vampire: the eternal struggle

Magic: The Gathering dominated 1993 and in 1994, dozens of new collectible card games hit the market. Even though 1994 produced more than one collectible card game on its list, we still have one honorable mention collectible card game, Illuminati: New World Order. I always loved Illuminati’s sense of humor; it’s a shame that neither the original game (released in the early 1980s) nor the CCG made the cut. That just shows these lists’ competition.

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. Back with another Top 5 Tabletop Games. We’ll talk about the board games that this year’s list soon, but let’s recap the ground rules for which games make these lists before we start.

1: Cultural relevance plays as much of a factor as overall quality. A game might make a list that doesn’t hold up to others of its type, but you must admit the game is everywhere.

2: Only one game from a franchise makes the list. This will become more of an issue the closer we get to games with expansions.

3: Longevity plays a role, too. A game doesn’t have to fly off the shelves today, but it had to have some widespread appeal for a decent time.

**5: Star Trek Customizable Card Game (1994)**

Illuminati: New World Order’s lack of staying power contributed to its absence from this list. The Star Trek Customizable Card Game doesn’t have that issue. I never knew The Star Trek Customizable Card Game stayed in print for over a decade. The game may have gone out of print in 2007, but a group of dedicated fans still play. Peter Ludwig was crowned the 2023 Star Trek Customizable Card Game World Champion.

The Star Trek Customizable Card Game pitted players against each other to assemble a team, a ship, and equipment to complete missions. The first player to complete 100 points worth of missions/objectives wins. The 1^st Edition, which ran from 1994-2001, only had the option of a two-player game, just like Magic. 2002 saw the Star Trek Customizable Card Game’s second edition. This version allowed for more players to join in the fun.

On a personal note, I knew one of the original designers of the Star Trek Customizable Card Game. Rest in peace, Rollie.

**4: I’m the Boss! (1994)**

I struggled with placing the 2-4 ranked games on this list. Honestly, you can shuffle these games in any order, and I wouldn’t fight you. The first game we’ll cover comes from a familiar face, Sid Sackson. We haven’t seen Sackson on one of these lists in a while, but he was productive during this period. I’m the Boss! is a negotiation game where players compete and cooperate to put together profitable business deals. Gameplaywise, I’m the Boss! splits the difference between luck and skill. One must be able to negotiate and needle their way into the best deals.

Not going to lie, I’m not the best at I’m the Boss! But if you like games where you can pull the wool over someone else’s eyes and rob them blind through a one-way deal. I’m the Boss! can give you those moments. Sackson has a knack for business games. His most famous creation was Acquire, which featured on our Top Tabletop Games from the Early Sixties. (Check out the link here.)

**3: Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (1994)**

Richard Garfield wasn’t done with collectible card games after 1993. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, which was originally published as Jyhad (changed to distance the game’s name from the Islamic term jihad), puts players in the role of Methuselah (ancient) vampires, controlling lesser vampires to complete machinations and wrest control of the Camarilla, the society of vampires featured in the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. Garfield wanted to show the versatility of collectible card games as a genre, and he succeeded in doing so with Vampire: The Eternal Struggle.

Magic games are quick. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle games can take up to two hours. Magic forces players to play lands from their deck to cast spells. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle allows players, who are Methuselah vampires, to spend their blood points to play cards, but be careful, your blood points are also your life and if you run out, you lose. Magic has players draw one card at the beginning of a player’s turn (you can have cards that allow you to draw more). Vampire allows players to draw cards as soon as they play cards. Magic started as a two-player game. Vampire was always a 2-5-player game. The two games couldn’t be more different.

Despite their differences, or maybe because of them, both games found a wide audience. Depending on how one views it, Vampire is the second longest-running CCG, only to Magic, if you include the five or so years when the game was transformed into a living card game. Or Pokémon, which (Spoiler Alert) will make a future list, takes the second spot, and Vampire takes the spot for the third longest-running CCG. Either way, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle has staying power.

**2: Manhattan (1994)**

Manhattan received the 1994 Spiel des Jahres award, so I gave it the nod over the previous two games. The concept is simple. Players construct and control Manhattan skyscrapers that will award points. Manhattan benefits from 3-D components. When you’re constructing skyscrapers, they will stretch vertically. This gives Manhattan table presence.

