In the Elevation Release Balance Update we wanted to open up the viability of new cards in the Startup format. We tried to do this through two main avenues: firstly, by unbanning generically powerful economy to support decks that cannot afford to spend as many slots on an economic engine; and secondly by making targeted bans to unlock new cards that would be overshadowed by existing powerful alternatives.
Since then, we’ve seen a variety of Arissana Rocha Nahu, Magdalene Keino-Chemutai, MuslihaT and Mercury decks soar in both popularity and win rate as they overpower almost all corps with economic dominance and consistent bypass strategies. This Balance Update seeks to address that trend of Runner superiority.
Summary of Startup Balance Update 25.11 Changes
Coalescence – Banned
S-Dobrado – Banned
Explanation of Changes
Coalescence
Since the unbanning of Creative Commission, we’ve seen Shaper decks consistently able to overwhelm corporations with raw economic advantage, usually by using it as a bounce back tool to supplement a powerful long term economic engine driven by “Knickknack” O’Brian. We are hoping that removing the most powerful piece of that engine, which provides a 2-to-6 credit swing up to six or more times in a game, will help curtail Shaper’s economic advantage.
S-Dobrado
With both MuslihaT and Mercury overperforming, it seems natural to hit a powerful run event that is also a bypass tool. We have seen Mercury relying a little too much on simply overwhelming the corporation with bypass, and would much rather see the rogue bioroid finding openings on all three centrals through cards like Eru Ayase-Pessoa and Beatriz Friere Gonzalez, or creating economic openings with tools such as Transfer of Wealth and Maglectric Rapid (748 Mod). In addition to this, banning S-Dobrado will force MuslihaT players into the meaningful downgrade of running Maintenance Access instead if they want to stay maxed out on run events and have an easier time sweeping HQ with Cupellation.
Other Considerations
Why not Trick Shot?
While Trick Shot is undeniably a powerful and format-defining card, with almost all highly-performant decks playing the full three copies, it is performing valuable service in keeping the format healthy by holding in check two otherwise extremely powerful corporation decks. Nebula Talent Management demands the runner makes a run on a central almost every single turn for large parts of the game, and the burst economy provided by Trick Shot allows many more runners to meet that economic requirement. LEO Construction, meanwhile, is presented with an important and often game-deciding choice: use their ability to keep the runner from seeing two cards on R&D, or hold back to end the run on the remote server. We feel banning Trick Shot would cause these identities to rise above an acceptable power level in the format.
An Alternate Way To Curb Criminal
We considered one other option to bring down the power level of Criminal, which is to re-introduce a card known to massively impact the power of the entire faction. In principle, opening up more cards to be playable would be a desirable outcome, but we fear that releasing the power of Tributary back into the format may be too significant a nerf to Criminal, as much as it would be very welcome support for the currently not-meta-relevant A Teia.
Vantage Point, Rotation, and the next Balance Update
When Vantage Point releases early next year we will be removing the entire Liberation Cycle (The Automata Initiative and Rebellion Without Rehearsal) from the startup format. The format will then consist of only System Gateway, Elevation, and Vantage Point.
The next balance update will be released in preparation for the release of Vantage Point, and will be published during preview season.
Startup Balance Update 25.11
Effective date: Tournament organisers should begin using this at their next events. For online play this balance update will be implemented in the near future.
Changes from Startup Balance Update 25.04 appear in bold.
Corp
Tributary – Banned
Pharos – Banned
NBN: Reality Plus – Banned
Corp decks have the following deckbuilding restriction: A Startup Corp deck can only contain a maximum of 4 agenda cards with a printed agenda point value of 3 or greater.
Runner
Cleaver – Banned
Coalescence – Banned
S-Dobrado – Banned
