Errata – Black Chantry Productions

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Product Roadmap 2024-2025

Words by Ben Peal, product director of Black Chantry Productions:

Greetings, fellow Kindred! With the new year approaching, it’s about time I gave you a product roadmap update for the Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (VTES) releases slated for 2024 plus a production update for 2025.

2024 was a lighter release schedule for us, seeing the releases of the 30th Annivesary set and the Fifth Edition Lasombra pre-constructed deck. We also had the launch of print-on-demand in Europe via Gamepod, helping meet a critical need there. 2025 is shaping up to have a much busier release schedule.

The Hecata pre-constructed deck was planned to be released alongside the Lasombra deck, but we felt a fourth round of playtesting was needed for it. Translation work the Hecata deck into French, Spanish, and Portuguese has been completed, the print files have been sent to the printer, and the Hecata deck is presently slated for release at the end of February 2025. We’ve had a couple of sneak previews for it already and we’ll have more of them coming soon.

Playtesting for the New Blood decks for Ravnos, Salubri, Tzimisce, Lasombra, and Hecata also concluded this year and we anticipate a Q2 2025 release for those. For logistical reasons, we’re likely to split their release into two waves: Ravnos, Salubri, and Tzimisce in one wave and Lasombra and Hecata in the other wave.

We are currently in Round Two of playtesting of the Sabbat pre-constructed decks. It’s an ambitious project, exploring the Sabbat in much more depth and in ways that encompass previously-published Sabbat kindred, so we may need a fourth round of playtesting for it. As it stands, we’re aiming for a release date timed with the Week of Nightmares in Columbus, Ohio in June of 2025.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I strongly recommend reading the Fifth Edition Sabbat book to get an understanding of how the Sabbat are currently being handled in Vampire: The Masquerade. The main thing – the core principle – is that the Sabbat largely discard any clan affiliation and instead adopt a Path-aligned ideology. So instead of having clan-themed pre-constructed decks for the Sabbat, we’ll have four Path-themed decks: Path of Caine, Path of Cathari, Path of Death and the Soul, and Path of Power and the Inner Voice. These decks will have crypt cards that are keyworded for their respective path and library cards specific to those paths. Separately from those decks, we’ll also release cards that give Paths to existing Sabbat kindred. If you don’t have a copy of the Fifth Edition Sabbat book, I recommend the Vampire: The Masquerade wiki’s page on the Sabbat as a quick primer.

Symbols of Sabbat paths: Caine, Cathari, Death and Soul, and Power and the Inner Voice.

Following the Sabbat decks, we’ll move away from pre-constructed decks to a pair of themed releases: Brazil By Night and Shadows of New York. With Brazil By Night, the release is a personal one, as we lost five members of the Brazilian VTES community to COVID-19. We’ve decided to honor those players with crypt cards and we’re going to explore the nation more in-depth with additional library cards and crypt cards. With Shadows of New York, we’ll cover the characters and events of the Shadows of New York, Coteries of New York and Reckoning of New York visual novels for Vampire: The Masquerade. Across both of these sets, you can expect to see additional crypt and library cards for the Camarilla, Anarch, and Sabbat sects. We anticipate a late Q3 2025 release for them.

That largely covers the releases for 2025. Looking past the horizon into 2026, I think we can expect to see New Blood packs for the Sabbat Paths, at least one more themed set like Fall of London, Brazil By Night, and Shadows of New York, and possibly another Path-themed pre-constructed deck or two. But there’s plenty of work to do for 2025 before I can give firm commitments to 2026.

Regarding the current tournament metagame and the possibility of errata, we certainly keep an eye on the tournament scene and its trends and we’re very aware of the concerns with Anarchs. Generally-speaking, there are three ways of addressing this: banning cards, issuing errata for cards, and developing new cards to counter/interact with the problem cards. In terms of banning cards and issuing errata for cards, I think we’re largely done with those methods for addressing issues. We do have cards on our internal watch list and we may still exercise those methods to address them – and there are two specific cards I’ll mention in a moment – but I think we’re pretty close to our comfort level with the existing legacy VTES cards and the newer Fifth Edition VTES cards.

