General announcement – Black Chantry Productions

Happy birthday Vampire: The Eternal Struggle!

Happy birthday, best game in the world! 30 YEARS OF VAMPIRE: THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE! The original base set was published by Wizards of the Coast on August 16, 1994. The design was by Richard Garfield, in collaboration with White Wolf, the company behind Vampire: The Masquerade, the role-playing game which the card game is based on. These games are set in the World of Darkness, a somewhat gothic horror reflection of our own world.

The base set had a massive 437 different cards, available in both thin booster packs and thicker starter packs, both randomised. It featured seven vampire clans of the Camarilla sect – Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue – as well as the clanless Caitiff.

Many of the cards that are among the most commonly played cards even today are from this set, like Govern the Unaligned, Telepathic Misdirection and Kine Resources Contested.

Today, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is produced by Black Chantry Productions (www.blackchantry.com), on license from Paradox Interactive. We are proud to keep this fantastic game un-dead!

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.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle production update May 2022

Originally published in the Vampire: Elder Kindred Network newsletter:

Greetings, fellow Kindred! It’s been a good while since I provided an update on where we at Black Chantry are at with Vampire: The Eternal Struggle releases and what’s down the road. Last year, we had the release of the Banu Haqim, Brujah, Gangrel, and Ministry pre-constructed decks, as well as the successful Kickstarter for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle Unleashed. Additionally, we made available on Drivethrucards.com the legacy reprints of Followers of Set, Giovanni, Lasombra, and Ravnos, and Latin translations of the Fifth Edition decks.

So far this year, we’ve made the English language versions of the Fifth Edition decks available on Drivethrucards, as well as legacy reprints of Pander, Salubri, and Tzimisce. April saw the release of the New Blood introductory decks for Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue. We’re presently waiting for the artwork to be complete for the Fall of London storyline set. Mike Nudd is the lead designer for it, and he also is a co-author of the Fall of London book for Vampire: The Masquerade. We’re expecting a summer release for that set.

We have a change in plans for what’s coming after Fall of London. We had originally planned to release a follow-up set for the Camarilla, filling out the Group 6 crypts and adding new library cards for them. However, with the heavy Camarilla themes of the New Blood decks and Fall of London, we felt we’d be oversaturating you with Camarilla-related cards. We’re presently planning for these cards – including the new Justicars! – to be in your hands in first quarter of 2023.

Coming after Fall of London, planned for the fourth of 2022, is another wave of pre-constructed decks. This time they’ll be Ravnos, Salubri, and Tzimisce, updated accordingly for the Vampire: The Masquerade V5 canon. We’re presently vetting the templating and mechanics of the cards and we’ll have them sent off for playtesting in June. We’ll have more information for you about those as we get closer to their release.

Heading into 2023, there’s the aforementioned Camarilla follow-up set, and following that we’ll have pre-constructed decks for the Lasombra and Hecata. We’ll also be wanting to release follow-up sets for all of the clans, as we’re definitely not done creating crypt and library cards for them. I’m frequently asked when we’ll be making new cards for the Sabbat. We’re very early in the concept and planning stages for the Sabbat, so they’re further down the production timeline, but we’re definitely excited for them.

I wish you all great summer nights and I look forward to seeing you at tournaments this year!

– Ben Peal, Product Director Black Chantry Productions

Welcome to our store!

Hi!

To make it easier for you to get Vampire: The Eternal Struggle products, Black Chantry now launches our own web shop: Black Chantry Distribution

The shop will carry an assortment of decks, bundles, and accessories, shipping from an EU location (Denmark to be precise). Helping us out with this is our dear friend and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle aficionado Jesper Bøje.

The shop will also have a limited supply of the Unleashed Kickstarter bundles Anarchs Unbound, Danse Macabre and The Unaligned 1 & 2 – we printed some extra of those for people that missed backing the campaign earlier this year.

Enjoy!

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle during the pandemic

We are continuing to experience a global pandemic. Please follow national and local regulations and recommendations about infection control when you consider organizing a physical event such as a Vampire: The Eternal Struggle tournament. At this time, doing so is probably not possible in most countries, but as some fortunate places exist, the VEKN will not issue a strict global stop for events.

Instead: Run online events! You can play Vampire: The Eternal Struggle on for example LackeyCCG , both casual games, leagues and VEKN sanctioned tournaments. Just have the organizer mark the event with “ONLINE” in the title when you enter it to the VEKN event calendar. You can find Lackey games on VTES-Hook and in the Facebook group VTES LackeyCCG.

