The Tremeres and Tremere Antitribus are a very exciting clan, as they are able to do quite a few things well. THAUMATURGY is a great discipline, throw in DOMINATE and AUSPEX, and you have a clan that is able to do combat, intercept, and bleed rather well. I've always liked my deck to be as toolboxy as possible, and hence the Tremere and their Sabbat counterpart are one of my favourite clans. This particular pre-con did highlight the flexibility of the Tremere Antitribu rather well, and is a good deck to buy if you plan on starting Tremere Antitribu, or Tremere~
How to Kill
This deck is primarily a bleed deck, with some bruise element, and it is probably one of the most combaty deck in the 3rd Ed pre-con selection. You can't really oust by combat alone since the deck lacks the combat ousting cards (pretty much completely) but with a good hand this deck actually plays quite competitively.
One way to kill is to bleed with your DOMINATE actions. Govern the Unaligned is a great card. In fact, it is probably one of the best cards that you can get your hands on in this starter. At basic, your Vampires will be able to bleed for 3 before modifiers, and in the hands of Paul Cordwood, you can just remove one card from your crypt to make this action +1 stealth. If you're facing only starter decks, and if you have a Bonding in hand, you're almost guaranteed a 4 bleed with +2 Stealth, which is something that most pre-cons cannot easily recover from. (Even comepetitive decks will not scoff at a 4 bleed, do beware of Archon Investigation though, and it might be wiser to just keep to 3 bleeds)
Threats and Bonding or even Dominate Kine will help your Vampires bleed your prey to death. Among all the pre-cons in 3rd Ed, only the !Malkavians can bleed as well as you, and that's because some of their Vampires have in-built bleed enhancers. But unlike them, your main path of getting your bleeds through will be your combat ability.
THAUMATURGY combat will need a little time to get used to, especially if you have never come across it. It has the unique ability to steal blood rather than hit for damage where the opposing Vampire will burn blood to heal. This is how it works. The key combat card here will be these 3 cards : Apportation, Theft of Vitae and Walk of Flame. A very common THAUMATURGY combat package, at it's simplest form, goes like this -
1. Move to long with superior Apportation, repeat if needed, this is mostly to avoid Immortal Grapples or aggravated close combat with the opponent. You can stay close if you do not have superior THAUMATURGY, but it is less efficient, and is more risky for your Vampires.
2. Strike with Theft of Vitae to steal up to 2 blood from the opposing Vampire. This is not a damage, and therefore cannot be prevented with FORTITUDE cards, or other stuff that target damage, such as Leather Jacket. The opposing Vampire will lose those blood, and your Vampire will gain the same amount. If your Vampire is suffering damage from the opposing Vampire's strike, you can use these "stolen blood" to heal, and not go torpor. For example, if you only have 1 blood, and the opposing Vampire hit you for 2 damage, but you Theft of Vitae for 1 blood, you will end up with zero blood, but you are not in torpor. Also note that, if the opposing Vampire do not have enough blood on him, you will not be able to steal "extra" even if the card says so. For example, if Uta strikes at Patrick with Theft of Vitae, attempting to steal 2 blood from him, but Patrick only has 1 blood on him, Uta is going to steal only 1 blood. THIS STEALING IS NOT A DAMAGE and it WILL NOT send the opposing Vampire into torpor even if they have no blood on them. Which brings you to step 3
3. You press for the next round of combat using Apportation.
4. This time, you can either continue to steal blood with Theft of Vitae, or use Walk of Flame to torpor or burn the opposing Vampire.
More about combat later.
This deck allows you to bleed heavily, and if you're blocked, send the opposing Vampire to torpor, and then bleed them heavily when he has no defense. This is the primary ousting path of the deck.
Combat
Besides the standard THAUMATURGY combat described above, you should pay attention to the following cards : Weather Control and Blood Rage.
Weather Control is another key card that many THAUMATURGY combat decks use. What it does is that it will be used at the Before Range step to cause one UNPEVENTABLE damage to each minion and retainer in the combat. Imagine the whole battlegrond being ravaged by tornados and lightning strikes and everybody suffers, including yourself. The issue here is that your Vampire can get those blood back with Theft of Vitae, theirs can't. It also kills off most retainers efficiently, as these retainers have no means of preventing these damage. Generally, 2 rounds of Weather abuse will kill off pretty much any retainer in combat, very handy against those pesky Raven Spies and Raptors. The decision to use Weather Control at superior or inferior depends on the situation and the relative health of your Vampire. You'll need to learn to assess the threat level of your opponent to decide on that. So, to use this card effectively, you just need to add it to the combat cycle highlighted above, and the opposing Vampire might not even get to strike resolution in round 2.
Blood Rage is a hand strike that will prevent damage from enemy's weapons, as well as disallow FORTITUDE cards to prevent it's damage. In this particular deck you have no Biothaumatrugic Experiment and no Vampires with enhanced strength, so this card isn't that much of a deal. But if you're facing FORTITUDE decks, this would be a great card to damage their Vampires, especially if they've lose all their blood to your Theft of Vitae.
Defense
This deck can block rather well too. Spirit's Touch, Enhanced Senses and Eternal Vigilance (note that this card can only be used by Lucubratio and Ladislas, discard it if you don't have them in play), make you the most viable deck to intercept the !Malkavian starter deck.
You can also use Redirection to bounce bleeds away to your prey if you like. And in general, you have no issue when you get into a fight.
Take a look at Rutor's Hand. This may look like a very expensive card to use, but do not underestimate the value of an extra untap every turn. You can get those blood back in combat anyway, so if you can, Rutor's Hand one of your bigger Vampire, and he can both bleed, and then untap to prepare your defenses - it's almost like having an extra clone of him - it's generally worth the investment.
Where you go from here
If you are ok with the toolboxy approach of the starter, you can start by getting rid of the vote cards, add in more bleed cards, and perhaps a few more combat cards. You can consider Deflections if you can get them, and replace or augment your Redirections. Spirit Summoning Chamber is a reasonably good search card for you to have too. Throw out the Threats and replace with Conditioning, they're more efficient.
You might want to tune your crypt a little, depends on which route you want to go. If you want to focus on combat, you should focus on Uta Korvacs, and maybe look to the Tremeres to add in some good Vampires from their selection - Hector Trelane comes to mind. You can then add in more Graverobbing, some combat oust cards like Fame and Tension in the Ranks. You might need a lot more Theft of Vitae, as many as 8-15 copies, and just as many Apportations. You can also consider 1 or 2 Rotschreck with Walk of Flame, just to be fun.
You can also go weenie DOMINATE bleeds with the deck, and you'll need to add in a lot more bleed cards and get rid of the bigger Vampires and replace them with small ones. This one is quite easy to achieve but you probably cannot stick to the Antitribus alone.
The Tremere Antitribus boast the Vampire Malgorzata, and she is often the key Vampire for a beginning !Tremere deck. I'll leave you to figure her out. She is kinda cool to play.
Value of the Deck
The !Tremere Antitribu deck is more valuable than the other 2 that I've discussed. It has some reasonably rare and good value cards in the deck to warrant a buy. Not exactly the best investment if money is what you're looking at, there are better starters to buy. But unlike the previous 2 starters, you'll probably get your money back with this one.
1 x Golconda, Inner Peace
1 x Helicoptor
1 x Infernal Pact
2 x On the Qui Vive
1 x Dominate Kine
2 x Uta Korvacs
(o.o)y
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