The 2025 World Championship was our largest Worlds yet and had plenty of twists and turns. LEO Construction, Nyusha “Sable” Sintashta and MuslihaT were just as popular as expected. Au Co. remained a mainstay, but with a variety of win cons ranging from End of the Line to Measured Response. Nonetheless, we saw several less popular or expected identities and builds perform well, and the Corp faction with the smallest representation throughout the competitive season managed to win the whole thing.

In the 25.10 banlist update, we had the stated goal of promoting faction diversity and engaging gameplay. While faction diversity was improved, many Corps were forced to resort to less interactive gameplans, doubling down on either fast advance strategies or kill combos.

This banlist becomes active on December 1, 2025.

Summary of Standard Banlist 25.12 Changes

Matryoshka banned

False Lead banned

Explanation of Changes

Despite being legal since its 2022 release, Matryoshka only started seeing significant play this year. When ice is so weak and predictable that it’s no longer worth the influence to import specific icebreakers, Matryoshka isn’t a meaningful downgrade from the competing options. Matryoshka costs Criminal and Anarch Runners less to install than multiple ‘reg’ breakers would, and frees up MU for additional utility programs like Cezve or Leech to support their economy. This forces Corps into an odd position in this meta: when the diversity of breakers is so low, the only major ice decision is to tech for Matryoshka or take your licks. We believe that this ban will push more Runners back towards regular icebreakers, which make Corps’ early ice more dependable and reduce early game volatility.

False Lead has been one of the most impactful Corp cards throughout Elevation Standard. Always paired with Oppo Research and End of the Line, this neutral agenda creates the same gameplay patterns no matter which deck it shows up in. The best counterplay to a scored False Lead is in deckbuilding rather than gameplay. As this and future metas develop, we believe False Lead will restrict gameplay health and archetype diversity, so we are choosing to remove it now.

Other Considerations

We seriously considered making no changes in this update. It’s safe to say that the changes we have settled on will have a large impact on the meta, but we don’t have specific expectations for the results. 

With the holidays coming up and Vantage Point on the horizon, we opted for a riskier, more experimental banlist for this period of downtime in the competitive season. In the meantime, we will be focusing our efforts on making the Vantage Point meta great!

The next scheduled banlist update will coincide with the preview season of Vantage Point, in Q1 of 2026.

Standard Ban List 25.12

Effective date: 01 December 2025

Changes from Standard Ban List 25.10 appear in bold.