Vampire: the Eternal Struggle, published as Jyhad in the first edition and often abbreviated as VtES, is a multiplayer collectible card game set in the World of Darkness, published by White Wolf, Inc..

The game was designed in 1994 by Richard Garfield after he had designed Magic: the Gathering, and initially published by Wizards of the Coast. After the 1996 Sabbat expansion, WotC abandoned the game, and in 2000 White Wolf took over development.

Setting

The game is set in the World of Darkness, drawing mainly from the Vampire: the Masquerade RPG

In VtES, the players take the role of a Methuselah, an ancient and manipulative vampire. Each Methuselah will try to eliminate all others, by reducing to zero their influence and power. To that end, the Methuselahs will control and manipulate a number of minions (mostly younger vampires) to attack and destroy the other Methuselahs' resources.

Game Play

The game is ideally played by a group of 4 or 5 players, but it can be played by any number of players from 2 up to infinity.

Like in most other CCGs, each player will design his own deck. Each deck is built with two components:

• a crypt deck, containing cards representing vampires that the player may control during the game.
• a library deck, containing all other cards in the game, generally representing actions to be taken during the game.

Most cards in the library can only be used in conjuction with vampires (drawn from the crypt). To put card from the crypt in play, the player must pay for it using his pool. The pool represents the player's influence, if it is reduced to zero the player is removed from the game. Thus care must be taken not to expend too much pool when bringing vampires into play.

Play proceeds in turns. Each turn one player controls his minions to perform a number of actions and attacks, which other players may intercept and interrupt using their own minions. Once a player wishes to perform no more actions, play proceeds to the player to his left.

Each player attempts to remove (in game terms, oust) the player to his left from the game (his prey), while defending himself from the player to his right (his predator). If he is successful, the removed player's prey becomes his new prey. Ousting your prey earns you one victory point, and being the last person left at the table earns you an additional victory point. This continues until only one player is left on the table. The winner of the game is the player with the most victory points.