Creator Invitational: Lessons for the Pre-release

Game three, the final tied at 1-1. Jordan has the choice and decides to play first. One mulligan, a fresh hand, and then the game runs the way Jordan’s deck had been running all day. Nothing flashy, turn after turn, until the moment that tips everything over. Jordan calls Wakako, picks the minus two, and the Psycho Squad across the table loses two power. Its six becomes a four. That’s enough. Jordan’s 6th Street Recruits swing in and take the Psycho Squad off the board.

The casters called it almost in passing: “Wakaco flipping and Jordan choosing the minus two made the six become a four, which let Jordan use the six street recruits in order to attack and get rid of the psycho squad.” No fireworks, no bomb pulled out of a booster. A Legend for one Eddie, a common unit, two points of power missing on the wrong side of the table. At the end of the first Cyberpunk TCG tournament WeirdCo ever livestreamed, that was all it took.

On October 20, 2026, 16 content creators met at CD Projekt RED’s headquarters in Warsaw for the Creator Invitational. The format was Sealed, the exact format stores will run at pre-release starting October 30. Everyone got a kit, built a deck out of it, and played four rounds of Swiss, followed by a single-elimination Top 8. The winner was Jordan, known to plenty of you as XOTCG, playing three Fixer Legends and not a single Go Solo Legend. Across the table in the final sat Fresh Lobster.

Fixers beat Go Solo. You could squeeze the day into that headline, and you’d be wrong. Three of the four semifinalists ran Adam Smasher as a Legend, and a lot of the day’s biggest moments belonged to him. Jordan’s deck came with the right answer. And if you’re sitting down this weekend with a fresh kit, there’s a lot you can steal from this tournament.

WeirdCo’s own write-up of the event is the official Creator Invitational recap. This piece is about what actually happened at the tables.

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Glossary for newcomers

A handful of terms pop up constantly below, and if you’ve never had the game on the table you’ll trip over them. Here they all are, in one place, so the running text doesn’t have to stop and explain them again.

Gig dice decide who’s ahead in nearly every game described here. A full set comes in the kit. If you want some on hand, a polyhedral dice set from D4 to D20.

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The format: one kit, at least 30 cards, three Legends

The Creator Invitational ran on exactly the kits that will sit on store shelves for pre-release. Each one holds six retail boosters, three random Legends from a pool of ten, all three in Cold Foil, plus a promo version of Gorilla Arms with a Cold Foil stamp and a set of dice. Which ten Legends make up that pool, the stream only partly revealed. Dexter DeShawn, Muamar Reyes and Wakako were named. Muamar Reyes is the same card the stream mostly calls El Capitán; its full name is Muamar Reyes: El Capitán.

From that pool you build a deck of at least 30 cards plus three Legends, and according to the Sealed Primer the Legends can also come out of the boosters. On stream, 30 cards counted as “kind of the sweet spot”. You can play at most three colors, and they don’t have to match your Legends. The casters made a point of it: you can run “three colors that do not match your legend”. In Sealed that’s a big relief, because the three Legends in the kit are random and rarely line up with whatever strong cards the boosters hand you. There’s no RAM restriction in Sealed.

According to the stream, players were allowed to swap cards from their opened kits in and out. Legends work differently, and the casters put it this way: “your legends generally don’t change between games, especially in sealed”. Whether two Legends with the same name are allowed in one deck, the stream left open. If you pull two copies of the same Legend at pre-release, ask the organizer at your store.

Play was four rounds of Swiss, each 50 minutes long and best-of-three. After that, the top eight moved into a single-elimination bracket. With 16 players, that means half the field keeps playing after the Swiss rounds, and an even record can absolutely be enough. Prizes were tiered for every place from first to 16th; places nine through 16 still went home with three boosters each.

All of that maps almost one to one onto pre-release: one kit, one pool, three random Legends, build on site. If you’re at your local store this weekend, that’s exactly your job too.

A pool of six boosters plus Legends and promo turns into a thick stack fast, and the cards that don’t make your deck still need to get home in one piece. Sleeves are also on the Sealed Primer’s list of optional things to bring. Clear standard-size card sleeves keep the pool safe on the way home.

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Four rounds of Swiss

Not every match made it onto the stream. Each Swiss round had one feature match, commentated by casters who also talked in between with WeirdCo’s Lead Game Designer David McDarby and with the players themselves. Those four matches alone give you a pretty good read on how Sealed in this game works.

Round 1: Ibo vs. Silvin

Ibo, known from AIBO Academy, opened the day against Silvin, and the match went the full distance. Game one showed the pattern that would run through the whole day. Silvin’s MaxTac AV, a green 5/8 carrying Gorilla Arms, attacks Ibo’s Pepe. Pepe loses the fight, but Ibo flips El Capitán, and Pepe isn’t defeated. Then comes Safety Override, and the program destroys the MaxTac AV. WeirdCo’s blog explains the trick: the unit survives, but it technically still lost the fight, and that’s exactly what Safety Override responds to. One Eddie for the Legend, two for the program, and one of the strongest units in Silvin’s deck is gone.

