Meta Report & Balance Update: 16/09/2026

If you want to jump right to the balance update, click here

Meta Report

Welcome to our first meta report. We want to give players some insight into the thought process and data behind balance decisions. We don’t want to ‘give players all the answers’, as we have seen some amazing discussion around balance, deck building, and new tools, which we want to encourage rather than quash. There’s plenty of discussion over in our Discord, and we encourage you to check it out.

We do, however, want to give some more detail and explanation behind the current state of the meta.

This report was taken at the end of the ‘Rise of the Duskborn’ season, so uses data from the whole of that season.

We evaluate a wide range of data points from players at all skill levels, but for the top end of balance we focus mainly on the most competitive players: those above CL 1000 and Rank 100. We then look at PvP win rates and card usage rates.

At this level of play, we see Gangrel consistently overperforming. In previous seasons, the most powerful cards within a meta archetype will gain high win rates, but we've never seen a single archetype dominate the win rate rankings as much as Gangrel have over the last two seasons.

The balance problem with Gangrel is that, generally, the whole deck slightly overperforms, as it is particularly well equipped to utilise core game scoring (since they have lots of cards to score both Prince and Knight points, while also control enemy plays defending with solid Power). Most other decks have to supplement their scoring with vulnerable points-generating cards.

However, generally their stronger cards are strong in subtle ways (i.e. value from Haji, massive card advantage from token generators, ability to reach spaces from low-cost tokens, etc.) the power of them is not always easy to feel.

Two indicative examples of this hard-to-perceive strength are Clive Crawford (55.9%) and R.O.U.S. (56.2%). These cards are not archetype-defining, they aren’t splashy, but they are efficient, and over many games this translates to increased win rates.

This makes it a challenging archetype to balance, as no one card is necessarily drawing attention or pushing its win rate, but rather the whole archetype is innately strong. It is an important part of the meta however, and the overall health of the meta would be harmed if the archetype became unviable.

Win rate data

To put some data to this, at the end of the ‘Rise of the Duskborn’ season, 18 of the top 19 cards by win rate were Gangrel (Rat-Eater is an honorary Gangrel for this stat), with the highest sitting at a 56.2% PvP win rate and the lowest of these at 53.7%.

For context, anything above a 55% PvP win rate is considered a balance issue. Back when the very strong Malkavian cards were at their peak, one or two of them reached ~57% win rate, but most others were spread out.

The elephant in the room: Archibald Rothwell. Ultimately, this card was released as dedicated swarm/rush hate, to give slower decks tools to protect key spaces when they are getting overwhelmed. He was very over tuned and is in need of addressing, but did this translate to win rate?

Not really. He currently has a 52.4% win rate, a fair bit lower than any of the Gangrel cards he was designed to counter. He does, however, have a very high usage rate. While that does have a normalising effect on win rate, this is still lower than would have been expected.

How are other archetypes faring?

Elitists are performing fairly well, as they have enough staying power and scoring potential to overcome significant point differences. As an example, Lady Gloria is currently at a 52.8% win rate.

The new thin-blood archetype has seen some success, with cards like Kelsey Griffin boasting a 53.5% win rate, and no thin-bloods dropping below a 51% win rate, they are slightly boosted by locations from the Rise of the Duskborn season so we'll continue to monitor how the archetype beds in.

Other keystone cards are struggling to maintain a decent win rate. Some examples:

• Justicar Parr - 51.6%

• Madame Tessier - 49.1%

• Elizabeth Dunsirn - 49.8%

• Amelie - 48.8%

Usage rate data

Usage rate reflects the number of times a player starts a game with that card relative to the total number of games played.

The most used card is Tim Holdsworth, who exploded his way into 37.3% of all decks played, followed closely by Ms Harriot at 29.0%.

Some popular heavy-hitters are high in usage rate for Elitists, with Archibald Rothwell at 25.48% and Stephen Fane at 26.1%.

Murder and Violent have both seen decent popularity.

This wraps up our first meta report. We hope these insights were interesting and give some context to our upcoming balance pass.

Balance Pass

Archibald Rothwell

Was: 4/0 Ability: “While in play: This has +2 Power for each enemy card.

Change: “While in play: This has +1 Power for each enemy card and +1 for each enemy Beast.”.