Manhattan may have a game concept based on a New York City borough, but it took Mayfair Games two years to make the game accessible to the United States. Manhattan was designed by Andreas Seyfarth. At the time, Seyfarth was an unknown game designer, but eventually, he’d add several more board game gems: Puerto Rico, San Juan, and Thurn and Taxis (which he codesigned with his Karen). This may not be the last time we’ll see Andreas Seyfarth’s name on one of these lists.

Despite earning the Spiel des Jahres, Manhattan has received mixed reviews. Previous critics have questioned the game’s components and scalability. Others claim that the game’s mechanisms are dated and too abstract, chaotic, and luck-driven. But still, others insist that Manhattan has broad appeal and praise the game’s engagement and accessibility. What does this tell us? Gamers can’t agree on anything, and one likes what one likes. If you like the idea of building skyscrapers, you may want to give Manhattan a try.

**1: RoboRally (1994)**

I promised that Richard Garfield would make this list again, and he claims the second number-one spot in consecutive years. Richard Garfield started a tabletop revolution with Magic: The Gathering in 1993 and kept busy in 1994. RoboRally is a robot demolition derby. Players attempt to guide their robots through a dangerous widget factory filled with moving gears, course-altering conveyor belts, metal-melting laser beams, bottomless pits, crushers, and more obstacles.

I say that players attempt to guide their robots because RoboRally is notorious for how chaotic the races get. The more players, the more mayhem ensues. The box reads that RoboRally plays for up to two hours. That’s generous. It may play longer than that, but RoboRally is another modern classic and shows Garfield, like the game type he invented (the collectible card game), is no one-trick pony. Richard Garfield has one of the most diverse board game catalogs and isn’t afraid to take chances.

Did we get the list mostly correct? Let us know which games you’d add in the comments. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

And we’re back from our scheduled holiday break. Hope you had a great and geeky couple of weeks. Your uncle Geekly sure did. Let’s get this Monday started with a new 3 Lists of 3.

Ah. Collectible card games represented a very specific time in tabletop gaming history. When Magic: The Gathering came out in 1993, a deluge of similar games came out in its wake. Every gaming company wanted to throw their hat into the CCG ring. Several of these games were good, but few of them lasted.

Old Uncle Geekly has played several of these games, so get your booster packs ready.

Overlooked, Long-running CCGs

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle

Let’s start with Richard Garfield’s follow up to Magic, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. This game is deeper than people might first think. It’s based off White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade RPG, so there’s plenty of political intrigue as well as combat and hunting for food. You know, the stuff you’d think vampires would be up to at night.

The series may come and go, but fan support for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle persists, and it remains in production (as of this write-up). What truly separates Vampire from Magic is that Vampire insists on a higher player count. It’s best played with more players, so gamers can form alliances and potentially betray those alliances.

Battle Spirits

Battle Spirits is a Mike Elliot design—you’ll see Mike Elliot’s name again on this list—that never really took off in the States due to inaccurate translations from Japanese to English, but it has interesting resource management component. Like a simplified Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Battle Spirits players use their core crystals (also their life) to summon creatures.

The push-pull of when to summon these creatures is magnified in Battle Spirits as there are fewer crystals with which to summon creatures. If you run out of core crystals, you lose. It’s a fun, brisk tight-rope walk. Battle Spirits was first released in 2009, and as of this write-up, it’s still in print.

Legend of the Five Rings

Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) makes this list on its character development and lore. It was in print from 1995-2015 and has since become a living card game, but while it was in print as a collectible card game, players affected the world in which they played.

If a certain faction won a tournament, that faction would assume power in the world of Rokugan. L5R’s actual card play centers on building one’s stronghold. Dynasty and fate cards may alter a stronghold’s future or the surrounding land. The personality cards are based on characters of L5R, and they change and grow during each match as well as the stories after major tournaments.

