Greetings fellow Kindred! Henrik of Black Chantry here. It is time for another Vampire: The Eternal Struggle roadmap overview. This will echo what our Product Director Ben Peal said in his presentation in Aarhus in October, with some small changes, clarifications and additional details.
First, a quick recap of 2025:
February had the Hecata preconstructed deck, introducing a new clan to the game and expanding support for the Oblivion discipline. In the Vampire: The Masquerade source material, the Hecata is a consolidation of earlier necromancy-themed vampiric lineages, and Oblivion is the discipline that unifies necromantic and shadow- and abyssal-themes under one umbrella (At a very high level in the World of Darkness cosmology, it’s about the unification of the Shadowlands and the Abyss.)
In May, we published the New Blood packs for Hecata and Lasombra, expanding their playable card pool and adding further Oblivion support.
In the summer, we started previewing the four Sabbat preconstructed decks: Path of Caine, Path of Cathari, Path of Death and the Soul and Path of Power and the Inner Voice. A prerelease tournament was also organised at the North American Championship in June. We thought they could be launched a bit earlier than what we did, but in the end, it became an October release. The Sabbat release was a major structural change: Sabbat support is no longer organized around clans as the primary identity, but around Paths.
Parallel to all this, both legacy reprints and other stuff was made available on print-on-demand, in Europe on Gamepod and in the US on Drivethrucards. The pace of this has been lowered a bit in order to dedicate efforts to various other things, including new products, translations and a new reporting system for organised play.
2026 Product Roadmap
February 2026: New Blood Ravnos, Salubri and Tzimisce
These have actually been ready for printing for a long time but had to wait first because Oblivion needed more cards urgently and then because of print window timing and storage space constraints. These packs broaden the deck types you can play for each of these clans; Ravnos go for more equipment, combat and defense, Salubri get more melee combat oriented, and Tzimisce gets a heavy ghoul-ally approach.
2026: Sabbat Legacy cards for print-on-demand
Now with the release of the Path-themed Sabbat precons out in the wild, the plan is to increase print-on-demand access to older Sabbat-related cards. This rollout is wave-based, moving through groups in sequence, with first Malkavian antitribu and the Dementation discipline, then other antitribu clans and after that the Sabbat bloodlines like the Harbingers of Skulls and Blood Brothers.
Art previews by Anastasiia Horbunova (two to the left) and one by Krzysztof Bieniawski (right).
April/May 2026: Storyline-style fixed bundles
Two fixed-content products are targeted for Q2 2026; a Brazil-themed pack and a New York-themed pack. Each is a 54-card fixed bundle in the same general product style as Fall of London, including both crypt and library additions – roughly 19–20 new crypt cards, roughly 13 new library cards.
No single clan theme is emphasized in these; instead, the intent is broad utility across the game. The New York set covers the characters and themes from the interactive fiction games Coteries of New York, Shadows of New York, and Reckoning of New York. Some of the cards in the Brazil-themed pack include memorial portraits honouring Brazilian community members who passed away during COVID-19.
Q3 2026: Two-player product
A two-player product is in testing – feel free to join the open playtesting at VEKN.net. It is intended as a lower-cost entry point than the five-player set, good for a better convention or store demos. The theme is Camarilla-focused, as we need a stronger Camarilla identity support after the Sabbat decks.
Q4 2026: Sabbat New Blood decks
A further 2026 target is New Blood decks aligned to the four Sabbat Paths. These decks will include additional Sabbat-related cards that was not part of the initial Sabbat product wave.
2026, sometime: New Anthology and other items
Several other items are in the works for 2026:
- A new Anthology set with legacy reprints and additional content
- A replacement for Baba Yaga named Gorgo, necessary due to canon constraints around Russia-related mythos (Check out Ginés Quiñoneros preview art above!)
- Some kind of Oblivion converter cards or rules to help older Necromancy and Obtenebration legacy vampires access Oblivion cards – the first implementation attempts failed in playtesting and require redesign
2027 and beyond: Design priorities
Post-foundation support and archetype revitalization
Once the Path-based Sabbat New Blood cycle is complete, the roadmap shifts to strengthening the broader environment:
- Identifying older deck archetypes that have fallen off competitively and supporting them with new options
- Improving Camarilla identity (beyond a small number of commonly played Traditions), so the sect feels as distinctive as Anarch and Sabbat
- Making Blood Sorcery feel more cohesive and “ritual magic” themed rather than only a mechanical discipline package
- Eventually tackling Thin-Bloods
What is not planned (given current canon constraints)
The talk lists several areas as off the table unless the licensor White Wolf first develops them further in the modern setting:
- Laibon
- Imbued
- Several bloodlines and legacy concepts, including Ahrimanes, Gargoyles and Kiasyd
- Daughters of Cacophony, who are canonically ambiguous in current source material
- Baali have been reintroduced in a substantially changed form, so any future implementation would need a very different approach
The European Championship in Aarhus, Denmark, gathered 142 players in October.
Thank you!
We would like to once again thank event organizers, judges, artists, playtesters and coordinators, and the global player community. While being a niche game, VTES continues to grow, with strong local communities all over the world. The official player organisation VEKN reports +461 active players compared to 2024! Increased streaming of games and online discussion is also encouraging signs for the game’s momentum.
Happy New Year and keep on bleeding!
