In our Elevation release banlist, we made a concerted effort to reduce the reliability of Runner economy. Despite this, Runners have maintained a notable advantage over Corps.
While each Runner faction has found success in their own way, we’ve seen many Corps resort to the same strategy: kill or be killed. Without some form of flatline threat, more straightforward rush or glacier strategies cannot stabilize early or maintain the tempo required to outpace Runners. This has resulted in Corps feeling homogenous.
Our goal with this update is to take the first steps towards recalibrating the meta balance between Runners and scoring Corps.
This banlist becomes active on August 1 2025, for the start of Continental Championships season.
Summary of Standard Banlist 25.08 Changes
Deep Dive banned
Info Bounty banned
Tsakhia “Bankhar” Gantulga banned
Luminal Transubstantiation unbanned
Explanation of changes
While the meta is far from solved, it is clear that Corp agency is suffering. This is reflected in the narrow set of viable Corp archetypes, and in the tendency of successful Corps to lean into exploiting variance.
Side imbalance and a lack of Corp diversity are interwoven issues with the current meta. The power of Runners forces Corps into specific gameplans, and then Runners can exploit that predictability with tailored tech tools in deckbuilding. This problem is exacerbated when the Runner knows the exact threats they need to play around—most notably in open decklist top cuts.
Our hypothesis is that the proliferation of kill decks is a symptom of this greater imbalance, because the successful Corps are the only ones that have cards that give them a chance to fight back against the extensive set of Runner tools.
We believe that this set of Runner bans opens up avenues for different Corps to find success, forcing Runner decks to make trade-offs and prioritize some matchups over others rather than being able to effectively challenge every Corp archetype. This, in turn, should bring us closer to side balance parity.
An Uncracked Egg
AU Co. has been a ubiquitous force in the meta, but successful AU lists have been radically changing over time. We believe that the reason for the new Jinteki identity’s presence in the current meta is partly that it is the only Corp that can exploit Bankhar and disrupt Deep Dive. We suspect there will be other viable options to explore that are currently being kept down by their weaknesses to the Runner cards hit with this update. We hope that some number of Corp players will now feel empowered to shift to more rush or glacier-style scoring strategies, reducing the overrepresentation of AU at tournaments.
We seriously considered several of AU’s tools as candidates for banning (including Sting!, Anemone, and Bladderwort, to name just a few). However, given the variety of archetypes being played out of AU, trying to take targeted action is like aiming at a moving target. It’s very hard to be sure that any given ban would actually reduce the identity’s meta presence, and we don’t want to risk banning a card that could be a useful tool to other Corps and having AU bounce back unaffected.
We will keep a close eye on the many AU Co. archetypes over the Continental Championships season and revisit making targeted Corp bans if Corp diversity doesn’t improve.
Explanation of card choices
Tsakhia “Bankhar” Gantulga most clearly warps the balance between Runners and non-kill Corps. In a matchup where Runner hand size is irrelevant, the inherent downside of taking damage is mitigated by cards like Raindrops Cut Stone, Strike Fund, and Steelskin Scarring. Bankhar’s ability to walk through ice on any server is game-warping. It is a 1 install that can singlehandedly put the Corp on the backfoot from as early as turn two.
Deep Dive is another card which has had a clear warping effect on the metagame since the last rotation. The Corp’s only real counterplay is to knock the Dives out of the runner’s grip—they can no longer count on cards like Bio Vault, Border Control, or Crisium Grid to prevent runners from reliably closing out games in one turn with one or more Dives.
The most ubiquitous Runner, however, is not running either of these cards. Nyusha “Sable” Sintashta has been sweeping through the meta, with a consistent level of reliability against the whole spread of Corps. While we considered banning Sable herself, we are usually more hesitant to ban identities, and banning Sable would take most of the cards that use the mark mechanic out of commission. As such, we are taking a similar approach to our previous attempts to balance Hoshiko Shiro decks by banning the most ubiquitous tool used in Sable decks: Info Bounty. Info Bounty provides every Sable deck a way to maintain a strong economy throughout the game, where other Criminals would run out of gas. We’re hopeful that this change will encourage Criminal players to explore a diversity of other identities and economy options, while reducing Sable’s ability to effectively challenge any Corp gameplan.
Finally, we decided to reintroduce Luminal Transubstantiation. Haas-Bioroid is seeing minimal play at competitive level, and we believe unbanning Luminal will help improve Corp diversity and give scoring HB decks the edge they need to out-tempo some of the more aggressive Runner threats.
Other Considerations
Bravado – A Bravado ban would ubiquitously hurt all Criminals, at a time when Criminal identities other than Sable are not performing particularly well. We believe that the more targeted ban we are making to address Sable will be more of a boost for scoring Corps.
Self-modifying Code – While Shaper has not been dominating the metagame, the faction’s potential for competitive success is clear. With Muse and Madani in the format, banning SMC while maintaining the feel of the faction seems more possible than ever. However, we believe losing Deep Dive is a significant enough hit to the faction, and don’t want to remove another card right now.
Touch-ups – Touch-ups has cemented itself as an egregious tool in a number of kill decks, allowing for combo kills while bypassing tech like Steelskin Scarring, which helps define Anarch’s natural role in the meta. However, currently the most successful Touch-ups kill decks, out of Nebula Talent Management and Pravdivost Consulting, aren’t posting the results needed for us to feel comfortable banning Touch-ups.
World Championship Banlist Timing
We are cautiously optimistic that this banlist update will be able to address both the issues of Corp diversity and side balance in the current Standard meta. As the stakes of competition rise throughout the Organized Play season, we believe that this banlist puts us in the best position to curate the best meta possible for the World Championship in October.
The 25.10 banlist update will be released on Wednesday September 17 2025, one month before Worlds.
Standard Ban List 25.08
Effective date: 01 August 2025
Changes from Standard Ban List 25.04 appear in bold.
| Runner | Corp |
| Bukhgalter | Bellona |
| Cleaver | Cayambe Grid |
| Creative Commission | Cyberdex Sandbox |
| Daily Casts | Dr. Vientiane Keeling |
| Deep Dive | Drago Ivanov |
| DreamNet | Engram Flush |
| Endurance | Gold Farmer |
| Info Bounty | Nanisivik Grid |
| K2CP Turbine | NBN: Reality Plus |
| Moshing | Project Vacheron |
| Rezeki | Tributary |
| Trick Shot | |
| Tsakhia “Bankhar” Gantulga | |
| World Tree |