Additionally, we have the Hecata pre-preconstructed deck and the Ravnos, Salubri, Tzimisce, Lasombra, and Hecata New Blood packs being released over the next 2-4 months, and we’d like to see the overall impact on the tournament environment after those cards are released before we make any errata decisions, mainly because it’s a lot of cards in a short time span. As for the aforementioned two specific cards, they are as follows:

Baba Yaga: Baba Yaga will be replaced with a new card named Gorgo with new artwork but otherwise the same stats and special abilities. The Russian mythos in the World of Darkness is still being worked on and the V5 canon may end up not permitting us to use Baba Yaga as a character in VTES. In the interests of having a published card instead of PDF-only we’ll release Gorgo in an upcoming anthology set in 2025 (release date not yet determined).

Major Boon: The present wording of the card has it playable only after a bleed action has been resolved – after priority has been passed on any action modifiers and reactions – but it also creates a window for playing additional action modifiers after that resolution. That doesn’t work within the mechanics of the game, so it’ll be re-issued with updated card text in an upcoming promo pack in 2025 (release date not yet determined).

Many thanks to the playtesters, the event organizers, and to all of you as players! I look forward to the next year, packed with new VTES releases!

Ben Peal
Product Director
Black Chantry Productions

The preview card in this article is from the upcoming Fifth Edition Hecata preconstructed deck. Lenelle, Mambo of Birmingham has art by Ken Meyer Jr, illustrator for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle since 1994!

Copyright © 2024 Paradox Interactive AB. www.paradoxinteractive.com. All rights reserved. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and Vampire: The Masquerade® are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB. All rights reserved.

Same card, different name: Puppet Master

The card Puppet Master appears in the upcoming Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition Lasombra preconstructed deck. This is to be considered as the same card as the previously printed card Mind Rape. The old card is still legal for tournament play.

Art by Brian LeBlanc.

The full deck list and all previews are at the Fifth Edition Lasombra product page.

Ashur Tablets and Emerald Legionnaire now as print-on-demand!

Hi! We have now added the changed cards Ashur Tablets and Emerald Legionnaire for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle as print-on-demand at Drivethrucards.com with a special discount ($0.15 per card). Direct links:

Ashur Tablets (2024 version)

Emerald Legionnaire (2024 version)

When you make an order, please have a look at our other offers – currently 34 decks/bundles, hundreds of Legacy Single cards (pick and mix freely) and of course the highly entertaining Card Creator!

Errata, tournament rule change and new cards legality date

Hello!

This is a Vampire: The Eternal Struggle update on:
1. Errata for Ashur Tablets and Emerald Legionnaire
2. Multi deck change for the tournaments rules
3. Ravnos, Salubri and Tzimisce legality date

1. Errata announcements

Since August 2021, some cards have been under scrutiny due to power or rule issues. Ashur Tablets and Emerald Legionnaire were among them. We had a few rounds of playtest over 2 years, interrupted by the Covid pandemic, during which multiple variations were tested on these as well as other cards. Based on this feedback, we decided to make the following changes:

Ashur Tablets
Errata: Only one Ashur Tablets may be played each turn.

Reason: This change has a greater impact on heavy MMPA deck as it doesn’t allow a player to play as many recursion cycles, which in turn limits the gain pool from other cards such as Liquidation, making decks including 50+ master cards and large pool gain less viable.

This card will be available for print-on-demand at Drivethrucards.com with a special discount.

This change has tournament legality 1st February 2024.

Emerald Legionnaire
Errata: You cannot use the Emerald Legionnaire’s ability during your unlock phase if you control as many or more copies of them as ready unique Harbinger of Skulls.

Reason: The intent is to suppress use outside of the clan, and to reduce the explosiveness of turns during which multiple Emerald Legionnaire return from the ash heap. This is closer to the designer’s intent.

This card will be available for print-on-demand at Drivethrucards.com with a special discount.

This change has tournament legality 1st February 2024.

Tournament rules change

The multi-deck system can now be used for any tournament except national championships, grand prix, and continental championships.

