With the Masquerade-Wintertide metagame settling in, we've got a few changes to help tune some decks that've fallen in favour, helping to keep the metagame moving in a healthy direction and moving some decks back closer to the spotlight.
A few changes have adjusted some potential outliers in the meta, helping to keep the highest ends of decks in check.
The previous SRL list saw Malady's Horrific Harvest come back to 3, and that change has been joined now by both Putrid Acidic Rain and Putrid Eruption Bloom. All of these cards saw adjustments while Mal'ady was particularly dominant in the metagame, but with the full removal of Horrix as the most problematic element of it's engine, these pieces should help to bring Mal'ady into a healthier spot.
While the archetype may still struggle to stand on it's own, these pieces will help give the deck a bit more gas, and less relience on other archetypes.
Similarly to Mal'ady, Gaia has had a fall from her peak, although she's on more solid ground at the moment. The return of That Unstoppable Feeling won't be a huge boon to her engine, but will help to provide more DCM recovery and the ability to create a bigger gap against burn focused strategies.
This should be particularly noticable against decks like Castiel where long term attrition can be difficult to maintain.
Fallen has seen some adjustments in it's available pieces, and here we have a slight adjustment to benefit it's draw package, helping to aid the various current Onoskelis archetypes including Fallen, Force Draw, and Mount Bane.
Ultimately this should be a small change in comparison to others, but it helps to keep Onoskelis, and Control decks overall, in a competitive space.
The last piece brought back, Pits Of The Outer Rim has returned as a power piece for the Boars build of Sharn Aggro. The Wartorn version of the deck has been incredibly popular for a while, with access to Orcbane Wildness as a negate, and the Visceria-Locked We Bleed For This.
With Pits being brought back a copy, we might see a bit more variation develop in Sharn lists.
One of the most notable control tools is back in the format, to help keep the format speed balanced.
Grimm Midrange has been a popular and consistent deck for a long time, and recently we've started to see Grimm Defeat pop up a bit more frequently in decks. While the on-play effect of this card has been generally too inefficient to warrant it's inclusion, it's on-mill ability is incredibly powerful at making the Grimm mill chains significantly more consistent. Additionally, the ability of Sacratum, The Grimm Pontifex to both discard Grimm Defeat to trade it in for another card, and the ability to use it's ability for free makes it drastically less clunky, and enables far more high-roll potential. This change should help to bring Grimm closer in-line, without damaging it's position in the meta.