Welcome Casters,
Today, we have an important update regarding some upcoming changes to the current meta for the Elestrals Trading Card Game. All restriction updates discussed here will take effect on April 3, 2026.
Starting April 1, the Qualifier Points leaderboard will reset, and our Road to Worlds 2027 will begin with our first Webcam Premier of the series on April 4, 2026. This is also when we’ll start Organized Play: Season 5, so that players can start earning points towards Divine Favor and Folk Hero promos at their local stores.
Normally, this new season would align with an expansion release and a new Tournament Pack at your Local Game Store, however the delay to Divine Champions: Sunstrike has made things a little tricky. This season will run a little longer to accommodate and will be in place until the release of Set 8, coming later this year. And while we have some time left with Lifestream, we’re going to temporarily change things up with a brief visit to Tartarus.
We have a few goals for this temporary banlist that will take effect on April 3, 2026 and expire on May 22, 2026, when Divine Champions: Sunstrike releases:
- Introduce novelty and deckbuilding opportunities at high levels of play.
- Limit the scope of change - don’t completely kill decks and don’t disrupt every deck.
- Focus specifically on high-performing archetypes using the World Championship Top Cut as a guiding factor.
With these goals in mind, we’ve identified four different archetypes and four subsequent changes.
Sent to Tartarus:
Apheros
“Fish” don’t need much introduction, especially if you’ve experienced the recent competitive format. This deck was an early front runner since the January 19th Banlist and has continued to put up strong performances, including Shurit’s run to the Grand Finals of the 2026 World Championships. Players have consistently identified the frustrating experience of facing down an early “Basepheros” that constantly draws cards to refill backrow runes. A limit doesn’t solve this play experience, as Aphrodite and Magneros both provide enough search power to find Apheros without much trouble. As such, we’re banning the card to see how Fish adapts without the power of perpetual draw.
Limited to 1 per deck:
Novacore Champion of Apollo
Novacore Champion of Apollo has been a strong performer for the entirety of the Lifestream metagame, but it really picked up in both representation and relative impact after the January 19th banlist. The power of a Normal Cast 2-drop that combines non-targeted removal and effective defenses, works naturally with Solar’s interest in hard ascending into Celestleo. Since January, decklists have not only moved to the full 3 copies of Novacore Champion of Apollo, but have also started shifting towards Exaltus to search for more, further enhancing the natural synergy with Temple of the Sun. The consistent and repetitive nature of this sequence is challenging for many decks in the format to deal with, so we’re reducing Novacore Champion of Apollo to 1 copy (per deck).
Avialith Champion of Hermes
Beyond Fish and Solar, Hermes is popular deck that's waiting in the wings to swoop into the power vacuum. Avialith Champion of Hermes turbocharged the deck’s performance, and while it’s very difficult to play well, those that play it have demonstrated the power of effectively playing with 32 Spirits. While it can take a little bit of time to spin up, the sequence of chaining Avialith into another Avialith gives the deck an enormous Spirit buffer to grind down opponents. We debated between a limit and a semi-limit here, but ultimately determined that a semi-limit did not meaningfully change the gameplay experience enough to meet our goals.
Semi-Limited to 2 per deck:
Morphrost Chimera Form
We’ve got one more change, and while it may look like a very small adjustment on paper, we’re confident that players will notice the change. Morphrost Chimera Form is one of the strongest tools the Morphrost archetype has ever had access to and it’s a direct enabler for sequences with Morphrost Batt Form that fill the board repeatedly. While we expect the Morphrost strategy to still play similarly to how it does now, this adjustment will limit the deck’s ability to routinely summon multiple Chimera Forms (with 5 Attack) and instead make it more reliant on other Normal Casts to keep up.
This update to the Tartarus banlist has an effective date of Friday, April 3rd, 2026, and will cease to apply on Friday, May 22nd, 2026, alongside the global release of Divine Champions: Sunstrike.
View the complete Ban & Restriction List for the Elestrals Trading Card Game HERE.
