Archon Online for Judges

Archon Online is the official VEKN platform for managing Vampire: The Eternal Struggle tournaments. This guide is for Judges: what you can do from the portal during a tournament and how to coordinate with the organizer. For event creation and the full tournament cycle, see Archon Online for Princes.

NOTE

The Judge and the Prince are distinct operational roles but with largely overlapping powers on the portal. In medium/large tournaments it’s customary to keep them separate (Prince = organization/flow, Judge = decklist review, sanctions, table calls). In small tournaments the same person wears both hats, and Archon doesn’t formally enforce the split. See the full capability map.

1. Becoming a judge on a tournament

To act as a judge on an Archon tournament you must be added by the organizer to the Judges and Organizers field at event creation (or later from the Tournament Manager → Info tab). Without this association the platform shows you the event as any other player.

Verify with the Prince before the tournament starts:

that your Archon account (Discord or email) is the correct one;
that your VEKN ID has been added as a judge on the event;
log in to the event and check that the Tournament Manager button is visible.

VEKN roles in the system

Archon recognises several VEKN grades — JUDGEKIN, JUDGE, RULEMONGER for judges; PRINCE for organisers with a VEKN sanction for Constructed; plus NC (National Coordinator), ADMIN, PTC (Playtest Coordinator), PLAYTESTER, ETHICS (Ethics Committee). In the Tournament Manager all judge grades share the same permissions: the grade matters for formal responsibilities and appointments (e.g. RULEMONGER, appointed by the VEKN Rules Director, co-maintains the rulebook, the rulings database and the judges tests) — not for what you can click on the portal.

2. Decklist verification

Decklists are verified from the Tournament Manager → Registration tab, before the first round starts.

On each player you’ll find the info button, which opens the card with sanctions and decklist. The decklist is shown in text form: deck legality checks (format, card count, banlist) happen here.

If you find a non-compliant list:

alert the Prince right away;
ask the player to fix the list.

WARNING

With the check-in open the player cannot edit the decklist even though the command appears active in their UI. To allow the edit, the Prince must use Cancel Check-in, let the player fix the list, then reopen the check-in. Always coordinate this step with the organizer.

3. Sanctions

From the same info card — accessible both from the Registration tab and the Round tab — you reach the sanctions module for that player. Archon defines four sanction levels, cumulative by severity and tracking:

Level	Tournament effect	Recording
`CAUTION`	Informational only, no mechanical effect — a verbal warning to the player.	Not recorded in the VEKN database (informal notice).
`WARNING`	Formal warning.	Recorded on the public VEKN profile, visible to anyone.
`GAME_LOSS`	Forced loss for the player at the current table. Always paired with a `WARNING`.	Recorded on the public VEKN profile (the `WARNING` is too).
`DISQUALIFICATION`	Removes the player from the tournament (possibly “without prize” in severe cases).	Recorded on the public VEKN profile.

You can attach a category to clarify the reason:

DECK_PROBLEM — decklist issue.
PROCEDURAL_ERRORS — procedural errors.
CARD_DRAWING — card drawing problems.
MARKED_CARDS — marked cards.
SLOW_PLAY — slow play.
UNSPORTSMANLIKE_CONDUCT — unsporting behaviour.
CHEATING — fraudulent behaviour.

Always fill in category and a clear reason: whoever reads the sanction six months later must be able to make sense of it.

NOTE

Traceability. Every sanction explicitly records the judge who issued it and the reason. Sanctions are not anonymous: in a future review you can see who applied what, and why. The same holds for sanction removal and for score overrides (see Intervening during a round).

Removing a sanction

If you applied a sanction by mistake or the situation later cleared up, you can remove it by clicking the trash icon next to the sanction on the player card. Coordinate with the Prince: best to do this before the tournament closes, so the “clean” version ends up in the final report.

IMPORTANT

DISQUALIFICATION ≠ Drop. To remove a player from the tournament for disciplinary reasons, use the DISQUALIFICATION sanction, not the Drop button. Drop is a neutral player action (voluntary withdrawal, logistics); a disqualification stays on the VEKN history and carries weight at future events. Mixing them up devalues both.