Silvin came back in game two with a combination you’ll see a lot on pre-release weekend: Rockn‘ Rockerboy on the field, Gorilla Arms attached, and suddenly three Gigs move to Silvin’s side in a single turn. The yellow 5/8 Rockn‘ Rockerboy is a common, and the casters thought very highly of it. During the elimination rounds they called it a “great vanilla card”, and when Jordan played it in the final, it was “one of the best in the game right now”. Since Gorilla Arms comes as a promo in every kit, practically anyone who pulls the Rockerboy from their boosters can build this pairing.

Ibo took game three. Sketchy Ripper, which according to the card database searches the top three cards for Gear, kept the resources coming, El Sombrerón hit the field, and at the end Adam Smasher was standing there. Ibo named the combination of Ripper and Valentino Street Racer as the key. The casters described the finish as “ending that legendary solo”. In the interview, Ibo said about the Ripper: “I drew three cards off the ripper.” Not bad for a 2/0.

During on-camera deckbuilding, the feature table had already wrestled with color choices. “Do I want green or do I want yellow?”, one player asked, and then added right away: “Or uh green or blue, I can’t remember”. The table then landed on the thought that actually matters: in Sealed, the hard question is less which colors you play and more which one you leave out. “Which color you cut”, as one player put it. There are four colors (red, yellow, green, blue), at most three can go in the deck, so one has to go. With some pools that hurts, because the color you drop would have given you one or two strong cards too.

Round 2: Ash Lizzle vs. Sunny

In round two, Ash Lizzle beat Sunny 2-0. Ash had three Fixers as Legends: Dum Dum: Maelstrom Triggerman, El Capitán and Wakako. The casters warned on commentary: “watch out for the dum dum. Watch out for the el capitan. Watch out for Wakaco.” Shortly after came: “Some real big fixer energy from Ash”. Sunny had two Fixers and one Go Solo Legend. Game one went to Ash.

Once the combat tricks came out, two Legends got involved at once: “Both Dexter Desawn and Morar Reyes coming in clutch with the battle combat tricks.” That means Sunny’s Dexter and Ash’s El Capitán. That’s the whole job of a Fixer in this format. They sit next to the deck, cost no card slot, and when a fight gets close, one Eddie for the Legend decides it.

On Sunny’s side, Jackie Welles: Mama’s Favorite came in via Go Solo, attacked, got defeated in the process, and saved a Heywood Ripperdoc that way. It wasn’t enough. At some point in game two Sunny scooped, which in TCG talk means packing up the cards before the game was formally over.

Sunny’s Legends are easy to piece together from the match: Padre, Dexter DeShawn and Jackie Welles: Mama’s Favorite. The casters praised the MaxTac Suppression Team on Sunny’s side as the “MVP” of that round. Despite the loss, Sunny also made the Top 8.

Round 3: Spessie vs. Scott Mines

Maybe the most instructive match of the Swiss rounds was Spessie, whose real name is Joe Curley and who also goes by Specimen, against Scott Mines. Spessie had started with two wins and later said Sealed in Cyberpunk was new territory: “it’s my first time playing it in Cyberpunk”. You couldn’t tell.

Game one still got away, and in exactly the way everyone in Sealed dreads. After the mulligan, Spessie held a hand full of cards to sell and not a single unit. The casters: “all sellables in his hand. That is not great.” So there were plenty of Eddies, just nothing for Spessie to spend them on. Scott Mines used that and took the game.

In game two Spessie flipped the script, deliberately going second, holding Adam Smasher in reserve and playing defensively. Scott Mines had an answer in Towerfall, the blue Epic the casters called “the onesided board wipe”. A board wipe that only clears your opponent’s side is a monster in any card game. Scott Mines also put Placide: Voodoo Sentinel up against Spessie’s Animals Wrecker. Spessie, for their part, brought out Hanako Arasaka: In a Gilded Cage, a yellow 4/1 rare that hardly anyone had on their radar before the tournament. The casters dubbed the effect “The full draw four experience”. Spessie won and evened it up.

Game three dragged, and it was the tensest of the lot. In this match Scott Mines had two Legends on the table, Judy Álvarez: Braindance Maestro and Dum Dum, plus the Zetatech Faceplate, a piece of Gear the casters called “a really solid draw engine”. Hanako came down again, and this time Spessie found exactly the cheap blockers needed to hold the game. That was the game, and the match went 2-1 to Spessie.

The casters called Hanako “a bit of a sleeper”, a card flying under the radar. According to the card database, Hanako reveals cards whose cost matches one of your own Gig values. Spessie explained the read like this: “if I have all my gigs dice at six, one to six, I will draw everything every time.” What you want, then, is Gig values that cover the cost steps from one to six, and the natural home for that is a deck where hardly anything is expensive. “I don’t think I play anything in my deck which costs more than seven”, Spessie added. That kind of build isn’t something most people land on in their first few games.

