With the release of Elevation, the Startup Curation Team would like to share a balance update for the Startup format. This banlist is designed with Elevation in mind, and we anticipate it to be considered legal for events after the release of Elevation on April 24, 2025. As a quick reminder, this release will cause System Update 2021 to rotate out of Startup, but System Gateway and the Liberation Cycle (The Automata Initiative and Rebellion Without Rehearsal) will still be Startup legal.
In replacing System Update 2021 with Elevation, we expect a large shift in the shape of the Startup meta, as Elevation has been designed with a focus of forming a viable product in conjunction with System Gateway on its own. As such, we have decided to keep our Balance Update minimal and keep a watchful eye on how the game develops in the hands of the players, while remaining open to taking action if things go awry.
Without further delay, let’s cover the main changes to the Startup format with Elevation’s release.
Summary of Startup Balance Update 25.04 Changes
Creative Commission – Unbanned
Cleaver – Banned
NBN: Reality Plus – Banned
The Startup specific Corp Deck Building restriction now reads: A Startup Corp deck can only contain a maximum of 4 agenda cards with a printed agenda point value of 3 or greater.
Explanation of Changes
Creative Commission – Unbanned
In Aesop’s Pawnshop, Shapers had access to the strongest economy engine out of all of the factions before rotation; combining Coalescence with Muse amounts to installing two programs at virtually no cost that are happy to be pawned in turns to come. With Aesop’s retirement, we felt comfortable returning some burst economy back to the Shaper toolkit. Shapers will still have access to Trick Shot, and we’ll continue to keep an eye on the faction to ensure they’re not outperforming their Anarch and Criminal siblings.
Cleaver – Banned
As the earlier Standard Ban List 25.04 has already concluded, Cleaver presents a major constraint to the design space of barriers. Kessleroid for example is a barrier that looks unassuming in a world with Cleaver, but with Rising Tide, Pressure Spike, and Curupira as the main fracters it warrants serious consideration. Cleaver forces Corps to skew towards either small barriers which provide easy gearchecks, or larger barriers like Bran 1.0, Boto, and Logjam, which exploit Cleaver’s poor numbers when it comes to boosting strength. By banning it, we hope to open up the barrier space again and thus give the Development and Design teams the wiggle room to design more interesting interactions on this axis.
NBN: Reality Plus – Banned
When NBN: Reality Plus was banned in Standard last December, SCT decided against banning it, as NBN was generally not one of the strongest performers in the environment of Liberation Startup. Nevertheless, Reality Plus exemplifies an outdated philosophy with regards to tags: Sebastião Souza Pessoa is more indicative of the play-pattern that we want tags to represent—a fluctuating game element rather than an on/off switch—but Reality Plus presents an ever-looming threat whenever a card gives out tags too liberally.
In contrast, Synapse Global: Faster Than Thought flips this dynamic subtly, but meaningfully. By reacting to the removal of tags instead of the Runner taking them, Synapse refocuses the gameplay around tags towards not the act of landing tags itself, but using tags as leverage. In doing so, the question of whether the Runner can afford to remain tagged and open themselves up to corporate Retribution or to having their agendas repossessed using IP Enforcement still presents interesting forks.
Corp Deck Building Restriction – Partially Relaxed
As Punitive Counterstrike leaves the card pool, Corps lose one of the main enablers for running a 44-card deck that contains only 6 agendas. In that light, we are willing to relax the restriction on the amount of agendas that you can run in a Corp deck slightly, while remaining ever cognizant of the fundamental threat that low agenda density decks pose to the low-multiaccess Startup format, as we had outlined in our previous Balance Update. Its replacement, Measured Response, wants Corps to run an agenda suite that can regularly hit Threat 4, a prospect that generally requires pursuing a more active game plan, and one in which running 3-point agendas is coupled with an inherent risk of losing on an errant steal.
With that in mind, one of Weyland’s historical angles for flatlining has become more challenging, and we found it reasonable to relax the printed agenda points restriction slightly. While runners may still have to contend with Clearinghouse glacier decks, we’re hoping that the new tools that they will have in Elevation will allow them to still be competitive in the matchup.
Startup Balance Update 25.04 Full Contents
Corp
Tributary – Banned
Pharos – Banned
NBN: Reality Plus – Banned
Corp decks now have the following deckbuilding restriction: A Startup Corp deck can only contain a maximum of 4 agenda cards with a printed agenda point value of 3 or greater.
Runner
Cleaver – Banned