Again: Listen carefully to local health authorities and apply common sense. These are serious matters, so please take caution. Stay safe.

About diversity and inclusivity (including VEKN Rules Team Rulings 05/07/2020)

Hello everyone,

1. Black Lives Matter
I want to make it clear that Black Chantry Productions firmly supports the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

The game we are honoured to publish, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, is a social game where friendships have been developed over the decades bringing people across the world closer.

We want everyone to have an equal opportunity to live, learn and love in life without being marginalised or having the fear of abuse, violence or death hanging over them due to their skin colour or race.

2. What does VTES or Black Chantry have to do with this?
Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is set within the World of Darkness and this is a world that has been designed to be a monster filled, alternate reality of our own. In filling this world with monsters, the original designers took many horrors and caricatures from our own world. This includes a whole host of things that are offensive by 2020 standards. I think the quote below encapsulates WoD very well.

The World of Darkness has always been about pushing back that darkness. That’s the -punk part of gothic-punk: the rejection of misuse of power and rebellion against it. That’s why the Riddle is A Beast I am lest a Beast I become. The player stands against monstrosity. – Justin Achilli June 2020

3. What practical things are Black Chantry or the VEKN doing?

VEKN

Rules Team Ruling – RTR 05/07/2020
From 1st August 2020 the following five cards will be banned in Vampire: Elder Kindred Network sanctioned Vampire: The Eternal Struggle tournaments:
Gypsies
Rom Gypsy
Tarbaby Jack
Terrorists
Tsigane

There may be other changes as the VEKN evaluates the card pool. Where possible we will design new cards to fit those spaces.

VEKN Code of Ethics Policy
This will continue to be reviewed and updated as needed, please let me know if you need any help with it, there have been a few queries so far.

It is partly there to ensure that no players are bullied or harassed whilst playing and particularly because of their race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability among others.

BLACK CHANTRY PRODUCTIONS

Here’s a brief overview of some of the ways Black Chantry works and how BCP thinks about inclusivity in the day to day work.

Art
We commission art to reflect the world around us, there will continue to be a spread of gender, race and other characteristics in the vampire characters we use in the game.

We try to ensure groups and cultures we know less about are accurately portrayed on artwork as we want the vampires to feel authentic. We do this through detailed conversations and research with a wide range of people.

Artists
We have a core group of artists who work on Vampire: The Eternal Struggle but are interested in working with more. We enjoy meeting with new artists and seeing if their style could work within VTES and often receive contact inquiries about work opportunities. We are keen to see a range of artist visions be portrayed in the World of Darkness rather than just our own.

There are some key things to note: VTES has a specific set of style constraints that we need artists to be able to work to, much of this is governed by World of Darkness art guides which looks for darkly horror-based art.

We have also taken steps to replace artwork from the game that we consider unsatisfactory due to depiction on the card or due to disagreement with an artist’s philosophy on life.

Design
We have a limited design team to the limited nature of what we do (one game), we do however take submissions via the VEKN forum.

Additionally, we operate with a diverse range of playtest groups and players, about 100-150 persons depending on the set. We are always looking for more playtest groups to encourage a wider set of opinions to help the testing.

Distribution
Black Chantry has deliberately used a range of distributors to help get VTES moving again, many of these are players of the game and the majority will be local to the countries they distribute in. This doesn’t make everything as smooth as it could be by using larger more established distributors or by selling to a larger online company or direct to customers but it does help us connect to retailers who are passionate about the game and talk to them directly.

We have so far avoided Kickstarter as we’d rather support retailers as much as we can.

We do enjoy using DriveThruCards to allow print on demand and by doing so also contribute to other, smaller, creators being able to use this mechanism to get their games out there.

Language
When we initially reprinted VTES we were asked on a number of occasions about getting the game in non-English languages. We have tried to provide cards in languages where it is economically viable as we want to be inclusive even if this means printing a limited volume of expansions for a specific playgroup.

Mistakes
I’m sure Black Chantry will make mistakes and has made mistakes. My intent is for mistakes to come with the best of intentions and for us to learn from any mistakes we make.

It may not be possible to please all of our community with the artwork and cards we produce or with some of the changes we have made to the game, but that won’t stop us from playing with you and being ousted cross table…

Thanks

Hugh Angseesing
CEO Black Chantry Productions