After three rounds, that put Spessie at three wins. In the interview, the line was: “you clinched your entry in the top eight”. Before the semifinal, Spessie was described as “only taking one draw today”.

Round 4: Maxildan vs. Lionheart

The last Swiss round put Maxildan up against Lionheart. Lionheart had units like Sandayu Oda: Hanako’s Guardian and Saul Bright: Stormrider in the deck, with Padre and El Capitán among the Legends. One scene showed pretty clearly what Fixers are good for. A Jackie Welles was threatening on Maxildan’s side, and Lionheart used El Capitán, “which will allow Jackie to steal one less gig”. A Fixer that knocks one Gig off the opponent’s damage is worth a lot in a game played to seven.

Maxildan still came out on top, 2-0. Afterwards the casters talked about a “critical difference between game one and game two”. Going by the cards shown, Maxildan’s deck spread across at least green, yellow and blue: Maelstrom Zealots, Wild in the Streets, Mandibular Upgrade, Jackie Welles: Ride or Die Choom and NetWatch Netdriver. As Legends, Maxildan played Royce, River Ward and El Capitán.

By Maxildan’s own account, Sealed was something they’d learned from a friend, and they mentioned having “so many boosters at home”. Not exactly a field of Limited pros, then, which may be part of why the games stayed so open.

With a field of 16 and eight spots in the elimination bracket, a record of two wins and two losses can be enough to make the cut. Then came the quarterfinals, and things got serious.

Round	Feature match	Result	Deciding moment
1	Ibo vs. Silvin	2-1	Sketchy Ripper, El Sombrerón, Adam Smasher in game 3
2	Ash Lizzle vs. Sunny	2-0	Dexter DeShawn and El Capitán as combat tricks, Sunny scoops
3	Spessie vs. Scott Mines	2-1	Hanako draws four in game 2 and finds blockers in game 3
4	Maxildan vs. Lionheart	2-0	El Capitán takes a Gig off Jackie, but it isn’t enough

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Top 8 and semifinals

Now it was win two games or go home. The stream mostly stuck with Jordan, which in hindsight was the right call.

Quarterfinal: Jordan vs. Maxildan

The best match of the elimination rounds went three games, and none of them played out like the others.

Game one went to Maxildan, and the engine behind it was NetWatch Netdriver. Maxildan drew card after card off it and kept adding units that take double Gigs. Both sides played a Live with the Aftermath, which makes each player defeat one of their own units. Maxildan flipped El Capitán in this game, while Jordan’s third Legend stayed face down, a card “which no one has seen”, as the casters wondered aloud. The turning point came somewhere else: Jordan’s Animals Wrecker got blocked, and after that Maxildan played Wild in the Streets. The casters called the card “one of the best ways to deal with that”. After that turn the game ran Maxildan’s way.

Game two showed how fast people had figured out what mattered that day. Jordan went first, and the moment the NetWatch Netdriver hit the table again, Jordan blew it up with Detonate. No waiting, no second round of card advantage for the opponent. Later, Memory Relapse moved Maxildan’s Secondhand Bombus out of the way so Jordan’s Animals Wrecker could clear the MaxTac Suppression Team on Maxildan’s side. Jordan evened the match.

If you want to understand Jordan’s deck, watch game three. This time Maxildan started, and the casters noted: “Players are choosing to go first in this game”. Again there was a MaxTac Suppression Team on Maxildan’s side, so Jordan held the Riding Nomad back for a long time. In the interview afterward, Jordan explained: “I knew I had to remove his Max-Tac so I could attack.” The decisive blow was built from two cheap pieces. On Jordan’s own turn, Carnage at the Colosseum got sold, and Jordan passed with three open Eddies. Then on Maxildan’s turn the reactions came: Jordan called Dexter DeShawn for plus two power, Jordan’s unit became a nine, and Maxildan’s MaxTac AV was off the board. On top of that came Safety Override. The program triggers when one of your units loses a fight and then destroys the opposing unit from that fight. It hit Maxildan’s Jackie Welles: Ride or Die Choom. The casters: “double got cleared both of his rival’s units on the same turn”.

Later Jordan also destroyed Maxildan’s Sandevistan with Detonate, and at the end Maxildan was missing exactly one thing: a card to sell, and with it the Eddies for an answer. “No sellable. That’s what it was”, the casters summed up. Maxildan couldn’t come back on the final turn, the long-held Riding Nomad struck in the last few turns, and Jordan was into the semifinals.

Keep count during this match and the cheap answers pile up: Detonate twice, Memory Relapse, Safety Override, Dexter as a combat trick, and a sold program as fuel. Jordan’s deck was loaded with cards like that.

The other quarterfinals

Fresh Lobster beat Ash Lizzle 2-1. Spessie won 2-0 against David Tisc from Poland, who used to be active in Gwent under the name Aison. Ibo advanced as well, past Sunny.

Semifinal: Fresh Lobster vs. Spessie

Two Adam Smasher decks in the first semifinal, and in the end a clear result: Fresh Lobster won 2-0.

