In the last banlist update at the start of Continental Championships season, we focused on balancing the scales between Runners and Corps. We knew then that the update was heading in the right direction, but the resulting meta was even better than we had hoped.
While we continued to see plenty of AU Co. throughout Continentals season, Runners managed to find ways to challenge the egg and turn the match-up in their favor. Matryoshka has become a first class breaker suite, allowing Runners to challenge any remote with a single piece of ice. In response, kill and rush decks out of Ob Superheavy Logistics have seen elevated success due to their favorable match-up into common Criminals like MuslihaT. All the while, LEO Construction and Nebula Talent Management continued to provide their factions some representation in the Corp metagame.
Heading into the 2025 World Championship (October 17-19 in Edinburgh, Scotland), we want to curate a natural continuation of the existing meta—maintaining the healthy side balance while promoting faction diversity and engaging gameplay.
This banlist becomes active on October 3 2025, and will be in effect for the World Championship.
Summary of Standard Banlist 25.10 Changes
Creative Commission unbanned
Sting! banned
Cybersand Harvester banned
Touch-ups banned
Explanation of changes
While Criminal was the dominant Runner faction throughout most of the season, Anarch has started popping up in tournaments and even took the majority of the top placements at the Online American Continentals. Shapers on the other hand were both the least represented and worst performing Runner faction throughout the entirety of Continentals season.
Damage assets are frequently forcing Runners into a scrappy game right from turn one—something Shapers are not well equipped to deal with. Creative Commission should give Shapers more economic flexibility when interacting with these early threats and allow for some more breathing room to build up their board state. With this unban, we hope all Runner factions will be relevant going into Worlds.
Most AU Co. decks have converged towards a tempo asset gameplan with kill combo threats to punish Runners that sit back. We tested many ban candidates to bring these decks down a peg, but eventually landed on Sting! as the right power adjustment for the current meta.
Without Sting! poisoning archives, Runners can flip the facedowns without taking excessive damage, to more easily defuse Regenesis, Moon Pool, or Cohort Guidance Program. In addition, multi-access on centrals in the late game should become a safer and more reliable strategy to close out games against AU Co. without fear of Sting! In spite of this nerf, we still expect to see adapted builds of AU Co. going into Worlds given the power of the identity and its supporting cast.
Since its glow-up thanks to the Elevation Rules Update, Cybersand Harvester has seen a lot of play in Ob Superheavy Logistics as an on-demand way to fetch impactful 1-cost assets like Bladderwort, Phật Gioan Baotixita, or Humanoid Resources. As the lists have been refined over the last couple weeks of competition, the deck became an obvious choice for many of the top performing players. With more refinements and innovations likely to further propel the deck’s dominance going into Worlds, we felt that it was time to extract the Harvester from the card pool to prevent Ob from becoming the clear best deck.
While Ob and AU Co. were the most represented and successful decks of the season, kill Nebula decks were a meta presence that Runners needed to account for. Nebula only won one Continentals event, but we want top decks on both sides of the table to have agency and counterplay. The one-note gameplan of the kill Nebula archetype doesn’t meet our expectations for dynamic gameplay at competitive events. We believe that removing Touch-ups will defang these linear, uninteractive kill Nebula decks, and force fast advance builds to dedicate more influence to scoring out agendas without the backbone of a remote.
Other Considerations
NBN: Reality Plus – As soon as 25.08 was released, we got to work on this update, starting by looking at potential unbans. R+ jumped out as a potential way to encourage more even faction representation in the Corp meta. Unfortunately, in testing we found that the existing asset NBN lists played out of Reality Plus were too economically demanding for all kinds of Runners. While we would love to see some more NBN representation in the meta, unbanning any NBN cards at this time would change the format more drastically than we are willing to risk.
Moshing – At the beginning of the season, Anarch was nowhere to be seen and unbanning Moshing looked like it could be a good counterpart to the return of Creative Commission. However, initial testing quickly showed that Anarchs powered by the burst potential of Moshing would be too much for modern Corps to handle.
Bladderwort – Most AU Co. lists rely on their hostile assets to create pressure. While Bladderwort’s impact can be felt in some games, Cohort Guidance Program, Phật Gioan Baotixita, Moon Pool, and Spin Doctor are all more important tools. When we tested banning Bladderwort, we found that AU Co. could focus on staying rich, play bigger ice, and execute the same gameplan. We ruled out a Bladderwort ban as it didn’t move the needle enough for AU Co. lists, and would have other knock-on effects by removing asset kill archetypes played out of Ob and Thule Subsea.
Anemone – While other sentries can be more taxing or have a worse facecheck, Anemone doesn’t care whether a breaker is installed — it will still guarantee net damage and AU Co. counters. In testing, we found Anemone to be one of AU’s best tools for bluffing and recovering from bad openers. Without a Runner side ban to accompany it, we felt that removing Anemone would reduce AU Co.’s agency and play potential too significantly.
False Lead – We considered False Lead as an alternative target to Touch-ups to disempower the kill Nebula lists. Either ban would likely render the deck as we know it unplayable, but Runners can tech against False Lead while Touch-ups is effective at killing through traditional kill tech like Steelskin Scarring. Either one would continue to see play in other archetypes, but with Sting! being banned we preferred to keep at least one other relevant 3/1 agenda in the card pool.
Nyusha “Sable” Sintashta – While MuslihaT saw some success early in the season, we thought that her reliance on Matryoshka and run events would be exploited and Sable would maintain her role as the de facto best Criminal identity. As the season went on, Sable saw more play and more success… until just two days before we needed to lock-in a decision, when MuslihaT completely overtook Sable during the Online American Continental event. While we considered other ban candidates to give Criminals a small nerf, we deemed that all other options would risk destabilizing the meta in ways that we could not predict.
A Note on Side Balance
The 25.08 banlist update put side balance into a great spot. With this update, we are unbanning one Runner card and banning one card from each of the top Corp lists. We understand that this looks at odds with trying to maintain a healthy side balance.
As the capstone competitive event of the year, we aim to give players a minimum of four weeks of preparation time for the World Championship. Due to the timeline of Continentals season, we had to make some tough calls and try to test while meta adaptations were happening.
We believe that Ob and AU Co. are resilient identities and that players will find ways of keeping those archetypes competitive with Runners for Worlds. With glacier lists starting to crop up more, Corps are pulling Runners into a variety of directions and no Runner list can easily handle everything. Our hope is that Runners need to continue to make trade offs when preparing for the field.
Post-Worlds Banlist Timing
We are looking forward to seeing how things pan out at the 2025 World Championship in Edinburgh! After Worlds we will evaluate the meta and consider potential changes to shape the landscape for the holidays. Whether we have no changes or a slew of new bans and unbans, you can expect an article in November.
The 25.11 banlist update will be released on Monday, November 17 2025.
Standard Ban List 25.10
Effective date: 03 October 2025
Changes from Standard Ban List 25.08 appear in bold.
| Runner | Corp |
| Bukhgalter | Bellona |
| Cleaver | Cayambe Grid |
| Daily Casts | Cyberdex Sandbox |
| Deep Dive | Cybersand Harvester |
| DreamNet | Dr. Vientiane Keeling |
| Endurance | Drago Ivanov |
| Info Bounty | Engram Flush |
| K2CP Turbine | Gold Farmer |
| Moshing | Nanisivik Grid |
| Rezeki | NBN: Reality Plus |
| Trick Shot | Project Vacheron |
| Tsakhia “Bankhar” Gantulga | Sting! |
| World Tree | Touch-ups |
| Tributary |
