Summary

Effective Date: September 2nd, 2024
Next B&R: October 11th, 2024

Corhazi Outlook is being moved to Category 3 and is effectively banned in Standard play. Chalice of Blood is being moved to Category 2. Gaia's Blessing is being moved to Category 1. Polaris, Twinkling Cauldron is added to Proxia's Vault.

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.

Introducing Polaris, Twinkling Cauldron! Proxia had a bit of fun cooking up this regalia for Arisanna. The intent behind Polaris to is allow more versatility in the approach to playing Astra cleric and allow the deck to have greater reach in certain archetypes. We hope that Polaris does an appropriate job in allowing for more interesting approaches to constructing Astra cleric and we're excited to see your brews! Polaris, Twinkling Cauldron will be added onto the Index later today.

Ruling Notes:
• To generate means to add cards from outside of the game. Those cards must be legitimate Grand Archive TCG cards, and cannot be represented by anything else. A player will fail to generate if they cannot find the cards to add to the game in a reasonable amount of time.
• Generated cards are removed from each game zone (including the main deck) after each game, before side-boarding.
• Tip: Using an altered card can help you differentiate between generated copies and copies that are in your decklist! Generated card alterations must still follow our guidelines that apply to any other Grand Archive TCG card if they would be used in a competitive event.

About Proxia's Vault

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. 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, Sword of Avarice, Reckless Conversion, Crystal of Empowerment, and Corhazi Outlook are banned.

For Corhazi Outlook, we've decided to shelve this card design and re-evaluate the accessibility of this type of interaction (or counter-interaction). As the card pool expands and interaction becomes more robust in Grand Archive, we feel that this card may be an unhealthy outlier in the future. For these and previously mentioned concerns, Outlook is now 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 is moved to Category 2.

Chalice of Blood is a card we've been keeping our eye on. With similar concerns of an increasing card pool that offers players greater control over the game, we feel that this growth might make the condition to favorably use Chalice of Blood with minimal downside and risk too easy and generally accessible for multiple archetypes. We're reflecting our concerns and watchfulness by upgrading Chalice to 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 four cards.

Gaia's Blessing is a new card we're paying increased attention to in the metagame. One of the main points of balancing control over influence size (hand and memory) and contributing to the board has been the feasibility of getting extra cards throughout the game. We've been generally careful in designing cards that can gain an excess of value to snowball games too quickly. Gaia's Blessing, while not a current problematic card, does skirt the edge of some of our design philosophies. Again, with concerns about a growing card pool and future design space, this is a card we will be paying closer attention to in the developing meta and going into the release of Mortal Ambition in October.

That's all for this B&R update! The next update will be on October 11th, 2024 during the release of Mortal Ambition!