Seating gave Spessie the choice, and Spessie let Lobster start game one. Same thing in game two: Spessie “opted to go second again”. That’s how Spessie had played it all day, successfully in round three. Against Lobster it backfired. According to the casters, Lobster’s deck was “very much a deck that wants to go first”, built on tempo, and Spessie handed Lobster exactly that advantage.

Two scenes from game one stick. First, Spessie’s Mantis Blades met Lobster’s Bonnie and Clyde. Then came the moment the casters described as “Smasher to Smasher”: two Adam Smashers on the field, one on each side. Lobster also had Safety Override in hand, and the casters speculated whether the card was being held back as a trap. That kind of lurking was part of every top match. If you see open Eddies, you expect a trick, and sometimes the trick really is there.

In game two, Lobster’s Smasher hit the field again, and at some point commentary dropped the line “It steals four”. Spessie did have Animals Wrecker in the deck, two copies even, but Lobster had an answer in Placide: Voodoo Sentinel: Placide sent the Wrecker to the bottom of the deck. That settled the semifinal.

In the interview afterward, Lobster shared a habit worth remembering for pre-release: “I want that fail safe of keeping the last pitchable program in hand.” A program you can sell in a pinch always stays in hand as a reserve. When the deciding moment comes, you then have either the trick or the Eddies for something else.

Semifinal: Jordan vs. Ibo

Jordan won the second semifinal against Ibo 2-1; before the third game, commentary had it at “1-1 … against Ibo”. That set the final: the Fixer deck with no Go Solo against the day’s third Smasher deck.

Round	Match	Result
Quarterfinal	Jordan vs. Maxildan	2-1
Quarterfinal	Fresh Lobster vs. Ash Lizzle	2-1
Quarterfinal	Spessie vs. David Tisc	2-0
Quarterfinal	Ibo vs. Sunny	Ibo won
Semifinal	Fresh Lobster vs. Spessie	2-0
Semifinal	Jordan vs. Ibo	2-1
Final	Jordan vs. Fresh Lobster	2-1

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The final, game by game

Jordan against Fresh Lobster meant three Fixer Legends against Wakako, Padre and Adam Smasher. Both had Wakako. Only Lobster had a Go Solo Legend that can come onto the field as a 9/9, and that’s exactly what Jordan had prepared for.

Game 1: The Suppression as insurance

Jordan started, and Riding Nomad was one of the units Jordan put on the table in game one. Lobster, meanwhile, barely got into the game, and the casters noted: “They haven’t really established any units”. Jordan still played a MaxTac Suppression Team as a precaution. The yellow 5/7 has one line of card text: “Rival Units can’t attack the turn they’re played.” The casters explained the Team was there “to deny the Atom Smasher from utilizing the go solo ability”. Had Smasher come down, he would have had to sit and watch for a turn. And per the rulebook there’s no loophole: the attack ban even takes priority over effects that let a unit attack immediately.

One turn sounds like nothing. In a game that, according to designer David McDarby, lasts “basically seven turns”, it’s a seventh of the match. In round four and in the semifinal, the casters had praised the card as “one of the best hard counters to that sort of game plan”, because it “stops any go solo legends from attacking when it becomes a unit”. The whole point of Go Solo Legends is that they hit right away. That’s precisely what the Suppression takes from them.

In this game, though, Smasher never made it onto the field. Jordan’s Suppression Team attacked instead, and its target was Lobster’s own Suppression Team. Little else came together for Lobster either. “That face plate didn’t draw Lobster a card once”, the casters observed. The Zetatech Faceplate sat on Lobster’s Smasher Legend and did nothing. Jordan also brought out Sandayu Oda: Hanako’s Guardian, Lobster’s board was empty, and game one went to Jordan.

Game 2: Nine Gigs

In the second game Lobster showed why Adam Smasher was the most feared card of the day. Smasher came in, Gorilla Arms attached, and then it went fast. The casters: “taking three dice in one smack”. Three Gig dice in one hit, and after that Lobster sat at nine Gigs.

Jordan pushed back as well as possible. Jordan’s 6th Street Recruits took three Gigs back with Gorilla Arms (“Oh, recruits. It’s a recruits.”). Lobster countered with Chrome Reverie on Jordan’s MaxTac AV, with Lizzy Wizzy: Delicate Weapon on the field as well. That decided the game. Game two went to Lobster, 1-1.

That’s the difference between Smasher and your regular big body. A 9/9 with a strong piece of Gear steals so many Gigs that a normal race to seven is nearly over after one undisturbed attack. If you don’t have an answer, all you can do is hope Smasher never gets to swing.

Game 3: First

Which brings us back to the start. Jordan had the choice in game three, and “Jordan is actually choosing to go first here”, as commentary put it. Many players that day had preferred to go second so they’d have the edge later in overtime. Not Jordan. Jordan had already gone first in the second quarterfinal game and the first game of the final. Then a mulligan, and with the new hand it was on.

