Summary

Effective Date: Monday, Janury 26th, 2026
Next B&R: February 23rd, 2026

Summary: The following are added to Category 1: Grim Pastiche, Incandescent Reliquary, Topsy Decree, Baby Green Slime, Ranger Strides, Alkhaest, and Unmake Duality. Additionally, we are adding a new card to Proxia's Vault:

We'd also like to mention that we are changing our philosophy regarding additions to the Watchlist. Going forward, we will be more proactive about moving cards into Category 1, however, the rate at which cards will move up any further will not see an appreciable increase.

The Watchlist only contains cards that were either previously legal in the Standard format or are currently legal for Standard.

See the entire list of banned cards here.

Proxia's Vault

Introducing Sablemere, a Proxia's Vault card for Nico. This cards blends the ideas of Nico's mill strategies (for both her player and her opponent) and tall attacks into one card, while also expanding upon her lash counter mechanic.

As a reminder, Proxia's Vault is a new way we're addressing specific meta issues by releasing cards that players are allowed to proxy, even for use in competitive events. Proxia's Vault is being updated to allow cards to be proxied indefinitely as long as the card is in Proxia's Vault. The policy guide will be updated accordingly. Read about the Proxia's Vault policy here:

Watchlist

Category 3

This category will contain all cards that are banned and restricted, proving to be too powerful or too impactful, and limiting tournament deck diversity and meta health. Currently, Baby Gray Slime, Crystal of Empowerment, Corhazi Outlook, Dissonant Fractal, Erupting Rhapsody, Icebound Slam, Lost in Thought, Sword of Avarice, Reckless Conversion, and Rile the Abyss are banned.

Category 2

This category contains cards that we consider very problematic and are heavily watched for potential future legality changes and category shifts. Chalice of Blood, Crystalline Mirror, and Mercenary's Blade are the only cards in Category 2.

Category 1

This category consists of cards that we don’t consider problematic in the current environment, but are unhealthy for future balance and game design space. This category currently has nine cards after today's changes: Tidestone Bovine, Dream Fairy, Grim Pastiche, Incandescent Reliquary, Topsy Decree, Baby Green Slime, Ranger Strides, Alkhaest, Unmake Duality.

Grim Pastiche: The card provides a highly flexible tool in Ciel decks. Although Ciel's core champion design was built around the tool-box strategy, Grim Pastiche provides too much recursion to go along with that tool-box, often exaggerating the benefits of certain cards when seen in multiples.

Incandescent Reliquary: This card was designed to help the luxem player catch up in influence, while also supporting the "turbo-to-3" playstyle. Although achieving its purpose successfully, the 1 base memory cost makes this card extremely difficult to interact with for certain decks.

Topsy Decree: This card was designed to be a card to reward decks running more norm element cards. However, because the unique effects found on the modes of this card are not efficiently found as standalone cards in the norm element, it has become a key card of the current format. As the norm element card pool expands, we expect the cost of versatility in Topsy Decree to be amplified.

Baby Green Slime: The on enter ability of this card is extremely effective when being used to interact with certain strategies compared to others. In addition, usually strong interaction cards are complemented with an opportunity cost of it being not useful all the time. However, because the wind element draw engine is based on reusing on enter effects, the opportunity cost for Baby Green Slime is very low.

Ranger Strides: The introduction of this card to aggressive strategies has lowered the amount of class diversity within those strategies.

Alkahest: The reasoning for adding Alkahest to Category 1 closely follows the reason we previously added Crystalline Mirror; we want to avoid putting accessible and versatile regalia interaction in the Material Deck. Making these interaction choices confined to the Main Deck is something we feel is not only healthier for the meta, but advances skill expression in construction rather than allowing too much "tool-boxing" within the Material Deck.

Unmake Duality: Decks that are using The Looking Glass that do not utilize Distortion cards are too readily able to "abuse" Unmake Duality, effectively invalidating the existence of Grand Crusader's Ring. We want Grand Crusader's Ring to be the standard for gaining a card for no cost.

That's all for this B&R update! The next B&R will be February 23rd, 2026.