As the meta has developed over the Megacity Championships season, we’ve seen some unhealthy dynamics emerge from the top Corp archetypes. Haas-Bioroid: Precision Design decks featuring Flood the Market rush towards an explosive, game-ending combo as soon as turn five, forcing Runners to find a critical mass of economy, breakers, and multi-access in as little as 16 clicks. Meanwhile, Méliès U supports multiple archetypes that abuse repetitive recursion to ensure they always have access to their key assets, upgrades or economy, invalidating the primary tools Runners have for interacting with Corp’s non-agenda cards.
On the Runner side, however, things are a little more balanced. We’ve seen MuslihaT and a variety of Shaper identities match the previously excessive presence of René “Loup” Arcemont in recent tournaments. While the top Corps are leading the meta, there seems to be a healthy ecosystem lying just beneath the surface level.
In this update, we are looking to unearth that healthier meta. Primarily, we are aiming to increase Corp diversity by bringing down the power of Jinteki glacier and Combo PD. With more reasons to play AU Co., Epiphany Analytica, Nuvem SA, and some returning favorites, we expect Runners will have to adapt to a wider field of threats, giving players more options for viable deck archetypes during the Continental Championships season.
This update becomes active on August 1st with the start of the 2026 Continental Championships season.
Summary of Standard Banlist 26.08 Changes
NBN: Reality Plus unbanned
Svyatogor Excavator unbanned
Méliès U banned
Red Level Clearance banned
Explanation of Changes
We started our banlist testing with a slew of unban targets on both the Runner and Corp side to see what could reenter the meta safely. Initial testing indicated that we could reintroduce both NBN: Reality Plus and Svyatogor Excavator. This would bring two new Corp archetypes into the meta that would pull Runners in multiple directions, addressing our concerns about Runners all converging towards doomrig Loup.
On the Runner side, we considered unbanning Trick Shot, Matryoshka and Tsakhia “Bankhar” Gantulga as tools with the potential to prey on Méliès U and PD – but they each proved to be overbearing for Corps across the board. With Runner unbans and bans ruled out, we focused on which targets would bring down the power level of Jinteki glacier and Flood PD, to broaden the Corp metagame without outright killing the decks.
Méliès U
A variety of archetypes have been played out of Méliès U since its release in Vantage Point: honest glacier featuring Humanoid Resources, ‘Jungle’ decks built around Lotus Haze and a variety of upgrades, ‘Splatoon’ decks featuring Big Deal and Measured Response, asset-heavy decks with Front Company and Hostile Architecture, and Unleash kill combo decks. Méliès U supports more archetypes and unusual cards than any other identity because its ability is so flexible and powerful – it directly challenges all of the fundamental tools Runners have to pressure Corps: credit denial, trashing key cards, and multi-access.
We think the Jinteki card pool is robust enough to support multiple archetypes without Méliès U turning them all up to eleven. AU Co. will continue to be a home for assets and kill combos, and we suspect that Jinteki: Restoring Humanity will take up the torch for the faction’s glacier archetype.
Red Level Clearance
The innovation of adding Neurospike and Simulation Reset to Flood PD turned it from a deck that scored out over multiple turns to one that could consistently execute a one-turn game-ending combo. The deck has many ways to generate clicks, both for set up turns and to combo out. Wage Workers, Synchrocyclotron, Nanomanagement, Top-Down Solutions, The Powers That Be and Méliès City Luxury Line combine to create a concert of click efficiency that compounds upon itself.
Of all of these tools, Red Level Clearance is the cheapest and most flexible. In our testing, we found Red Level Clearance was the glue that allowed Flood PD to bail itself out of bad situations and execute its gameplan more consistently. We expect players to continue to experiment with Flood the Market and Fully Operational, but without Red Level Clearance the Runner will have more turns to set up and more opportunities to disrupt the board state that the deck relies on for scoring.
NBN: Reality Plus
In comparison to the other factions, especially Jinteki, NBN’s card pool feels like it’s missing the strong foundational pieces needed to support multiple archetypes. As a result, NBN as a faction is vastly underrepresented in this Standard metagame, and we wanted to explore every option available to us to rectify that.
The Design and Development concerns stated in the 24.12 balance update that removed Reality Plus definitely still exist. However, in our testing, we were pleasantly surprised that Reality Plus consistently created fun and engaging matches on both sides of the table with the current Standard cardpool. Every single game was reported as feeling close and even.
This was not our expectation, especially given that key recent cards like Transfer of Wealth had been designed with no regard to the existence of Reality Plus. But since NBN is in need of more tools and Reality Plus did not create any glaring problems in testing, we decided not to let an old decision stand in the way of improving the current meta. In addition, addressing the reduced presence of tags in the meta will hopefully apply pressure to Anarch’s resource-heavy economy and contribute to diversifying the top Runner decks.
The Design and Development teams will continue to not design or balance new cards around the existence of Reality Plus. The constraints it puts on the design space for tagging cards, both on the Corp and the Runner side, are still too high. When a new release warrants it or when it otherwise becomes a problem, Reality Plus will be banned again – for now we think its presence will contribute to creating a healthier Standard metagame.
Svyatogor Excavator
Alongside Reality Plus tagging decks, we tested new iterations of the powerful Ob Superheavy Logistics lists from before the release of Vantage Point that contributed to the banning of Svyatogor Excavator, and found that the top Runner decks could handle them well enough. With Extract remaining banned, the previously-dominant ‘ScrObs’ archetype relies heavily on sticking Excavator. While its hefty trash cost can be a challenge to overcome, if the Runner could do so and keep the Ob board in check in our testing, they would usually find a way to win. We will keep an eye on how Ob evolves over the rest of the season, but for now we are happy to give players back another Corp option.