The plan worked. The Wakako call with minus two turned the Psycho Squad’s six into a four, Jordan’s 6th Street Recruits attacked and cleared it. The casters had already described the Psycho Squad, a blue 4/6, back in game two as a “vanilla card, but very very good”. After that Jordan played Memory Relapse, and the Heywood Ripperdoc, a yellow 6/8, couldn’t attack anymore. Placide: Voodoo Sentinel stayed in Lobster’s hand.

Jordan won game three and with it the final, 2-1. Over the whole day, Jordan played seven matches and won all seven. The casters called it “technically 7-0”, and that “technically” is there for a reason: Jordan dropped one game each in the quarterfinal, the semifinal and the final.

Afterwards Jordan stayed modest. “I know the card pool quite well”, Jordan said in the interview, and then: “I’m not normally good at limited, so I was glad I got it got a good pull.” The caster team already knew Jordan: at GenCon, Jordan had beaten two of them.

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The decks at the top

WeirdCo hasn’t published decklists from the Creator Invitational. These portraits are built from what the stream showed and said: card colors on the table, flipped Legends, interviews and commentary.

Jordan (XOTCG): Curve, answers, three Fixers

At its core, Jordan’s deck was what the casters called “in most people’s opinion a very solid sealed deck”, and they followed up with the reason right away: “You play the big vanilla units.” The plan was to “curve out”, meaning use all your Eddies every turn and put one unit after another on the table that brings more power for its cost than usual. Animals Wrecker, 6th Street Recruits, Rockn‘ Rockerboy, MaxTac Suppression Team. Mostly little text, mainly big bodies that stand there and attack.

One card Jordan went out of the way to praise doesn’t fit that picture. Per the card database, Riding Nomad is a green 5/4 with Adrenaline, so it sits well below the curve on power. Its value is tempo, because with Adrenaline it attacks right away. After the quarterfinal, Jordan said of it: “Really underrated. I recommend giving it a go.”

With the Legends, Jordan took a route nobody else in the semifinals took. In the final, commentary said: “he is not playing any Merc Legends”. The three Legends were Wakako, Dexter DeShawn and El Capitán, and the final confirms all three. Per the card database, Wakako is blue, Dexter red and El Capitán yellow.

Going by the card colors on the table, Jordan played the main deck in red, yellow and green. The casters wavered between “yellow, green, red or yellow green blue”. It’s interesting all the same, because it shows how independent Legends are from the deck. A blue Legend in a deck with no blue is completely legit in Sealed, and Wakako delivered in the final.

Then there was the density of answers. In the transcript, Jordan shows Safety Override, Detonate, Memory Relapse and Live with the Aftermath, plus Carnage at the Colosseum, even though Jordan sold that one during the decisive quarterfinal turn. Lobster also showed a fair amount with Bonnie and Clyde, Chrome Reverie, Placide and Safety Override, but on stream Jordan’s cheap answers came into play most often. For the win, that probably mattered more than the choice of Legends. Against a field full of Go Solo plans, a deck with lots of cheap answers plus MaxTac Suppression Team is simply well positioned.

Which leaves the Fixers. Designer David McDarby explained what the idea behind these cards was: “I wanted them to communicate. They helped you with gigs.” A Fixer steps into combat or shifts Gig dice, and it does that for one Eddie without costing a card in the deck. If a deck already wins on board strength, small edges like that tip the close fights. In the quarterfinal it was Dexter who turned Jordan’s unit into a nine; in the final it was Wakako, who took two power off the Psycho Squad.

“I wanted them to communicate. They helped you with gigs.”

Fresh Lobster: Go wide, then Smasher

Lobster’s deck ran red, yellow and blue; “We know he’s playing red, yellow, blue”, the casters noted in the final. The Legends were Wakako, Padre and Adam Smasher. So both finalists had Wakako.

According to commentary, the plan ran in two stages. First go wide with several units and put the opponent under pressure, then bring the big cards: Placide: Voodoo Sentinel and Adam Smasher. The deck wanted to go first, and tempo was its fuel. Lobster described the dream hand like this: “Zeta Tech face plate… curve, ramp, sellables”. Translated: a draw engine, a curve, something that gets you to the expensive cards faster, and enough material to sell.

Lobster also played differently from a lot of others: programs liked to stay in hand as an emergency reserve. “I want that fail safe of keeping the last pitchable program in hand”, in Lobster’s own words. In the final it wasn’t enough, and Placide never made it onto the table in game three.

Spessie: Twelve units and two Wreckers

From everything that was said, Spessie’s deck was the most carefully calculated. “I’ve gone for a 12 unit to 18 sellable”, Spessie said during deckbuilding. A caster did the math later: “So that gives you 18 non-unit cards which are all sellable.” Twelve units in 30 cards sits at the low end of what the casters recommended, and Spessie felt that in round three, when there wasn’t a single unit in hand after the mulligan.

