Unearthing the data behind the 25.10 standard banlist
Was this update a measured response? or a punitive counterstrike?
The 25.10 standard banlist is here, and I think it is fair to say that it goes much further than anyone expected. While each individual change is, perhaps, not the biggest surprise in the world, I don’t know of any player that was predicting that so many changes would be made all at the same time, so close to the World Championship, and all favouring one side over the other.
With only four weeks to go until the largest event of the netrunner calendar, and the 25.08 corp meta completely upturned, players will be scrambling to cook something new for Worlds—or maybe they have already decided that they are just going to play LEO.
But was this update really necessary? Let’s dig into the data behind some of the explanations for these changes.
Shaper
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.
Our Analysis: MOSTLY TRUE
While technically Shaper (46%) had a higher win rate than Anarch (44%), Shaper also had a relatively poor cut conversion (0.9x). Interestingly, Anarch had the strongest cut conversion (1.11x), despite having the lowest win rate.
It is certainly true that Shaper was the least represented, and that Anarch performed much better later in the continental series than at the earlier events.
Will the unbanning of Creative Commission encourage more players to play Shaper? I’m not sure that it will. My sense is that, while hardcore fans will enjoy being able to include more Shaper kick-flips in their deck—because their economy can now recover from as low as 1-credit, the thing that has actually been driving Shaper reticence has not been the economy package, but rather an ambivalence towards the Shaper win conditions (Conduit and Cataloguer).
Damage Assets
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.
Our Analysis: SHAPERS WERE ALREADY WELL EQUIPPED
If we take AU Co. and Ob as our two identities most likely to be playing damage assets—Bladderwort, Phat, Hostile Architecture—we can do some analysis on Runner faction win rates against those identities. This analysis suggests that Shaper is actually one of the best equipped factions for dealing with these early damage asset plays. The Shaper win rate against AU Co. was 41%, which is better than Criminal at 37%, and the Shaper win rate against Ob—arguably the ID most likely to present a bladderwort threat on Turn 1—was 48%. This was significantly ahead of both Criminal (40%) and Anarch (37%).
AU Co.
Most AU Co. decks have converged towards a tempo asset gameplan with kill combo threats to punish Runners that sit back.
Our Analysis: TRUE
We don’t have all of the decklists, but from the decklists that we do have we can see that at least 58% of the top performing AU Co. lists had a kill threat—usually some combination of Oppo, See How They Run and End of the Line. Other top performing AU Co. lists used Skunkworks, Anoetic Void and larger ICE like Boto to quickly create a scoring remote.
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.
Our Analysis: PROBABLY TRUE?
Gauging when to run archives against AU Co. is part of the challenge of that matchup, and it is certainly true that banning Sting! will remove some of the mental maths involved in making that decision. It’s also true that AU Co. has plenty of options for replacing Sting! with other agendas. However, Sting! can be an important backstop for getting AU Co. counters early, and it’s not obvious that any of the alternatives will help the Corp to play through their bad openers in the way that Sting! did.
Ob
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.
Our Analysis: PROBABLY TRUE
18 x Ob decks made top cut across the Continental series, 15 of which we have decklists for. Of those 15, 12 were playing 3x copies of Cybersand Harvester, and the remaining 3 were playing 2 x copies. Fair to say that Cybersand Harvester has been at the core of Ob since the NCIGS rule update.
In terms of it being an “obvious choice” for top performing players, the situation is less clear, but this is—or at least was—also probably true. Together with AU Co. and Nebula, Ob is one of the three Corp IDs that has been propping up the Corp win rate in 25.08, and of those three Ob had the best chance of converting into the top cut (1.41x). Also, if you consider the recent revival of Anarch, Ob was one of the few decks to be giving Hoshiko a challenge—the others being LEO and RH. For all of these reasons, I think it probably fair to say that Ob was an obvious choice for many top performing players looking at what to play at Worlds—but it was by no means the only option.
Nebula
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.
Our Analysis: TRUE
Almost all of the top Nebula decks were playing Touch-ups and False Lead. While there are other tools available for fast-advancing a False Lead, they all cost influence, and none of them help with landing End of the Line the way that Touch-ups does.
