Yes it does, so to augment once combat starts is to forego your attack - of course if you tend to be loosing your rolls and thus need to augment this may not be a bad thing!
> If you had (to be absurd) 6 different combat feats(affinities), all
> at level 20, could you apply them all to your close combat skill at
> the one time. I know only one physical augment is allowed, but
> several magic ones ??
Yes, you can , providing that they are all "relevant" - You might have difficulty if you are a Babeester Gor Devotee using "Slashing Blow" and "Hurl Axe" as Augments at the same time, or as a Humakti using "Weapon Destoyer" and "Shield Destroyer" when fighting wolves.
Remember too that as a default, magic lasts for "Current Contest only"(HW:RiG p232) - You can't get up in the morning and power up all your feats for the day (Well, you can, but only at a +20 Resistance...). It's largely GM's Call as to how many Augments you can prepare ahead of time before the first one(s) start to wear off. A suggested rule of thumb IIRC was about three, but it's whatever you feel comfortable with. Just remember that if your PC's always sucessfully augment to +10-12 then just make the enemy about that much stronger (either naturally or through augments of their own) to preserve the "dramatic balance". It can be fun to augment up to a couple of masteries so even your failures are criticals, but a game without challenges soon looses it's appeal.
Of course if you are squaring up to the Enemy at the time then all the time you are augmenting, they are too, and if their magic is stronger than yours then you may not be doing yourself any favours... (And there is the old KoDP favourite "They attacked while we were still performing our sacrifices" - The Enemy can choose to attack while you are unprepaired and thus limit your possible responses which is never a good thing).
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