In return, those twelve units included some of the best cards in the format. Spessie ran two copies of Animals Wrecker, the card the players‘ table during deckbuilding rated as “the best card right now”. Add Hanako Arasaka: In a Gilded Cage as a draw engine.

The Legends get messy. During deckbuilding Spessie said “I got Roy who is a go solo”, meaning Royce. In the matches, Goro Takemura: Vengeful Bodyguard, El Capitán and Adam Smasher showed up. In this version Goro isn’t a Go Solo, but a Legend with a Quick effect that can turn units into blockers. In the interview, the person asking the questions connected Smasher and turn order: “especially going second really helps you clinch up that victory on the draw.” Spessie did mostly choose to go second, and with Smasher in reserve that made sense.

First time playing Cyberpunk Sealed (by Spessie’s own account) and straight to the semifinal: that’s a strong result. What finally stopped Spessie was Lobster’s tempo deck, which wanted to go first and got to.

Ibo: Two Go Solos and the Ripper

Ibo played Royce, Adam Smasher and El Capitán as Legends. That means three of the four semifinal decks, Ibo’s, Spessie’s and Lobster’s, had Smasher. The deck’s engine was Sketchy Ripper, a yellow 2/0 that according to the card database searches the top three cards for Gear. The card already got praise during deckbuilding at Spessie and Silvin’s feature table, where one player said: “I never had a case where he missed.” In the tournament, by Ibo’s own account, three cards came off the Ripper, over several attacks, since it fetches at most one Gear per attack, and Ibo named the combination with Valentino Street Racer as the key. El Sombrerón was among the units as well.

Royce plus Smasher means two Go Solo Legends in one deck. During deckbuilding, one player noted that this type of Legend can feel like “basically de-ramping”, because you sink Eddies into the Legend instead of into cards from your hand. The casters still recommended: “Your deck generally wants at least one in a pre-release environment.” Ibo had two, and it went all the way to the semifinal.

The rest of the Top 8 and two feature matches

Going by the cards shown, Maxildan played at least green, yellow and blue, with Royce, River Ward and El Capitán as Legends. The strongest cards on stream were Maelstrom Zealots, Mandibular Upgrade and NetWatch Netdriver. With the Netdriver, Maxildan won the first game of the quarterfinal against Jordan. The fact that Jordan blew it up immediately in game two tells you everything about how dangerous the card is. Maxildan went out when the selling material ran dry in game three.

Ash Lizzle played the purest Fixer build of the day: Dum Dum: Maelstrom Triggerman, El Capitán and Wakako, three Fixers with no Go Solo, just like Jordan. Ash beat Sunny 2-0 in the Swiss rounds and only lost a close 1-2 to Lobster in the quarterfinal.

Sunny played Padre, Dexter DeShawn and Jackie Welles: Mama’s Favorite, so two Fixers and one Go Solo Legend. The quarterfinal against Ibo was the end of the road.

Scott Mines, with Judy Álvarez: Braindance Maestro and Dum Dum as Legends plus Towerfall, Placide and Zetatech Faceplate, had a deck that pushed Spessie to three games in round three. Lionheart had Sandayu Oda: Hanako’s Guardian and Saul Bright: Stormrider among the units and Padre and El Capitán among the Legends.

Name	Legends (per stream)	Standout cards	Uncertainty
Jordan	Wakako, Dexter DeShawn, El Capitán	Riding Nomad, MaxTac Suppression Team, Animals Wrecker, Safety Override, Detonate	deck colors only from footage
Fresh Lobster	Wakako, Padre, Adam Smasher	Placide: Voodoo Sentinel, Zetatech Faceplate, Chrome Reverie, Gorilla Arms	none
Spessie	Goro Takemura: Vengeful Bodyguard, El Capitán, Adam Smasher	2x Animals Wrecker, Hanako Arasaka: In a Gilded Cage	none
Ibo	Royce, Adam Smasher, El Capitán	Sketchy Ripper, El Sombrerón, Valentino Street Racer	deck colors
Maxildan	Royce, River Ward, El Capitán	NetWatch Netdriver, Maelstrom Zealots, Mandibular Upgrade, Wild in the Streets	deck colors
Ash Lizzle	Dum Dum: Maelstrom Triggerman, El Capitán, Wakako	Sandayu Oda, Zetatech Faceplate, Meredith Stout, Mandibular Upgrade	none

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What this means for pre-release

Sixteen people don’t make a meta. Each person at the table had exactly one pool, and there are no decklists. And which ten Legends sit in the retail kit pool is only known in small part. Whether Adam Smasher is in there, whether Royce, Goro or Padre are, the stream didn’t say. Everything said here about Legends applies to this event, not necessarily to the kit you open this weekend. A few patterns, though, show up in so many games and caster comments that you should keep them in mind while building. If you’re coming at this from the constructed side, our meta overview before the first tournaments covers that angle.