This change is a major nerf to Archibald’s overall usability and general over-tuned state, but a smaller nerf to his matchup against Beast decks. His role is intended to be a hate-piece, but he was a massive problem when he was the best 4-cost in the game, while also hating on a specific archetype. Now there is a lot more opportunity cost to running him, and he gives Gangrel decks more choice of counterplay since not every card in the deck has the Beast tag. Being much worse against non-Beast should lower his usage rate and make running him a more nuanced choice.

Known Issue

In the future, we will update him to be able to be debuffed and stolen from without resetting his Power, but this is a more technical change due to how ‘While in play’ effects resolve.

Stephen Fane

Was: 5/8 Ability: “On Reveal: If this is Prince or Knight, gain +3 Power."

Change: 5/8 → 5/7

Stephen Fane was essentially a 5/11 with little-to-no downside since you’d almost always want him in a scoring space anyway. Because of this he sees very high usage rate and we want to put him into a more balanced position.

Roland Heffé

Was: 3/6 Ability: “While in play: Your Seduced cards have +2 Power.”

Change: 3/6 → 3/5 Ability: “While in play: Your Seduced cards have +3 Power.”

When we previously adjusted Roland to a 3/6 we wanted to give a solid boost to Seduce decks as they were struggling to take root in the meta. However, in doing so he became the best 3-cost in terms of raw stats! This was a mistake and we’re correcting that now, but also making him better deliver on his original gameplay design.

Ms Harriot

Was: 5/5 Ability: “On Reveal: Create a Street Dog (Beast) on an enemy Pawn on the opponent’s side."

Change: 5/5 → 5/4

Ms Harriot has an exceptionally high usage rate. She provides a huge amount of utility for multiple archetypes, ultimately her having decent Power as well made her too easy of a choice to include in a wide variety of decks.

Mother Everly

Was: 4/2 Ability: “On Reveal: Create a Rat (Beast) in each empty connected space."

Change: 4/2 → 4/0

We’ve tried a lot of different versions of changes to this card internally. It feels a lot worse to play at 5-cost, and nerfing the number of Rats spawned has little effect unless you go to extremes. Ultimately, while she is rarely able to hold the space on her own, Power being 0 now means she’s vulnerable to incidental control effects like Bruno, Agent S and Vena, which should give your opponent a few more choices in counterplay.

Cathy Carmine

Was: 4/6 Ability: “After this wins a Conflict: Gain +4 Power."

Change: 4/6 → 4/5

Cathy Carmine, when paired with Haji, is a 3/6, putting her in line with the overtuned Roland. With the ability to jump up to a 3/10 after she wins a Conflict, this presents a massive issue in locking down mid-game plays. While she does have decent counterplay, it often feels too easy to push her stats up to an unbalanced state.

Rat-Eater

Was: 2/2 Ability: “On Reveal: Discard your lowest cost card and create a Rat in up to 2 empty spaces."

Change:  "On Reveal: Discard your lowest cost card and create a Rat an empty space."

Rat-Eater has been a big contributing factor to Gangrel decks’ high win rate for a while. The ability to get 3 Beast cards on board for 2 Blood presents a couple of major balance issues: this is simultaneously a huge burst of scoring potential, a lot of flexibility in terms of filling board spaces, and a 3 Blood discount on Manfred. With cards like Clive Crawford, you’ll often end up with more low-cost cards than you can play, so the ‘downside’ of only gaining 1 card advantage is negligible compared with the acceleration you get from this.

Manfred

Was: 9/10 Ability: "This costs 1 less for each of your Beasts in play. (minimum of 1)"

Change: 9/10 → 10/10

Manfred, when played with nothing other than Mother Everly, is immediately the best 5-cost on raw stats (now that Stephen Fane has been adjusted) and is capable of scaling to be even more efficient. Ultimately to make this play pattern just a little bit slower we’re increasing his Blood-cost, rather than making him weaker.

Haji Wahyuni

Was: 3/5 Ability: "While in Play: Your Beasts in hand cost 1 less. (minimum of 1)"

Change: 3/5 → 3/3

Haji is one of the best deck-wide discount effects in the game, giving you a 1 Blood discount on a large portion of your deck, which no other archetype gets access to in the same way (while Tremere do, it’s their core archetype rather than a support piece). On top of this, having very good Power made him a problem, so we've reduced his Power to make him more vulnerable to disruption.

Ian Dunsirn

Was: 7/3 Ability: "While in Play: This has +2 Power for each card Murdered this game."

