Rebooted Vampire: The Masquerade card game Eternal Struggle delayed to autumn
New edition of CCG by Magic: The Gathering creator.
Vampire: The Eternal Struggle - Fifth Edition, the upcoming reboot of the classic collectible card game created by Magic: The Gathering designer Richard Garfield, has seen its release date pushed back to this autumn.
Vampire: The Eternal Struggle was originally released in 1994 as a spin-off from the beloved horror tabletop RPG Vampire: The Masquerade, in which players control creatures of the night stalking the streets of LA in search for blood and answers. Part of the World of Darkness series, Vampire: The Masquerade has continued to receive new instalments to this day, the latest release being the 2018 fifth edition.
In Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, two to five players challenge each other to a duel for control of a territory and its humans, fighting other bloodsuckers until they’re the last one standing. Players control methuselahs: incredibly ancient and powerful vampires with a seemingly unending lust for influence and blood - and a willingness to kill for it.
Throughout the card game, players ecruit younger and more suggestible vampires in order to do their bidding. By spending influence, players can attempt to seduce vampires onto their side, with older and more powerful night creatures costing more influence to sway.
Players each have a deck of cards at their disposal, which they can use to gradually whittle down the health of their prey. A methuselah’s prey is the player to their left, with all attacks by minions and cards directed towards them. During the course of Vampire: TES, players will be looking to eliminate each of their prey one by one, with a new victim stepping into the place of the old one until only one vampire remains.
Vampire: The Eternal Struggle - Fifth Edition is a reboot of the collectible card game, having endured a hiatus after publisher White Wolf ceased production in 2010. First announced in early 2018 for a planned release in Q2 2020, the Fifth Edition looks to expand on the card game with new cards for each clan deck, whilst staying true to the original’s mechanics.
Publisher Blank Chantry Productions has announced a Fifth Edition box set featuring pre-constructed decks based on five of the clans in Vampire: The Masquerade - Clan Malkavian, Clan Nosferatu, Clan Toreador, Clan Tremere and Clan Ventrue - as well as the necessary tokens and an official rulebook.
Garfield designed Vampire: The Eternal Struggle alongside co-designers Robert Goudie and L. Scott Johnson, having already created Magic: The Gathering. The game was originally released by MTG maker Wizards of the Coast under the title Jyhad before being renamed after Vampire: The Masquerade in 1995.
Blank Chantry confirmed that Vampire: The Eternal Struggle has completed development and is set to begin production “soon”. The game is planned for a release this September at a retail price of $95/£74.