TIP

CAUTION is the lightest notice and leaves no trace on the VEKN profile: use it as a verbal warning for first issues you don’t want to formalise. WARNING instead is recorded: apply it when the behaviour was already flagged verbally, or when the situation calls for a permanent disciplinary note. Weigh the reason you write into a WARNING: anyone consulting the player’s profile in the future will read it.

TIP

In online tournaments, with no physical clock, SLOW_PLAY is the most recurring sanction; UNSPORTSMANLIKE_CONDUCT covers intentional disconnects and leaving the voice channel.

4. Intervening during a round

From the Round tab of the Tournament Manager you see the full list of tables. For each player at a table:

info: quick view of that player’s decklist and sanction history — handy when you walk up to a table for a call.
pencil (results entry): in medium/large tournaments the Prince enters VP; in small ones, or when asked, you do it. Results you set as a judge are final: players can’t overwrite them from their view.

TIP

For at-table rulings, look up the rule in the official rulebook before answering, even if you know it by heart: players trust an answer more when they see you consult the source. The VEKN Rulebook is accessible online from your phone.

Override on irregular table score

Sometimes a table closes with a “non-standard” score that the system wouldn’t accept in the normal flow: typically a mid-round disqualification, or VP not summing to 5 by regulation. In those cases use the Override button (judges only).

The override applies to a single table and asks for three things:

Round — round number.
Table — table number.
Reason — mandatory free-text (e.g., “DQ player P3 in round 2 for CHEATING, VP redistributed per regulation”).

The action is logged against your name. To revoke an override, remove it from its row with the trash icon.

CheckOut (temporary absence)

Distinct from Drop, the Check out action marks a player as temporarily absent for one or more rounds (e.g., stepping away for a round without dropping). Allows re-check-in next round; Drop is permanent. Use it when the Prince asks you to “skip” a player without dropping them.

5. What you can do as a Judge (and what you can’t)

In the Tournament Manager the Judge owns everything related to players, sanctions and table-level corrections. The Prince organizer keeps control of the tournament lifecycle (round start/finish, event close, event data).

As a Judge, from the Registration tab, the Round tab and the player cards you can:

Register players: open/close registration, sign up an existing player or create a new one (with on-the-fly VEKN ID generation).
Manage check-in: open/cancel check-in, check in a single player or everyone at once, check out (temporary absence) or drop (leaving the tournament).
Adjust pre-round seating with Alter Seating when the Prince asks you to fix a pairing before the round starts.
Apply and remove sanctions from the player’s info card (see Sanctions).
Correct anomalous scores with Override / Unoverride on a single table (see Override on irregular table score).
Run the finals: compute the seeding (SeedFinals) and assign seats (SeatFinals). These are judge-only actions: if the Prince is not also a judge, a judge must be present for the finals.

These stay Prince-only (ask them if you need one):

start, finish or cancel a round (RoundStart / RoundFinish / RoundCancel);
close the tournament and submit results to vekn.net (Finish);
edit event data (venue, description, times) from the Info tab.

For the exhaustive action list (useful for doubts or to filter logs), see the Archon README.

IMPORTANT

Mixed role in small tournaments. When the Prince is also the only judge (typical at local tournaments), the split above collapses: the same person holds both sets of powers. In practice you can do more, but you don’t have fewer responsibilities: even doing everything alone, apply both roles’ best practices — traceability on sanctions, explicit reason on overrides, clean separation between Drop and disqualification.

6. Offline mode

Archon supports an offline mode for tournaments in venues without reliable connectivity: events are stored locally and synced when connectivity comes back. Offline mode can be deactivated by any judge once back online — you don’t need to be the Prince who created the event, having the Judge role on the tournament is enough.

7. Coordinating with the organizer

Good practices before and during the tournament:

Initial briefing (5 minutes before check-in): format, any announced deviations, applicable banlist, proxies allowed or not.
Quick communication channel (chat, Telegram, voice) with the Prince to coordinate opening/closing of check-in when a decklist must be corrected.
End-of-tournament notes: hand the Prince a list of applied sanctions with context, so they can include the relevant ones in the report post.

References

VEKN Tournament Rules — official tournament regulations.
VEKN Rulebook — game rulebook.
Official Archon Online repository: github.com/vtes-biased/archon.
For Archon UI bugs or suggestions, use the Report Issue button in the top-right corner of every page on archon.vekn.net (GitHub account required).

Report an issue