Pack an answer to Smasher

Per the card database, Adam Smasher: Ender of Legends is red, Epic, and a 9/9 as a unit. The casters described the card as “some of the best what we would call unconditional removal”, and it costs 9 Eddies to enter play as a unit. Their advice for Smasher decks was to flip the Legend early: “Flipping it up early just ensures that as soon as we have the required resources to go solo”. If you’re sitting across from a Smasher deck, assume the big guy arrives on exactly the turn your opponent has 9 Eddies together. For how Smasher plays in constructed, see our RRY deck guide with Adam Smasher, Dum Dum and V.

Three of four semifinalists had him, and he decided games: in round one for Ibo, in the second game of the final with nine Gigs, and in the semifinal he hit the field for Lobster in both games. No other pattern ran through the stream as clearly.

The best answer to it might be sitting in your boosters with a bit of luck. MaxTac Suppression Team is a common, and plenty of pools will have it. The yellow 5/7 chains a Go Solo Legend down for a turn. Jordan had it on the table in the final for exactly that reason. If you have it in your pool, it goes in the deck. The flip side: if you’re playing Go Solo yourself, expect the opponent to have a Suppression and plan a way to get rid of it. Jordan showed what that looks like in the quarterfinal.

Fixers are a real option

Jordan’s win makes it easy to learn the wrong lesson. A deck without Go Solo wins, and the conclusion that Fixers are the better pick is right there. It’s not that simple. The semifinal had one deck without Go Solo and three with, and the win is a single data point. During deckbuilding one player did warn that Go Solo Legends feel like “basically de-ramping”, but the casters still advised: “Your deck generally wants at least one in a pre-release environment.”

The actual lesson is smaller, and still useful. If you pull three Fixers in your kit, you didn’t get a bad draw: Jordan and Ash Lizzle both made the Top 8 with them. Fixers cost one Eddie, take no slot in the deck, and step in exactly when a fight is close and a unit is two power short, or ought to be. In a deck with a solid curve and plenty of answers, they’re the small levers that hold a lead. If you do have a Go Solo Legend, play it the way the casters recommend and expect a Suppression on the other side. And if you also play constructed, our yellow-yellow-red deck guide is a good next read.

Build a curve of big units

The casters offered a rule of thumb you could write on a sticky note: “at four cost is six power… At five… eights… at six, the gold standard is your animals wrecker with 10 power.” So for four Eddies you’re looking for units with 6 power, for five Eddies units with 8, and for six Eddies the Animals Wrecker with 10.

The 10 is there for a reason: from 10 power on, a unit steals two Gigs instead of one. Animals Wrecker hits that number without any Gear, as a 6-drop and as a common. The casters called it “one of the highest performing sealed deck cards that we’ve seen so far”. Designer David McDarby said about the pace of play that a game lasts “basically seven turns”. With seven turns, every single one counts, and a hole in your curve hurts far more than a missing bomb.

Cost	Target power	Examples from the stream (per card database)
4	6	6th Street Recruits (red, 4/6), Psycho Squad (blue, 4/6)
5	8	Rockn‘ Rockerboy (yellow, 5/8), MaxTac AV (green, 5/8)
6	10	Animals Wrecker (red, 6/10)

The casters stressed: “strong vanilla units can can shine in general, but certainly in a limited environment like pre-release”. Designer McDarby added that in Sealed, Gigs probably count a bit less and “that number in the bottom right corner”, the power, counts more. If you get stuck sorting your pool, count power per Eddie first. A unit like Riding Nomad that sits below this curve then needs a good reason to make the cut; for Jordan, that reason was the tempo from Adrenaline.

Bring cheap answers

One caster line nails the day pretty well: “All of the biggest swingiest turns that have happened in this whole tournament… safety override has been a common element”. Safety Override is a yellow program for 2 Eddies with Quick. Detonate against Gear, Memory Relapse, Live with the Aftermath, Wild in the Streets and Towerfall showed up too. The casters called Live with the Aftermath, which makes each player defeat one of their own units, “just a fantastic one” during the quarterfinal. Sure, there were bombs. The games still tipped on a cheap answer showing up at the right moment.

There’s a rules detail behind that. Quick effects can be used in your own Main Phase, but the extra reaction window only exists “when you are being attacked by your rival”, as the casters explained. The defender can answer with a trick in the middle of an attack, and the attacker has to factor that in. That’s why everyone at the table kept eyeing the opponent’s open Eddies, “respecting your opponent’s open eddies”, as the casters put it. An open Eddie might hide a trick, or just a bluff, and that’s what makes one or two cheap programs in hand worth so much.

So for deckbuilding: programs and Gear for 1 to 2 Eddies that flip a fight or remove a unit are gold in Sealed. A Fixer call belongs in the same math, since it only costs one Eddie. Jordan’s deck was stuffed with them, and it won.

Twelve to 15 units, and the last program stays in hand

The right number of units got a lot of airtime on stream. Spessie played 12, and a caster said about it: “I would be pretty close as well.” During deckbuilding, players at the table named “12 or 13 units”, and one made it clear: “You really can’t play 30 units”. In Constructed, according to the casters, you run 16 to 17 units; in Sealed it’s more like “closer to that 15 cuz you can’t win a game without playing units”. WeirdCo’s own Sealed Primer recommends 14 units to 16 sellables. So the range sits between 12 and 15 units in 30 cards.