Change: 7/3 → 7/5 "When a card is Murdered: Gain +2 Power. (Wherever this is)"

Ian was meant to be a good Power-scaling card for Murder decks to take scoring spaces late game, but ultimately would often fall a little short of the Power needed to make him worth playing, so is getting a bit of a bump in Power. We also found the templating on his ability to be a little hard to calculate, so we’ve updated how he gains Power. Ultimately he still gains the same amount of Power in the same way from his ability, but you can now see his true Power value when he’s in hand.

Murat Kazan

Was: 3/4

Ability: "When an Acolyte is murdered: Score 2 Points."

Change: "When an Acolyte is murdered: Score 3 Points."

Murat giving you fewer points than Elizabeth, while also being more restrictive in his targeting, made him a slightly undesirable choice for deck building even in situations where he should shine. So we’ve adjusted the number of points he gives to open up more interesting choices.

Ethan

Was: 2/0 Ability: "When you Defeat an enemy card: Turn it into a Skin-bound Book and add it to your hand. (Once per turn)"

Change: 2/0 → 2/2

Ethan has a fun effect, but ultimately was far too vulnerable to any disruption. We were worried about the potential control power of his effect, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get good use from it, so he has a bit more Power to keep him on board longer.

Ron Queen

Was: 3/1 Ability "While in Play: The Prince cannot give or receive Support in Conflict."

Change: 3/1 → 3/3

Ron Queen suffered from a similar issue to Ethan: a fun effect, useful in the right circumstances, but very vulnerable to disruption. We’ve also given him more Power to make him a little bit more defensible.

Joseph

Was: 6/2 Ability: “While in play: Double the Power of all cards with 10 or more Power. (after all other effects)”

Change: 6/2 → 5/4

Joseph seems like a fun and exciting card to build around, but ultimately he ends up being too slow and easy to disrupt. We like the aspect of counterplay in this card affecting both players, but since he has this built-in downside he’d be more viable at a lower Blood Cost, and with a tiny bit more Power to keep him on board.

Nick Locke

Was: 3/3

Ability: "On Attack: If the enemy card was played this turn, gain +4 Power."

Change: "On Attack: If the enemy card was played this turn, gain +5 Power."

Nick Locke’s effect is theoretically very powerful, but the risk of whiffing is ultimately too much for the payoff. We like the mind games this card opens up, so rather than diminish the risk, we are increasing the payoff to make the trade-off more interesting.

Lt Chamkaur Gupta

Was: 3/7

Ability "On Reveal: Donate 2 Power to the highest Power enemy card."

Change: 3/7 → 4/10

Lt Chamkaur was made to fill a similar role to Ivy du Pont and Nelson: an over-statted card to be paired with Mr Kaufman, but at a lower Blood Cost. However, due to not curving out well with Kaufman and having a smaller total payoff, he saw no real play or wins. We wanted to keep the ability, as it offers a fun design space in ‘good stats with a downside’, but make him curve out better and offer more of a payoff.

Vena Danube

Was: 3/1 Ability: "End of Round: Seduce a connected enemy card with less Power than this."

Change: 3/1 → 3/3

Vena suffered from similar issues to Ethan and Ron, in that they could be good in theory, but are far too easy to disrupt and too hard to keep on board. Vena’s Power has a big impact on her effect, and since Seduce is still a little undertuned as an archetype, we wanted to give them a strong engine to build into the gameplan.

Father Azriel

Was: 9/3 Ability: "While in play: This has +5 Power for each of your connected Acolytes."

Change: 9/3 → 9/6

Father Azriel suffered a similar issue to Ian: too little Power to work in the role of a ‘big end-game card’, so we’ve given him a good deal more Power to amplify that role.

Olympia Fairfax

Was: 8/14 Ability: "While Prince: You score Double Points."

Change: Tags: Vampire, Elitist → Vampire, Elitist, Violent

Olympia Fairfax was originally meant to also be Violent, so we’ve rectified that now.

We’ve reworded Lawrence’s ability to make it clearer that his discount is part of his on reveal effect, and not ongoing:

Lawrence

Was: 2/3 Ability: "On Reveal: Return the highest cost card in your discard pile to hand. Cards in your discard pile cost 2 less (minimum of 1)."

Wording Change: "On Reveal: Reduce the cost of all cards in your Discard pile by 2 (minimum of 1), then return the highest cost card in your Discard pile to hand."

Bug Fix:

Fixed a bug causing Fitzwilliam Hardy’s Power to scale beyond the correct value.

Thank you

🩸The Clans of London Team