VTES Golden Years?

What are your golden years of VTES?

For me, it was probably the early years, 1994 - 1997. I had a regular game going at work, and there were 3 sets that came out, so it felt alive. The newsgroup discussions were lively, and it was still played regularly at the local cons - with lots of players.

Honorable mention to right after Sabbat War came out until maybe Anarchs release. We had a lot of players then too.

How about for you?

Well my playgroup seems to be hitting a rebuild phase. Which I'm hoping will continue.

The largest numbers were in the early 2000s for my own playgroup... but a few things happened and it came crashing apart before about 2010.


Admittedly, as far as card design goes, I think we're getting closer to a golden age than we have in the past.

Let see. I guess when I was in college for that is where I found the majority of the V:TES gamers and that was by accident. I kid you not. On a saturday night in 2002 in the student union building I see a person sitting at the table with his wife with a box of v:tes cards. I was the only one that recognized them and chatted him up. Turns out he moved into the area and was looking for more players.

It was from that I was able to email all the local VTES players and we got a game going at least once a week at the student building and then started to have game nights at people's houses.

In the end the one that started it all finished grad school and moved to CO. I also I moved out of the region. So that play group slowly started to meet less and less. Then by the time the game stopped being printed in 2009 they had all stopped play vtes. I currently still demo and teach players at my FLGS. I have been in contact with them ,but they no longer have time to play.

I bought a Cam ed Malkavian starter a little after the set came out (i had to order one, because the comic shop was always out) and it sat in my drawer for years before i got back into mtg, then got annoyed at mtg. Probably 2008 was when i got really into vtes, and the next year the newark playgroup boomed. 3+ tables 3 or 4 times a week. Weird as hell. Id go to the comic shop, and wed wait for either one of the 5 player tables to collapse to acoid a 7 player table. We would go to someones apartment 2 days later and have a game in the kitchen and 2 in the basement.

Tournaments would be like 6-8 tables.

Stuff waned though, especially after we went OOP. most of our good and regular players have life stuff similar to me that makes playing hard. The best players in my group play every other sunday at Bob Josephs house, and the following Tuesday with just Newark people.

Myself and at least 3 others want to play more, but work and or kids makes finding time rough. Two hall of famers stopped playing, one becaise hes crying about lilliths blessing being out of legality, and Rodd turns up around origins and thats about it, his lifes kinda busy and he isnt as into vtes due to playerbase shrinkage.

I guess even people who just barely "got" the game being 65% of the playgroup was fine, because you saw alot of fun decks, and then stealthbleed, at every table. But id settle for our 12+ good players getting time to play again. Maybe next year, i suppose.

'94 - '97, discovering the Jyhad with 3 close college buddies. The 4 of us figuring it out and then recruiting our friends, siblings, girlfriends, etc.

But really it was '02 - 05. During that time we had a weekly game (usually Wednesday nights) with a tight group of 5 (with the occasional sub or visiting player). And at least once a month we would hold a Saturday game for the at-large group. We'd host tourneys twice a year where players from other cities would show up. We would play pickup games Friday night, constructed tourney Saturday and draft tourney Sunday. And party the whole time. Likewise we would travel to other cities maybe 4 or 6 times a year for tourneys. We made a point to host every storyline too and would often travel around to play in multiple story lines to rep our favorite clans.

Those were good times, lots of players, lots of prize support and lots of beers. But eventually attrition set in, it became harder to recruit quality players, those we did recruit tended to get frustrated by (lack of) card availability. And then the game went out of print, and people started selling off...

1994-2014 <3