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THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF VAMPIRE: THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE CONTINUES

Great news: The release date for this 120 card set is moved from September (what a lousy idea!) to mid/late July! Here are some previews:

• Ian Carfax is another Tremere Justicar from the Vampire: The Masquerade lore, and also a previous Archon of notorious Karl Schrekt. The design team gave him a really interesting discipline spread as well as very strong special abilities, don´t you think? Art by Ginés Quiñonero.

• Reinforcement is not new, but a reprint of a card that first appeared in the Final Nights set. Only playable by titled vampires and removed from game when resolved, it is debated what decks this really is suited for. The original art by Steve Ellis is used.

• Lasombra Justicar is the a way for "The Night Clan" to get a Justicar, now that they officially joined the Camarilla sect. Art by Riccardo Fabiani.

• As mentioned above, the 30th Anniversary will be out earlier than first expected, official premiere date July 20. The box is manufactured in Germany and should be able to contain the fully sleeved deck.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle turns 30 – welcome to the ball!

Some words from Ben Peal, Product Director of Black Chantry Productions:

Hey, everyone! The 30th anniversary of Vampire: the Eternal Struggle is coming up soon – August 16th! – and I wanted to talk a bit about the 30th Anniversary set we’ve created to celebrate the occasion.

We wanted to do something like the Stanislava deck we made for the 25th Anniversary Set, and the Toreador AAA (Anson, Anneke, Alexandra) archetype came to mind as it’s another classic archetype. But with the banning of Anthelios and with the design direction moving away from multiple master phase actions, that archetype is less viable in today’s meta and we felt a different approach was needed than recycling Toreador Grand Ball. We also wanted to give the Camarilla and politics a boost, as our preconstructed decks for Fifth Edition have tended towards stealth-bleed, intercept walls, and combat.

What we came up with is a deck we call “The Endless Dance”: a Toreador political deck that still centers around Toreador Grand Ball, but also uses a new action modifier called Loup (French for “eye mask”) to help get its actions to succeed. We took inspiration from the Ishtarri card Uncontrolled Impulse – we felt that the Toreador could really use a card like that. Giving it a feel of a masquerade ball, where you’re not certain of anyone’s identity, it’s an action modifier that gives all Toreador +1 stealth until the end of the turn or until a Toreador successfully performs an action. So if your first acting Toreador is blocked, each subsequent Toreador will get the +1 stealth until one of them succeeds at an action that turn.

We can’t have a deck without a crypt, so we have an assortment of all-new Toreador crypt cards for the deck. Looking through the Camarilla sourcebook for Fifth Edition Vampire: The Masquerade, we were thrilled to see our old friend François Villon still in charge of his domain in Paris. We chose to anchor the deck around him and newcomer Justicar Diana Iadanza. François Villon’s disciplines needed to be adjusted to account for the changes in Fifth Edition, so he has Animalism instead of Chimerstry. We carried over his +1 bleed to his new Group 6 version, and we’ve given him a new special to represent his skills of manipulation.

Another thing Vampire: The Eternal Struggle has needed is new Justicars for Group 7, representing the recently appointed clan Justicars in the Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition canon. They didn’t quite fit into the preconstructed decks in the Fifth Edition boxed set or in the respective New Blood decks as they’d increase the average capacity of the crypt cards in those decks for minimal benefit – deck effectiveness won out in that regard. However, with the Toreador Justicar Diana Iadanza being in the Endless Dance deck and with some extra space left in the 30th Anniversary bundle, this seemed the ideal time to get all of the new Justicars printed.

The official release date of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle 30th Anniversary is July 20. Full content list and all previews is at the 30th Anniversary product page.

Now all the cards in the upcoming 30th Anniversary set have been previewed - isn´t it great?! The official release date is July 20, which means the new cards in the set will be legal for tournament play on August 19.

• The 30th Anniversary set was formaly announced on June 1, for official release on July 20 and official tournament legality date August 19. Product Director Ben Peal wrote a piece about the deck design (“Vampire: The Eternal Struggle turns 30 – welcome to the ball!”) and we also saw an interview article with returning original Jyhad artist Randy Gallegos (“Artist in focus: Randy Gallegos”). Content list and all cards have been spoiled in various ways - you´ll find everything on the 30th Anniversary product page.

We´ve seen some nervous questions about the box quality of this 30th Anniversary set, and about that we can assure a sturdy thing, roughly equivalent of the much loved 25th Anniversary box, with room for 102 sleeved cards.