CCGs with Unique Game Mechanisms

Doomtown: Reloaded

Doomtown combines Poker with a collectible card game, and the Poker aspect to the game is the one that determines a player’s combat power. Each card has an ability but also a card suit and value. This leads to a very interesting push-pull. While most collectible card games require a gamer to think of only a card’s ability, one may choose one card over another because it works better for playing the Poker side of things.

It also doesn’t hurt that Doomtown is more of an area control game. Movement is just as important as combat as players go back and forth, building up the town and trying to control as much of the town as they can throughout the game. The currency may be called “victory points,” but it functions as money. One must consider the ebb and flow of their actions to be successful and that makes for an interesting puzzle.

Hecatomb

I never realized how many collectible games Mike Elliot has made in his career, but Hecatomb is another good one. It’s essentially Magic with pentagon cards that players can play on top of each other. The edges of the pentagram can hold extra play text and that’s how each player upgrades the creatures they summon.

It doesn’t surprise me that Hecatomb is no longer in print. The production value was through the roof and unsustainable, but it’s an excellent game and if you find it in a sale rack or garage sale, it’s worth a shot.

Dark Age: Feudal Lords

I hope Dark Age: Feudal Lords gets reprinted as a self-contained game or living card game because the combat system in it is unique. It borrows more from miniatures games and RPGs than it does from typical collectible card games. The characters have a range of numbers (on a die) that can hit your opponents and power up cards add to that range. It’s a simple, elegant combat system that’s a lot of fun.

I could take or leave the actual theme (dystopia) so a rebranding of this combat system would be welcome as well. Still, if you can find Dark Age on the cheap, I’d highly recommend it.

Collectible Card Games that Became Living Card Games

I’ll preface this section by clarifying what a living card game is. The term living card game (LCG) can only be used by Fantasy Flight Games because they trademarked the term, but many other card games qualify as LCGs.

LCGs work differently than CCGs. While CCGs have random packs that players may purchase, and players must purchase a lot of packs—and I mean a lot of packs—to gain a copy of each card in a set, LCGs have everything available from a set in one box or series of boxes. Both game types encourage—or better yet require—deck building.

Android: Netrunner

A lot of people’s favorite LCG Android: Netrunner started as a CCG, and it was a very good CCG, but it works just as well as an LCG. The two players have asymmetric decks. One side plays as a futuristic corporation while the other plays as a hacker trying to break into the corporation’s defenses.

I always liked the concept behind Netrunner, but it’s a game that has a lot of barriers for entry. While the two sides have similarities in the card types they play, the game renames these cards. It’s almost like learning two new games for each side, and there are plenty of Netrunner fans who know how to play your deck better than you if you’re a beginner.

Still, it’s a solid game that deserves its community. Each side feels different and thematic.

Star Wars: The Card Game

The Star Wars Customizable Card Game was fun to play, but the unruly card sets made it difficult to balance the game. It may have followed the movies a little closely too. If the rebel player built a deck centered around destroying the Death Star (and they’d win the game by blowing up the Death Star), the empire player would only have to not play the Death Star to prevent the rebel player from winning.

Star Wars: The Card Game LCG does a better job of balancing these discrepancies while still giving the players the flavor they want. The various objective cards a based on the specific decks each player constructs, so one side can’t play keep away. Players will want to use as many of the various expansions as each one invokes a sense of place. The Hoth expansion feels like Hoth.

Vs. System 2PCG

The Versus system was a relatively short-lived CCG from the early 2000s. It did a decent job of depicting all manner of comic book characters. You could even pit one comic book world against another—Marvel versus DC anyone?—and that wouldn’t happen again until Dice Masters.

Vs. System 2PCG takes elements from the popular Versus system and turns it into an LCG. Of course, it’s not named an LCG because it’s published by Upper Deck, but it functions the same way. Vs. System 2PCG streamlines the original gameplay and while that may turn off some Versus purists, the game had gotten bloated. The new LCG does a better job of introducing new players to the system. Marvel, Alien, and Predator have gotten their own LCG releases. We’re still waiting on DC.

That’s what I have for CCGs. I’m sure I didn’t collect them all. If you have any suggestions or complaints, leave a message with my answering service or just leave a comment.

Tag: vampire: the eternal struggle

Top 5 Tabletop Games from 1994