3.1.5 Multi-Deck System
Players are prohibited from making modifications to their decks between rounds unless the tournament uses the following multi-deck rules. The multi-deck system can be used at any tournament that is neither a national championship, a grand prix, or a continental championship. Organizers choosing to use this system must announce its use in advance of the tournament date. Players may choose to bring any number of tournament-legal decks to the tournament and/or extra cards to exchange with cards in their decks (also known as a sideboard in some games). Between rounds, players may freely switch decks (or cards in their decks).

This change has tournament legality 1st February 2024.

Ravnos, Salubri and Tzimisce Fifth Edition preconstructed decks

These have now been shipped. The main pallets to the UK still need to arrive but Denmark, Finland, Italy, Poland and Spain should have received theirs so far.

These decks are covered in an eco paper covering with no outer cellophane as a test run. The new print run of Fifth Edition Vampire: The Eternal Struggle boxes shipped later in January will contain 5 decks without cellophane but still with an outer box covered in cellophane.

The new cards in the Ravnos, Salubri and Tzimisce decks have an official release date 2nd January 2024 and tournament legality 1st February 2024.

Rules Team Rulings with Fifth Edition rulebook addendum and errata (RTR 30/11/2020)

VTES - The Becoming - Art by Kyri Koniotis

Fellow Methuselahs,

To accompany the release of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition, the following rule change will be effective December 30, 2020.

Rule Change: Default sect
Clans do not have a default sect anymore. This means that if a vampire changes clan, they keep their sect. For instance, a Derange played by Malkavian antitribu on a target vampire who is Camarilla Ventrue changes the target into a Camarilla Malkavian antitribu (not a Sabbat Malkavian antitribu as before).

This is a REVERSAL of the following rulings (based on the old rule):
LSJ 20030225, LSJ 19990924, LSJ 20010924.

The following cards have changed:
Becoming, The: Inherits the sire’s sect.
Brother in Arms: Inherits the sire’s sect.
Creation Rites: The vampire is now explicitly Sabbat.
Dual Form: Inherits the sire’s sect.
Nosferatu Bestial: Inherits the sire’s sect.
Third Tradition: Progeny: The vampire is now explicitly Camarilla.
Trophy: Progeny: Inherits the sire’s sect.

Fifth Edition Rulebook addendum

Drawing Cards (p. 7)
Whenever you are asked to draw from your crypt, move the top card from your crypt to your uncontrolled region.

Requirements for Playing Cards (p. 7)
Unless explicitly stated, costs you pay must be paid with resources you control: your pool, blood on vampires you control, cards in your ash heap, etc. For instance, you cannot play Enticement if you do not control the Edge, since you must burn it as part of its cost.

An exception is the “Rescue a Vampire from Torpor” action (p. 23) whose cost can be paid by the acting vampire or the rescued vampire, or the cost may be split between them.

Performing an action (p. 16)
The term “perform” applies to the entire course of the action, from the moment it is announced to the moment it is resolved. An action that is “performed” can end up by being successful or not. “Performing an action” does not imply that the action is successful.

Political Action Cards (p. 27)
Those cards simply say “1 vote”, rather than “worth 1 vote” (which was the wording used in older sets).

Quick Reference (p. 53)
The Discipline Blood Sorcery is also called Thaumaturgy in older sets. They are exactly the same.

The clan Banu Haqim is called Assamite in older sets. They are exactly the same.

Similarly, the clan Ministry (whose members are called Ministers) is called Followers of Set in older sets.

For instance, if a card requires a ready Banu Haqim, any ready Assamite will fulfill this requirement (and vice versa).

Fifth Edition Rulebook errata

Rulebook, p. 15
The 30 pool displayed as your pool do not necessarily reflect the state of the game at that moment (since you have spent some of them to bring vampires into play), unless you have found a way to regain enough pool to reach your initial 30 pool. Also, please note that there is no limit to the amount of pool a Methuselah can have.

Fifth Edition Helpsheets errata

Leave torpor
The cost of the action is missing: “Action cost: 2 blood”.

Diablerise a vampire in torpor
The word stealth is missing in the following sentence: “Undirected +1 stealth action if you control both vampires.”

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Fifth Edition is available for all stores and distributors. For more information please visit the Products section at www.blackchantry.com. Contact us by mail or social media.