What is a Prince?
Note: A player has to be at least 16 years of age to become a VEKN Prince.
A prince needs to register at www.vekn.net. The name and e-mail address of the player will be displayed on the VEKN website. He or she is also required to submit his or her postal address and phone number.
A VEKN Prince is required to do the following:
- Make himself familiar with the game. He has to have a good knowledge of the rules and be an active player himself.
- Organise regular play in his domain. Best are weekly gaming nights at a store or a public location, but any method is acceptable. Players should be made aware of the gaming sessions.
- Keep his players informed about current errata, rulings and clarifications, as well as news about expansions, events, etc. A mailing list of some kind greatly helps here. Other Princes in the vicinity may be of help here too.
- Organise at least one tournament in a 12 month period. For these tournaments the VEKN Tournament Rules and Rating System are to be used. In some cases there might be too few players in a city to organise a tournament, the prince should then focus on demo-games. This in no way prohibits a player from becoming prince of his particular city.
- Apply for sanctioning with VEKN when planning tournaments. Sanctioned tournaments require the use of the most recent VEKN Tournament Rules and erratas and rulings from VEKN's official NetRep Pascal Bertrand.
- Make a list of planned activities in his city so that it can be displayed in appropriate ways.
- See to it that players in his city enter themselves into the VEKN VTES-player database.
- Princes should elect Primogen; they help the prince in handling the city’s affairs. The VEKN will make sure that other princes in the given geographical area take advantage of the information you provide.
- Promote VTES in every way possible, this may be through advertising, demo-playing, tournaments, or whatever way the Prince deems suitable. Especially demo-ing is a key to spreading the game. A Prince should always have a number of easy-to-play sample decks with him.
- Act as a contact where new players can go to when in search for other players, cards to trade, or general information about VTES. Answer rules-questions from new players, and help them through their first steps. Therefore a prince is required to have a valid email address that he or she checks on a regular basis.
The above points are just a rough guideline, and though the VEKN asks the Prince applicant to stick to it, there may be exceptions, but not without good reason.
Applying for a VEKN prince
A prince can only be appointed by the national coordinator of his or her country or a member of the Inner Circle. For contact information, please visit the National Coordinator list or the Inner Circle list.
Support for Princes in a number of ways:
- They will be part of the Prince forum, in order to discuss topics related to the game and to relay news very fast. This forum is not open to anyone. Only Princes, National Coordinators and VEKN Inner Circle members can read and post messages there. To become authorized, a Prince needs to be officially appointed, the VEKN Website Coordinator then takes care of adding the Prince to the Prince forum and to the Prince List.
- They can download an easy to handle tournament report sheet for sending back results of tournaments, called the Archon .
- They can get lists of local players in their respective geographical area via the Player Registry, if there already are entries.
- Princes get a block of VEKN numbers (see the prefix in the VEKN Prince-list), that they have to allocate to individual players the first time they take part in VTES tournaments. These numbers identify the players world-wide, and also enable them to have a VTES-rating.
- Princes can apply for prize support for any VEKN tournaments they are holding at .
The job of a VEKN Prince is a very important one, it is the key position in bringing new players into the game, and providing the existing players with news and support and at the same time voice the opinion of the local players to the VEKN. Being VEKN Prince bears a lot of responsibility. The VEKN Prince is the person players should go to when they have problems or any ideas. He is also the one who elects Primogens (local group contacts) that assist him in his task.