Other Nebula options are available, but Runners will be breathing a sigh of relief that they no longer have to respect the False Lead + Touch-ups kill threat, and it is not obvious that these vegan options remain competitive without the cover that their more murderous counterparts were providing.
Anarch
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.
Our Analysis: ALMOST CERTAINLY TRUE
It’s taken a while for solid Anarch lists to emerge sans Bankhar, but, by the end of Continentals season, Hoshiko was starting to again look like the powerhouse that she always has been. According to recent win rate numbers, the only things keeping her in check has been Ob and LEO.
The banning of Cybersand Harvester, and the defanging of Nebula—a matchup for which Hoshiko was having to slot hard tech for—already puts Hoshiko in a prominent position as the “best runner”. The unbanning of Moshing would almost certainly have gone too far.
The big question for all Anarch players—and Hoshiko specifically—is whether they can use their Nebula tech slots to instead improve their equity into glacier matchups.
Criminal
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.
Our Analysis: SABLE WAS NEVER A THREAT—BUT MATRYOSHKA IS
There was never any real reason to consider banning Sable. While she was more popular than MuslihaT throughout the continentals series, Sable was neither more successful in terms of win rate nor cut conversion. The only matchup where Sable was noticeably preferred over MuslihaT was against Nebula—presumably because of The Class Act offering some temporary flatline protection.
In regards to Matryoshka being exploited, while most Corp decks play some sort of Matryoshka tech—Semak-semun, Hagen, SDS, Hammer—it is not obvious that any of those decks have managed to capitalise on the edge that these tech cards give them. There is even an argument that the reason why Sable win rates improved later in the series may be because (some) of those Sable decks made the switch away from regular breakers to play Matryoshka instead.
Worth mentioning that, at the very end of the Continentals series, some of the highest placing Hoshiko decks had also switched to playing Matryoshka.
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.
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.
Our Analysis: GAMES WILL MOST LIKELY SWING IN THE RUNNER FAVOUR
Nebula was not a very popular ID, but it was an ID with a 59% win rate and a 1.21x cut conversion. Together with AU Co. and Ob, it was one of the three Corp IDs to be propping up the Corp win rate. With Nebula out of the meta, players can focus on choosing decks that are good into these other matchups. They also no longer need to play hard tech like Marrow or T400 memory diamond—which will only improve their equity into those other matchups. By my estimation, the Touch-Ups ban, alone, would have shifted the Corp win rate down from 53% to 52% at the very least—and probably lower.
Whether or not the Cybersand Harvester ban has a similar effect depends on an assessment of how critical the ability to summon Bladderwort, Phat and Humanoid Resources is to that decks game plan—as opposed to cards like Basalt Spire, Slash and Burn, and Measured Response. For my money, I think this means that we can expect Ob’s numbers to fall from a 59% win rate and 1.41x cut conversion to something a bit closer to Nuvem, which had a 49% win rate and a 0.21x cut conversion. The net effect is probably at least another percentage point drop in Corp win rates.
With Nebula removed, and Ob diminished, this leaves AU Co. as the last remaining pillar of the 25.08 competitive meta. Of the three it had the best win rate (61%) and a solid cut conversion (1.37x). Of course, we should expect this win rate to come down, but it is impossible to say by how much.
The Sting! ban and Creative Commission unban are the icing on the delicious cake that the SBT have been baking for the Runner. It is going to be (slightly) more difficult for AU Co. decks to make Regenesis plays, and it is going to be (slightly) more difficult for Weyland decks to rush out against Shaper, or to land Measured Response. PD’s game against Shaper is quite likely to be impacted as well.
There are only four weeks to go until Worlds, and only one major tournament before then at which to test out whatever new emergency Corp deck you’ve got brewing.
The Online 2025 Worlds Showdown! is happening on Saturday 27th September. Organised by ManintheMoon, the showdown series of online tournaments have become a prominent fixture in the netrunner calendar—and one hundred people have registered their interest in playing so far. The prize support is generous, as always, and the Top-6 will receive an invite to the Ultimate Showdown invitational event that is happening on the 15th November.
Such an institution ❤️
Actually, I honestly expected about this much level of bans from the SBL and it feels like the right amount. We'll see if this keeps tournaments from being 50% Criminal, or if these changes let runners lean into Crim's strengths even more.