• Cerebral Imaging: Infinite Frontiers goes from 2 to 3 points.
• AstroScript Pilot Program goes from 0 to 1 point.
• Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel. goes from 2 to 3 points.
• Clan Vengeance goes from 2 to 3 points.
• Rumor Mill goes from 3 to 4 points.
• Kabonesa Wu: Netspace Thrillseeker goes from 0 to 2 points.
• World Tree goes from 0 to 1 point.

In addition, AstroScript Pilot Program will no longer be limited to 1 per deck as of the release of Elevation.

Explanation of changes

Since the latest points update, back in late 2023, we’ve seen the Eternal metagame evolve, with players developing new archetypes as well as incorporating the cards released in Rebellion Without Rehearsal. Runner tends to have an advantage over Corp, with Anarch’s catch-all tech cards and Shaper’s ability to aggressively search for the right cards to best tackle any Corp archetype finding great success. On the other side of the table, the top tier Corp decks are usually presenting very fast combo lines to either kill or fast advance points in just a few turns, relying on their speed to shorten the time the Runner has to interact with them.

Rumor Mill

Rumor Mill is by far the best current Runners have access to. It can shut down entire Corp decks to the point that recurring the card over and over can suffice as the Runner’s entire strategy in some matchups. Most Anarch decks are still playing it at 3 points, and its prevalence hurts the diversity on the Corp side by curbing the viability of several archetypes. We expect that increasing Rumor Mill to 4 points, making it the most expensive card on the points list, will be enough to make Runners pivot to something else or reduce the overall power level of the decks that decide to stick with the current to the point that it feels like a big tradeoff to include.

Clan Vengeance

Clan Vengeance is the main win condition for many Runners, allowing them to threaten victory while interacting with the Corp as little as possible, if at all. It also offers powerful disruption, stopping many strategies dead in their tracks at paid ability speed. Clan Vengeance sees a lot of play in many different Anarch decks, getting counters thanks to cards like Tsakhia “Bankhar” Gantulga and Zer0, and usually getting paired with Rumor Mill for maximum disruption. With these changes, Runners won’t have the point budget to include both of these power cards as well Zer0 to enable them, giving Corps more breathing room to push their strategy forward.

Kabonesa Wu & World Tree

World Tree Wu has been taking the format by storm, with its amazing value-generating  engine and the potential to materialize any tech card necessary for a matchup. The deck relies on Kabonesa Wu to find the World Tree and then consistently tutor throwaway programs to turn them into an unstoppable late game machine. The archetype has been putting up dominant performances, but it is still underexplored, and players continue to iterate on their own versions of the deck, with wildly different amounts of cards and ways to spend their points. 

Out of the two namesake cards, Kabonesa Wu is being given more points. She showed her potential outside of World Tree decks as a program-centric combo enabler when the Devas were in the format, and she’s no doubt destined to become problematic again in the future as the pool of programs keep increasing. Additionally, the printing of Coalescence has given Wu a generically excellent search target that pushed her power level above the curve. 

On the other hand, time and again World Tree has shown the power of repeatable search effects mixed with substantial discounts. While the program is indubitably the flashier of the two cards, it’s not nearly as powerful outside of Wu, as other identities must play it in a smaller deck with fewer silver bullets for consistency’s sake. Our hope is that giving World Tree just 1 point will open up the possibility of different World Tree based decks that aren’t purely built around deploying a plethora of different tech cards. Make no mistake, World Tree Wu is far from dead, but these points should at least prevent the deck from having access to some of the format’s most powerful cards.

AstroScript Pilot Program

On the 18th of July 2016, the iconic Core Set NBN agenda, which was dominating Standard at the time, was errata’d to include the text “Limit one per deck”. We’re coming up on the 9th anniversary of that errata, and with Astro far in the rearview mirror of Standard, we feel confident in lifting that restriction and putting the ‘AstroTrain’ back on the tracks. 

Scoring is consistently the less popular way to win the game for Corps, and those that do decide to head down that path usually hide behind huge piles of ice and defensive upgrades or attempt to score out multiple agendas in a turn in uninteractive combo plays. Allowing AstroScript to be played as a three-of is our way to help rush decks find their place in the meta, as well as helping boost NBN, generally considered the least threatening faction, with a new power card. In our testing AstroScript proved to be a fun inclusion for players, but also a very powerful one, so including it in a deck now deservedly costs 1 point.

Ob Superheavy Logistics

Ob is an extremely powerful identity in the format, enabling many different ways to play the game and push itself toward victory. The most famous of these lists is the one that uses a combination of Mutually Assured Destruction and High Profile Target to flatline the runner at lightning speed, offering the opponents very few clicks to find the right answers. Just like the other identities targeted in this update, Ob’s power grows with every new release, and that fact combined with its current power level now warrants action to reduce its access to some more pointed cards and keep it in line with the rest of the Corp playing field.

Cerebral Imaging 

CI has always been a synonym for combo decks, hiding all of its important cards in HQ and making it really hard for the runner to interact with it outside pure economic pressure. Since the printing of Your Digital Life in The Automata Initiative CI has been a staple in Eternal, winning games with kill combos as well as fast advance ones. Giving CI an additional point should reduce its tool set, probably pushing many lists off of Jackson Howard and towards the less powerful Spin Doctor. 

We can certainly expect to see CI perform well in the future despite its additional point. The joke among Eternal players is that every set comes with at least a new CI card, given that Haas-Bioroid loves its value oriented operations that provide a mixture of card draw, credit gain, free installs or additional clicks—and I can confirm that this is no less true of Elevation:

Notable Absences

Jinteki

Industrial Genomics and Mti Mwekundu are both very powerful decks in the meta that every Runner has to keep in mind when deck building. However, compared to Ob and CI, these two are considerably slower at winning the game, giving the runner a wider window to find the right cards to contest them. Additionally, IG in particular relies on other heavily pointed cards to advance its gameplan. Currently we think these identities are fine as they are in the format and we expect the points changes to shift Runner side deckbuilding in ways that should negatively impact them, keeping them in check without requiring balancing actions for now.

Employee Strike

Employee Strike is the second most expensive Runner current, point wise, and sees a lot of play outside of Anarch. Compared to its bigger brother Rumor Mill, Employee Strike affects corps in a much more disproportionate way, debilitating the strongest corp identities more than the niche ones. Because of this we see Employee Strike as a healthy tool for the meta rather than an oppressive one. We intend to keep an eye on the popularity of Employee Strike going forward, especially with Rumor Mill becoming more expensive, to make sure it doesn’t become too ubiquitous.

ETERNAL POINT LIST 25.04

Effective date: 4 April, 2025

Changes highlighted in bold.