Hey everyone, Stwyde here with the Startup Curation Team! We wanted to do a quick retrospective of the last few months of Startup competitive play, as well as a look ahead to what Startup will look like with the release of Elevation. 

While the Standard competitive format is still the most commonly played format, especially with District Championship season in full swing, there have been several large events using the Startup format since Startup Balance Update 24.09. We wanted to take some time to look at three big events: Worlds 2024’s Startup Side Event, the UK Nationals 2024 Startup Event, and the Three Blind Mice Startup CTK in Melbourne Australia. All three events took place with the latest ban list, and we wanted to see how the meta is looking before System Update 2021 rotates out of the Startup card pool. 

Corp Distribution

After Startup Balance Update 24.09, we expected to see a drop in Weyland Consortium players, which seems to be somewhat reflected in the data. Generally there’s a healthy split of corporations, with core identities like NBN: Reality+, Weyland Consortium: Built to Last and Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design all seeing play. The soon-to-be-rotated Jinteki: Personal Evolution is also continuing to see consistent and regular play in Startup, instilling fear in the format’s Runners. 

While the System Gateway identities are generally the most common, newer identities such as Epiphany Analytica: Nations Undivided and A Teia: IP Recovery have seen some play, supported by some of the cards from Rebellion Without Rehearsal.

Top Placing Corps

We also decided to look at top placing Corp identities. For events without a top cut, we looked at the top X placing players after swiss rounds completed, where X is based on the size of cut suggested by the Organized Play Policies for an event of that size. With this information, it’s increasingly clear that Weyland is still one of the biggest threats in the current Startup meta, with an outsized degree of representation at the top, mostly at the expense of Precision Design and NBN players. 

Runner Distribution

Unsurprisingly, with the powerful Trick Shot still legal in Startup, a significant number of players chose Shaper on the Runner side. Criminal and Shaper see significant identity diversity, with System Gateway identities like Tao Salonga and Zahya Sadeghi seeing regular play alongside newer identities like Arissana Rocha Nahu. Anarch as a whole seems to be slightly underrepresented in this overall pool, but not to a particularly worrying degree. 

Top Placing Runners

Criminals took about half of the field when it comes to top placements at the Startup events we looked at. Anarchs are barely present in the top placing pool, represented only by a singular Sebastião Souza Pessoa player. This lack of diversity among top-placing Runner identities is certainly less than ideal.

Observations

A lack of Anarchy

Anarchs are wildly underperforming in Startup compared to Standard. This may be due to the lack of a huge value identity like Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist, which has been a significant presence in the Standard metagame, especially after Trick Shot’s ban in Standard. Additionally, Anarchs are missing key card draw tools like Steelskin Scarring and Moshing in the Startup Card pool.

Anarchs are also less able to reliably utilize the power of Trick Shot compared to their Shaper and Criminal counterparts. Virus-heavy decks employing cards like Botulus and Audrey V2 are not nearly as reliant on credits to break subroutines compared to more traditional breaker suites, reducing the value of Trick Shot and Overclock for the faction. Meanwhile, Trick Shot synergizes well with most Criminal Runners in the format, providing credit value for Zahya or Ken “Express” Tenma and a high value recursion target to Steve Cambridge. 

Built to Last has not crumbled

Weyland Consortium: Built to Last is still a major force in the meta, with regular top placements even after being directly targeted by multiple changes in the 24.09 Balance Update. With Logjam and other scaling barriers, as well as the ability to summon Archers through Eminent Domain, Built to Last has continued to glacier up effectively in a way Runners can still struggle to beat. Additionally, the use of Charlotte Caçador to provide reliable credits has allowed Built to Last to consistently deploy its expensive ice.

While Built to Last is still strong (and maybe still overperforming), our original intentions in Startup Ban List 24.09 were to reduce its overall dominance in the meta, and with more variation on the Corp side, I think we’ve been successful. Runners need to know how to handle threats like Jinteki and NBN as well as building in ways to respond to Clearinghouse decks and strong barriers in the current varied Corp meta. 

Looking to Elevation

System Update 2021 has been a significant component of the Startup meta, comprising half of the core card pool for Startup since its creation. With its rotation, Corps lose several beloved (or hated) damage cards like Jinteki: Personal Evolution and Snare!, as well as a collection of 3/2 agendas that see regular play such as Project Beale, Project Atlas, and Project Vitruvius. Archer and Punitive Counterstrike, arguably the most powerful Weyland cards, are leaving the format, as well as many of Haas-Bioroid’s bioroid ice.

Shapers will need to find new sources for card draw as their favorite energy drink Diesel rotates out, and Aesop’s Pawnshop will finally close down, significantly weakening the Muse and Coalescence value engine that has been highly played in the format. Other classic Runner staples like Imp and Inside Job rotate out, as do a collection of identities, many of which still see regular play. 

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Elevation enters the format as the new core complement to System Gateway, bringing with it a collection of cards that we’re sure will be a regular part of your Startup decks. We’re happy to reveal two of those cards here!

These two new neutral cards, among many others, will be available when Elevation releases on April 24, 2025. 

A note on rotation

With the release of Elevation, System Update 2021 will rotate out of the Startup card pool. However, the Liberation Cycle will still be legal in Startup. The card pool for the Startup competitive format will be composed of the following sets: 

• System Gateway
• Elevation
• The Liberation Cycle: 
  • The Automata Initiative
  • Rebellion Without Rehearsal

You can read more about rotation here. Additionally, the Startup Curation Team will be publishing a new ban list when Elevation releases, our first of 2025, as we continue to monitor the Startup meta. 

Looking beyond Elevation

We also want to take a quick moment to mention plans for a future rotation. We plan to rotate the Liberation Cycle from the Startup card pool with the next major set release after Elevation. There are a variety of reasons for this. We believe that Startup should be a celebration of the latest set, and even if the next set after Elevation were to release this year, it would mean that The Automata Initiative will have been Startup-legal for over two years. That is longer than we would like for a format that historically has been aggressive with rotating sets.

We are making this announcement prior to the release of Elevation so that newer players can be aware of an earlier than expected rotation of the Liberation Cycle.