At unconciousness level, that's enough to cast level 35 spells in any Te/Fo combination. Level 50 could be reached if you're willing to take a heavy wound - there's no die to the damage, so no risk of killing yourself. At least, directly.
I'm sure it's possible to optimize it a bit more than I have done. If I were actually to play this character, I'd probably give them some fairly crippling flaws when trying to cast magic without ceremony.
Get performance magic: mystical corepgraphy for an added +3 to your total.
Really nice number crunching, btw. Slow-ish and powerful.
Xavi
It's not just the SG...rules interpretations like that ought to be discussed with the troupe in general.
Or am I the only one who does this?
-Ben.