State of the V:EKN - October 2013

Greetings fellow V:TES players,

As most of you may already know, I was recently elected Chairman of the V:EKN (with Antonio Cobo as my Vice Chairman) during the meeting of National Coordinators and Inner Circle members held on the 4th of October, 2013 in Stockholm.

In a moment, I will talk about some of my projects as Chairman, but first I want to thank Johannes Walch for his years of dedication to V:TES and especially for his enormous efforts to bring our beloved game back in print.

I can assure you all that I will also do my best to keep promoting V:TES at all levels, despite the major setback of print-on-demand not happening. And I hope to engage the community of players in several projects I have in mind, which are listed below:

Video demos
In order to make V:TES more accessible to new players I have asked the Marketing Team to develop a series of short videos in English to teach playing V:TES (with subtitles in different languages).

Translations
Nowadays, where smart phones and tablets are everywhere, thus allowing the players to have an easy access to the up-to-date card texts or to the most recent version of the Rulebook or Tournament Rules, I think it will also be very useful for those who don’t speak English to have these resources available in their own language. So I will try to form working groups in charge doing these translations.

World Ranking incentives
I think it would be a good idea to make the current ranking system more significant, either by granting the top X players automatic qualification for the Continental Championships and/or for the Second Day of the European Championship, or by giving the top X players some special prizes, etc.

Standardization of European Championship applications
In order to standardize the application for organizing the European Championships, I am going to create an application form and set all necessary deadlines to be met during the whole process.

VEKN sets
Another thing that keeps some players interested in the game is the release of new sets, so the V:EKN Design Team, under Ben Peal’s Leadership, will keep developing new ones.

Judges’ Guide
Antonio Cobo (V:EKN Vice Chairman) is going to form a team to fully revise and adapt the Judges’ Guide to what the V:TES tournament scene really needs.

Rules Test for Players
I want to create an online V:TES and tournament rules test as a useful tool for players to know their level of understanding of these rules and to improve it. The person in charge of developing this test is Antonio Cobo.

Better communication
I intend to keep the community updated on the activities of the V:EKN on a regular basis, and involved in V:EKN projects. Wait for upcoming posts asking for volunteers.

Inner Circle changes
Johannes Walch has been appointed Chairman Emeritus, and, whereas I am still performing the duties of Website Coordinator, this position is available to anyone suitable to take.

Ginés Quiñonero
V:EKN Chairman

ReverendRevolver wrote:

The current rankings look terrible for most of the US. i liked the initial idea to only consider recent things relevant, but given recent declines, at least that i know of, nearly all of "top ten" is going to be he northern half of the eastern hemisphere.
[...]
Id love incentive stuff for rankings, but with pod off the table, im not too astonished by the prospect. For winning a continental championship, a trophy makes sense, but not for a,ratings system that alienates regions.

I think the current ranking looks terrible for most of the US because most US tournaments do not get reported.

In 2013, 49 constructed tournaments have been held in the US, but only 11 have been reported so far.

In Spain, for instance, there have been 53 tournaments held in 2013, and 47 have been reported.

fredsct wrote:

I hate to sound like a broken record every time this comes up, but putting important incentives on the so-called "World Rankings" - which is really just an incentive point system and not a real ranking system at all - is a really bad idea.

I have been implementing this idea to the Spanish ranking for several years now, and it seems to be motivating some players to travel around to play tournaments and/or to participate in as many tournaments as possible.

Putting some incentives on the V:EKN Ranking is in my opinion just another way to motivate the players who care about their ranking, who in turn will encourage the princes to report events.

The nature of the prizes to be awarded to the top X players in the V:EKN Ranking is still to be discussed.