Archon Online: notes for the Italian scene

Archon Online is the official VEKN platform for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle tournaments. Since the 2026 rewrite it ships complete official documentation, translated into Italian and other languages, inside the app itself — there is no point in us copying it out.

This page collects the rest: what the official documentation does not say or says confusingly, and the cases that keep coming up at our events.

1. The official documentation

From Archon’s Help menu:

Document	What it covers
Player Guide	Account, registration, decklists, check-in, scoring, ratings
Organizer Guide	Event creation, console, rounds, finals, leagues, offline, Discord
Tournament Rules	The VEKN tournament rules
VTES Comprehensive Rules	The game rules
Code of Ethics	The Ethics Committee’s remit

They are readable offline once the app has been opened: handy on site when you need to check a rule at a table.

2. Translation traps

The most frequent stumble, because the interface translation and the in-app guide do not use the same words.

• Registered ≠ Checked in. A player is Registered once they sign up for the tournament and Checked in once they show up. In Italian these read Iscritto and Registrato, which sound nearly identical and get mixed up constantly.
• The same applies to tournament states: Registration means sign-ups are open, Check-in is the roll-call phase. Between rounds the tournament goes back to Check-in, not to sign-ups.
• Sanctions have two sets of names. The interface says Caution and Warning; the in-app Player Guide calls them “verbal warning” and “warning”. They are the same two things. When in doubt: the one that stays on the profile for 18 months is the Warning.
• Player states. Whoever misses check-in, or drops, ends up Completed; a withdrawn player shows Dropped. The in-app guide calls them “Finished” and “Dropped”, and “Finished” is not a label the app shows.

3. Where the app does more than the guide says

Three features are documented as online-only but are not:

• Timer — the guide and the setting both label it “online only”, but the countdown appears in any tournament you set a round time for, per-table extensions included. It works fine in person.
• Call Judge — it does not depend on the tournament being marked Online: the button is there whenever the player’s device has connectivity and the tournament is not in offline mode. In a large room it beats raising your hand.
• Announcements — available from check-in onwards, in person too. “Round 2 in 10 minutes” lands on everyone’s phone.

4. Before the tournament (for Princes)

• Create the event on Archon, not on vekn.net. It reaches the VEKN calendar by itself. Creating it in both places produces a duplicate that is painful to untangle: if it happens, tell your National Coordinator straight away.
• Mind the fields that lock immediately. Format, rank, start time, proxies, round count and open rounds freeze the moment the event hits the calendar — which is when you create it. This is the expensive mistake: the only fix is deleting and recreating the event.
• Only Princes, NCs and ICs can create tournaments. Anyone can no longer spin up a Demo or unsanctioned event: if you are running a demo, have a Prince create it (see Running a V:TES demo).
• Judges are co-organizers. There is no per-tournament judge role: add them from Tools → Organizers and they get your powers.
• The banner matters. Upload one from Tools → Set up (1200 × 630): it is the link preview when you paste the event into WhatsApp or Discord, and without it the link reads as spam.
• The VEKN requirement to announce the event at least 28 days ahead, with date, time and place, still stands.

5. At the registration desk

The cases that come up at every event:

• Player with no VEKN ID. Find them under Community → Members and press Sponsor: it creates their number on the spot. You need to be a VEKN official, so do it yourself at the desk.
• Walk-ins. No need to register them first: checking in someone who never registered signs them up and checks them in at once.
• Latecomers. Check-in never closes: you can check someone in mid-round. They become present but unseated, and you decide whether to slot them into a table with room (Seat a player) or hold them for the next round.
• Whoever misses check-in is dropped automatically when the round starts — but it is reversible: if they turn up, check them in again.
• Decklist Required blocks nobody. A player without one gets a warning badge, nothing more: what to do about it is a judge’s call.
• Payment is just a reminder. The Pending/Paid badge prevents nothing.

6. Venues with no signal

The shop basement with no coverage is the typical case here, and offline mode covers it well — provided you prepare:

1. At home, on the network: open the tournament page, press Go offline, close the app. On site, reopen it and everything runs from local data.
2. It is restricted to organizers who are VEKN officials (Prince, NC, IC), because offline mode can create new members on the spot.
3. The tournament stays locked to your device: nobody else can change it.

If the organizer’s device dies, another organizer who is a VEKN official can Take over — but unsynced changes on that device are lost. It is a last resort, not a shortcut.

7. Leagues

A league groups a series of tournaments into single standings. What is worth knowing before opening one:

• Only NCs and ICs can create them. If you are a Prince, ask your National Coordinator: they can create it and add you as an organizer, or mark it open to country Princes — the right option for a national circuit spanning many cities, since everyone then links their own tournaments.
• Pick the mode by what you want to incentivise:
  • Rating Points (RTP), the default, sums each leg’s rating points including finals, with no best-8 or 18-month cap. It lines the table up with the global VEKN ranking.
  • GW/VP/TP sums preliminary rounds only: it rewards turning up and playing, great for keeping small legs alive, but winning a final adds nothing.
  • Grand Prix awards fixed position points (Winner 25, other finalists 15, then down the table): it rewards winning big events, weak on small ones.
• Drop rules and custom tie-breaks do not exist. If your ruleset says “best 4 of 6”, compute the official standings separately and publish Archon’s raw table as well, so everyone can check their leg-by-leg points. And write the rule in the description before the first leg.
• A disqualification propagates. A DQ at one leg blocks check-in at every other leg of the same league until an organizer lifts it. Account for it in your ruleset.

8. After the tournament

• The VEKN push is automatic on finish. The “results not yet reported to vekn.net” badge is normal: it retries in the background. If it sticks, Tools → Wrap up → Report results to VEKN forces it.
• Wrong scores? Tools → Wrap up → Reopen Tournament, fix, finish again. Ratings recompute. Disqualifications stay.
• For the community channel: Tools → Wrap up → Copy results puts the standings and the winner’s deck on the clipboard as Markdown, ready to paste into Discord.
• For the archive: Download a copy of the event (JSON). The VEKN rules require keeping the report for at least a year.
• Forum report: post it in Event Reports and TWD with the archon.vekn.net/tournaments/<uid> link.
• If you issued significant sanctions, let your National Coordinator know.

9. Reporting problems

For Archon bugs and suggestions: the Help page → Feedback section → Send feedback, which opens a GitHub issue. Link your GitHub account from your profile to follow the discussion.

If something looks wrong but you are not sure it is a bug, ask on the Italian community channels or your National Coordinator first: it is often a new feature.

For mistakes or gaps on this page, use the report link at the bottom.

See also

Judge

updated on10 August 2026

Archon Online for Judges

Sanctions, overrides, judge calls and decklist checks on the official VEKN platform.

Prince

updated on10 August 2026

Running a V:TES demo

Run a demo at an event: table setup, prepared hands, guided sequence of a first round with the First Blood decks.

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