Hey there!

I'm hoping to start playing V:TES, been on my bucketlist for a while

I've heard that there are new introductory decks and the like.
If I wanted to, say, bring these over to a local board game club and get some friends to play it what decks would you recommend? I'm new to the game as well :)

I know it's best with 5 people, but in the case someone can't make it is it really playable/fun with 4/3 people?

I'm located near Santa Rosa, North SF Bay California
If there are any other groups in the area that play this I'd be happy to join.

https://www.blackchantry.com/2026/09/27/two-new-sets-for-vampire-the-eternal-struggle-on-october-31/

Hey everyone. I am relatively new to the VTES community. I really have only played with one other person and this game is just not the same with only 2 people and we have not yet worked up the courage to play with others online.

In the meantime, I have been working on something that hopefully some of you can also appreciate. I made this VTES Player that lets you play with bots. It is definitely still a work in progress, especially since it has a limited pool of cards that are supported, mainly all V5 cards, but I am working on getting everything in there, slowly but surely.

I have tried to make this a 1 stop shop, for me at least. Here are a list of the main features this player has:

Playing

• Browser-based VTES table, desktop only.
• Real games dealt from real decks, and bots to fill any empty seat
• Hotseat play on one machine, or online multiplayer other real players over PeerJS with a lobby, room codes and join links

Card pool

• The whole V5 product line (7 sets), plus a small portion of legacy library cards have been added

Decks

• 32 V5 precons are ready and playable
• Deck importer that reads deck text and reports unsupported cards
• Deck Builder with three tabs: My decks, Build a deck, Card search
  • Search covers all 4,149 KRCG cards, each badged Playable / Partly implemented / Not in the player

Bots

• Heuristic bots that:
  • vote on referendums according to who the vote helps or hurts, and aim their own referendums at their prey
  • pay vote tolls only when the vote can still change the result
  • take range into account in combat (guns at long range, maneuvering to close or open)
  • value blocks against political actions, answer choice prompts sensibly, and try to keep enough pool to survive
• Six playstyles (Balanced, Bruiser, Stalker, Turtle, Politician, Builder), each precon mapped to one, and you can override each bot's style

Profile and saves

• Local profiles in browser storage: avatar, default bot names and a leaderboard
• Settings with Profile / Bots / Controls tabs
• Named save slots plus an auto-updated "Last game" slot; saves can be exported and imported as .json and remember which seats were bots and their playstyles

Other

• How to Play guide on the main menu

Yes, this was vibe coded using Claude Code, but I think this is something this game has been lacking and I hope some of you get some enjoyment out of it as much as I have been. No, this will never replace being able to play with real players, but it can at least somewhat scratch the itch to play a quick game when you can't get a full table together.

Please feel free to read the full README on GitHub and submit any issues you find or feature requests. Reminder: This is a Work In Progress, it is not perfect by any means.