Other Considerations
We tested a variety of bans targeting the Loup lists that have been the de facto Runner deck of choice for many players throughout Megacity Championships. However, it became clear that Loup is seeing so much play because it has the most even match-up spread, not necessarily because it’s unbeatable. As testing went on, and we saw Shaper and Criminal representation increase over the season, we were able to rule out each of the ban candidates one by one. We also considered a variety of other options to achieve our aims on the Corp side before settling on the final changes of this update.
Paladin Poemu
Without Paladin, Anarch had to completely reimagine their economy package. The current Anarch decks are a linchpin of the meta, and this would radically change how those decks operate, destabilizing the rest of the meta. So we ruled out a Paladin ban (for now) to explore other options that would have more predictable downstream effects.
Hermes
We identified Hermes as one of the key reasons why Loup has such an even match-up spread. While a Hermes ban would have opened up more weaknesses in Loup’s strategy for Corps to exploit, it would also have huge implications for Criminals. We’re not comfortable making a ban that would cause such significant collateral damage at this time.
Buzzsaw / The Tungsten Tailor
This duo puts a lot of pressure on which code gates can be Standard-playable. While we kept these in the ban testing pool for the longest, locking in Reality Plus and Svyatogor unbans alongside meta trends towards more Runner diversity made these bans seem unnecessary for a good Continental Championships ecosystem.
Bellona
While looking for ways to bring NBN back into the competitive scene, we tested both Bellona and Reality Plus, but quickly found that Bellona was extremely problematic in the current card pool. Forcing the Runner to find an additional 10-15 over the course of the game is already a high bar, and now it can be combined with Magistrate Revontulet, or played with newer agendas such as Let Them Dream, Oracle Thinktank, and Next Big Thing for problematically low agenda densities.
Offworld Office
With the banning of one of its key pieces, we expect Flood PD to move more towards relying on tempo rather than a full combo. One of our primary aims in this update was to reduce the presence and power of Flood PD, and even though most builds are not currently playing 2-point agendas, we are aware that giving back Offworld Office could mean that it shifts into yet another new form and maintains the blisteringly fast pace that has made it problematic for the format.
With the unbanning of Reality Plus, we anticipate that NBN rush will re-emerge as a popular archetype. While we are keen to enable this shift, we don’t believe that this archetype requires Offworld Office to be competitively playable. In fact, it could well be the case that an Offworld Office unban pushes the power of rush NBN – or other rush decks – to an undesirable level. This is something that we will need to review as the meta develops.
Fully Operational
If Flood PD was unplayable, we don’t think the Runner metagame would allow for other Haas-Bioroid decks to thrive in its place. Lists that rely on scoring out of a single-iced remote struggle into Hermes as well as Buzzsaw and The Tungsten Tailor. We think Flood PD can create interesting and compelling games when it’s a little slower and more susceptible to Runners trashing key assets, so we chose to impede the deck by banning Red Level Clearance rather than killing it by banning Fully Operational.
Your Digital Life
Your Digital Life allows Flood PD to turn card draw directly into credits. With Nanomanagement then turning credits into clicks, many of Flood PD’s resources can be exchanged for one another. If there were no other ramifications, we would have preferred to ban Your Digital Life over Red Level Clearance. But NBN representation is already low, and again we’re not comfortable making a ban with a large collateral effect on another faction.
Simulation Reset
In Flood PD, once you’ve drawn your entire deck, Simulation Reset allows you to recur any five cards for a single click. We first tested if a Simulation Reset ban by itself was enough to tamper Flood PD’s power, but all it did was make the deck more feast or famine. Red Level Clearance was enough of a power level hit, so we determined that Simulation Reset can stay in the pool.
La Costa Grid
The team was split between Méliès U and La Costa Grid entering the banlist to temper the power of Jinteki glacier. La Costa is the one card that all Jinteki glacier decks play. It allows Méliès U to score out impactful agendas with defensive abilities while using their clicks to build out their defenses. Alongside Charlotte Caçador, it also provides a critical mass of economy that allows Méliès U to rez large ice on all its servers.
Repeatable recursion, even in the dynamic and interesting form presented by Méliès U, is a breach of one of the game’s unspoken rules: powerful cards that have been played or dealt with once don’t keep coming back. Recursion cards commonly end up being banned or otherwise rebalanced across many card games. In banning Méliès U, our vision for Jinteki glacier is for it to return to a playstyle more like that seen before Vantage Point, where games centred around Runners attempting to exploit key moments of vulnerability with central server pressure to win the game before Jinteki could leverage its intimidating ice into a victory.
Safe travels and have fun at this year’s Continental Championships!
The next Standard Balance Update is scheduled for release between August 31st – September 4th. See this article for more information on the timing of Balance Updates in the 2026 season.
Standard Ban List 26.08
Effective date: 01 August 2026 (Competitive)
Changes from Standard Ban List 26.05 appear in bold.
| Runner | Corp |
|---|---|
| Ashen Epilogue | Bellona |
| Bukhgalter | Cayambe Grid |
| Cleaver | Cyberdex Sandbox |
| Endurance | Cybersand Harvester |
| Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist | Dr. Vientiane Keeling |
| K2CP Turbine | Drago Ivanov |
| Matryoshka | Engram Flush |
| Moshing | Extract |
| Nyusha “Sable” Sintashta: Symphonic Prodigy | False Lead |
| Rezeki | Gold Farmer |
| Trick Shot | Luminal Transubstantiation |
| Tsakhia “Bankhar” Gantulga | Méliès U: Only the Brightest |
| World Tree | Nanisivik Grid |
| Offworld Office | |
| Project Vacheron | |
| Red Level Clearance | |
| Sting! | |
| Touch-ups | |
| Tributary |
