Formats

The non-rotating format — essentially every card ever printed for the game is legal. Instead of a ban list, Eternal uses a points system: each deck has a budget (currently 7 points) to spend on cards flagged as powerful, plus a small list of cards banned outright. This is deliberately a lighter-touch approach than Standard's ban list, given how much larger the Eternal card pool is.

Random Access Memories (RAM) isn't a fixed card pool. Every two weeks, a new legal pool is drawn live on stream: 2 large releases plus 12 data packs, picked from an eligible set (a handful of sets are permanently excluded). Whatever's drawn is legal as-is for the next two weeks — there's no ban list at all. Originated as a 'Mystery Box' Worlds side event before becoming a recurring official format.

A frozen, point-in-time format. The card pool is fixed at exactly what was tournament-legal under the original publisher's (FFG) organized play program on November 16, 2018 — Creation and Control through Reign and Reverie. Snapshot has its own frozen banned/restricted list from that era and never changes.

The flagship rotating format. The card pool is the two non-rotating Core Sets (System Gateway and Elevation) plus the most recent complete cycles — currently Ashes, Borealis, Liberation, and the newest release, Vantage Point. When a new cycle completes, the oldest cycle in the pool rotates out. Uses a simple ban list (currently 19 Corp and 13 Runner cards banned) rather than a points system.

A smaller format aimed at newer players. The card pool is the Core Sets plus only the single most recent complete cycle and the current incomplete cycle — never more than five sets at once. It rotates on the same cadence as Standard, always trailing one cycle behind. Has its own smaller ban list (5 Corp, 1 Runner) plus an extra deckbuilding rule capping how many high-value agendas a deck can run.

The original March 2021 starter-set card pool — just the cards from the System Gateway two-player starter set, predating the later Elevation expansion that's now bundled alongside it as part of the 'Core Sets.' No ban list.