The reason it skews low is selling: Gear and programs turn into money when needed. A card you can’t play becomes Eddies. “I want to play virtually every single bit of gear”, one player said during deckbuilding, and the casters called selling “one of the most skill expressing decision points in this game”. The tournament showed both extremes. Spessie lost a game in round three with nothing but sellables in hand. Maxildan lost the quarterfinal because exactly one sellable was missing at the end. If you want to land somewhere between those poles, do what Lobster does and keep the last sellable program in hand as a reserve. Jordan showed the other side in the quarterfinal: Carnage at the Colosseum never hit the field and instead became the Eddies Jordan used to react on the opponent’s turn.

The hardest part of deckbuilding is often the color that has to go. Three of the four colors can go in the deck, regardless of your Legends. So set your Legends aside first, sort the pool by color, and look at which color has the thinnest curve. That one goes. Your Legends adapt afterwards, not the other way around.

First or second: The deck decides

According to commentary: “Going first gives you a strong advantage early in the game.” And the reverse: “Going second with the way that overtime works… is a significant advantage late on”. Many players chose to go second that day, for “more of that kind of even curve with the four eddies”. If, on the other hand, you have tempo units and play aggressively, “you want to go first”.

Spessie and Jordan stand for the two sides. In the semifinal Spessie deliberately chose to go second in both games, against a deck that wanted to go first, and lost 0-2. Jordan went first several times in the quarterfinal and the final and won. With so few games that’s not solid evidence, but it works as food for thought: look at your curve before you choose, not at what everyone else is doing.

When a loss is right around the corner, the casters had one more practical tip. Cheap blockers are “extremely valuable at this point”. The cards named at that moment were Corpo Security, a green 2/2, and Secondhand Bombus, a yellow 2/0 with Blocker.

Play your draw engines

When both sides have plenty of cheap answers, whoever sees more cards wins in the end. Hanako Arasaka: In a Gilded Cage saved a game for Spessie, Sketchy Ripper brought Ibo three cards, the Zetatech Faceplate counted as “a really solid draw engine” for Scott Mines, and NetWatch Netdriver won Maxildan a quarterfinal game. People at the table took that seriously: Jordan blew up the Netdriver immediately in the next game.

Draw engines aren’t a guarantee. In the first game of the final, Lobster’s Faceplate didn’t draw a single card. They were still in nearly every deck at the top.

Expect Gorilla Arms

One card is in every kit. “every one of these pre-release kits has a promo gorilla arms in it”, the casters explained, and they called the event “the tournament of Guerilla Arms”. Silvin used it to take three Gigs in one turn in round one, and in the final Lobster knocked off three dice at once with Smasher and Gorilla Arms. The recommendation on stream was clear: “this card should be auto include”.

So Gorilla Arms goes in your deck, and every opponent has it too. A unit that looks harmless on paper can suddenly steal several Gigs with this piece of Gear.

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What comes next

Pre-release events start on October 30, with around 3,000 events planned. One week later the game hits regular retail. In the week after the worldwide launch come the Night City Brawls and Showdowns; at the Showdown there’s Adam Smasher: Metal Over Meat as a promo in the anime style of Edgerunners, plus a Sandevistan promo.

The next big tournament tier is Regionals. Chicago kicks things off December 11 to 13, 2026, with 1,984 tickets for the Main Event, and the second sales wave starts November 4 at 7 p.m. Eastern. Before the last game of the final, the casters said: “I know Jordan is extremely excited to compete in Chicago”. Warsaw follows on January 30 and 31, 2027, with 1,536 tickets. After a first wave for backers, Wave 1 opens on November 11 at 6:00 p.m. CET.

The second set, Edgerunners: Burn Bright, is announced for spring 2027, with a new rarity tier. A Chinese edition of the game is coming too. And Hanako Arasaka: In a Gilded Cage, the card that saved Spessie a game in round three, had the world premiere of its retail Iconic variant on stream on tournament day. The casters expect it’s “going to be a chase”.

If you want to get your pre-release pool home safely, Legends and promo included, you need some room for it. A deck box for 100 cards holds your deck and the leftovers.

October 30, 2026 is when the first Cyberpunk TCG pre-release weekend kicks off, with the same kits they cracked at the Creator Invitational in Warsaw.

Sources

• Creator Invitational, livestream recording: YouTube
• WeirdCo blog, Creator Invitational Recap: cyberpunktcg.com/blog/ci-recap
• WeirdCo blog, Sealed Primer: cyberpunktcg.com/blog/sealed-primer
• WeirdCo blog, event announcements: cyberpunktcg.com/blog/eo-announcements
• ICv2, Cyberpunk TCG Retail Edition Incoming: icv2.com
• Comprehensive Rules: api.netdeck.gg
• Card database: api.netdeck.gg/api/cards/cyberpunk