Praise the Sun

a little story on this one. i was inspired by seeing Robyn Tatu play a deck with bursts of sunlight, so i thought i'd try building a Tremere deck using that. later on, Robyn thought this looked fun and borrowed it from me for a dragoncon tournament, and she came very close to winning the whole thing. while playing it for the first time, and not even knowing the full decklist.

this is what i see as the true way of playing Tremere. also, the main motivation to build this was to counter the annoying Toreador gun wall decks that were becoming rampant in the local meta at the time.

DISCLAIMER: this is not a good deck. i kinda slapped it together and decided to make it one of those "fun" 90 card toolbox decks with a lot of fluff. if you want to try this, don't copy it directly, use the core and build your own version around that. it definitely needs to shrink to 80 cards or less, and be more focused. also there's a banned card. but even as unrefined as it is, it seemed to do pretty well in that tournament.

Deck Name: Praise the Sun
Author:
Description:

Crypt (Capacity min=3 max=10 avg=6.33; 12 cards)
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1x Blythe Candeleria 3 aus THA Tremere:2
1x Ignatius 4 aus dom tha Tremere:1
1x Jing Wei 3 dom tha Tremere:1
1x Lydia Van Cuelen 6 aus dom pre tha Tremere:1
1x Merrill Molitor 5 aus dom THA Tremere:1
3x Muaziz, Archon of Ulugh Beg 7 aus dom for THA Tremere:2
1x Sarah Cobbler 4 dom THA Tremere:1
3x Ulugh Beg, The Watcher 10 cel for pot AUS DOM THA Tremere:1

Library (90 cards)
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Master (17 cards)
1x Academic Hunting Ground
1x Arcane Library
4x Blood Doll
1x Chantry
2x Dominate
1x Fragment of the Book of Nod
1x Guardian Angel
1x Heidelberg Castle, Germany
1x KRCG News Radio
1x Lilith's Blessing
1x Powerbase: Montreal
1x Rack, The
1x Wider View

Action (16 cards)
1x Blood of Sandman
2x Bum's Rush
1x Dominate Kine
1x Far Mastery
5x Govern the Unaligned
2x Graverobbing
3x Magic of the Smith
1x Revelations

Equipment (6 cards)
1x Ankara Citadel, Turkey, The
1x Bowl of Convergence
1x Flak Jacket
1x IR Goggles
1x Palatial Estate
1x Talbot's Chainsaw

Ally (2 cards)
1x Gregory Winter
1x Ponticulus

Retainer (1 cards)
1x Charnas the Imp

Action Modifier (18 cards)
3x Conditioning
3x Foreshadowing Destruction
4x Freak Drive
4x Mirror Walk
4x Seduction

Reaction (17 cards)
5x Deflection
2x Enhanced Senses
2x Fillip
2x Forced Awakening
2x On the Qui Vive
2x Precognition
2x Wake with Evening's Freshness

Combat (13 cards)
9x Burst of Sunlight
4x Theft of Vitae

Created with Secret Library v0.9.4b. (Mar 4, 2014 07:28:20)

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i hate walk of flame, it never works for me. burst of sunlight is the true threat of the thaumaturgy arsenal. theft of vitae comes pretty close, but sunlight is the best. i believe the Tremere are built around taking advantage of this spell, so let's abuse it.

you only need basic thaumaturgy to do your thing, so weenies are excellent fodder here (sorta like weenie claws, except ranged). once you have Merrill Molitor, a Chantry, or a permanent source of damage prevention, your bigger guys can zap sunlight with relative impunity too. the biggest counter to this is fortitude, so we're packing theft of vitae to counter THAT.

between seduction and mirror walk, we have some degree of choosing who and when we want to fight. I've sometimes even bluffed with mirror walk, "+1 stealth, and there WILL be combat," and it worked. let everyone else stress out over whether it's safe to block you or not.

what if they rely on S:CE and think they're so safe? then we pull out the trump card, Talbot's Chainsaw. we don't equip this until we have a way to safely handle it, but there's plenty of those. Chantry, Ponticulus, Lillith's Blessing, or just having a ton of weenies and blood gain available. use Heidelburg for two rushes per turn, and we'll see just how long their S:CE holds out. and guess what? Talbot's Chainsaw comes with 1 damage prevent for casting sunlight! or just use the mandatory press to do 6 damage per fight, whichever works. don't discard it, always plan on getting the chainsaw, it's your mop for cleaning up the endgame.

use weenies or Muaziz to diablerize VIP targets. or graverob them. or both. you don't need too many superior disciplines in this crypt, except maybe for superior Govern.

you have 6 vamipres with for in crypt so why don't you use some prevents for your bursts? I would also play second copy of chantry. It's crucial in this build
also where are rotschrecks? they are your best answer for prevents, combat decks and strike:ce when you are reacting minion
Crypt is weird for me as well. If you don't use fortitude what is Ulugh Beg for? He is very weak vamipre for the 10cap. Lydia is very weak as weel being 6cap with no superior disciplines. On the other hand you are missing Aisling. One of the best midcap tremeres have to offer. Also Astrid Thomas and Justine are no brainers if you want to play govern superior. Speaking of which I would definitelly add some more governs.
Apart from that, as you said there is too much cards here

This seems kinda clunky compared to similar things.

Ive had some success with my "graverob n go" deck, using midcaps n weenies with precognition, burst of sunlight, etc. I just thiught it was cheesy, and needed my eyes of argus for other stuff, but it flowed well

Ive had a few finals with my "agg repair" 2nd trad with burst and dawn op+weather control, but it is blood intensive.

What you have is a start. Have you considered making it a Muaziz deck with outferior flames of the netherworld, burst, and fortitude, along with good old amaranth? Ive seen trophy versions of that do ok even, and if its good on cardflow to add trophies, fatty vamps with titles, and the redlist action, it can work ok without trophy tools.

I agree on walk of flame. Last time i used that well, it was a ponderoisly slow Petaniqua combat deck, and i blood to watered, thefted, pressed, and round three, having stolen 4 and burned 3 blood, along with her built in R damage, i burned a vamp outright with walk of flame. That was like 3-4 years ago though....

Anyway, at least add rego motus. Thats cards the reason my Agg Repair isnt a twd. It apparently saves vamps with tham from being shot with agg and amaranthed by g3 ventrue justicars.......

Just to be sure : Rego Motus can't prevent damaged dealt by you own burst of sunlight.

Timo wrote:

Just to be sure : Rego Motus can't prevent damaged dealt by you own burst of sunlight.

Correct

Rego motus
Combat, 1 blood

[tha] prevent 2 damage from the oposing minions strike, only one rego motus can be played each round.
[THA] As above, but prevent up to 4

(Thats not cut n paste, phone makes that hard, might be other text, but the relivant to the question part is drom opposing minions strike)

(John Bell rego'd my agg at Mistress Franchoin, when i was low on blood and had ousted Loughman, at the final where rego stopped my evil plans...)
Rego is good because losing to freakning return agg poke is frustrating.

The basics are solid here: Muaziz says leave me alone or die, and dominate covers defense and oust.

All I'd bother with that core is an Amaranth or two (because discarding one with Muaziz out puts the fear into everyone -- or gets the table hate) and Seal of Veddartha ('cuz +1 bleed and extra dom just works with your core, and fortitude goes with your deck bluff, as this isn't a full on Tremere with fortitude deck).

Most i'd really tinker with here, outside of redoing the concept tighter, is an extra bleed equipment to toggle with your Heidelburg. Reserves your dominate lunge for ousts.