Cyberpunk TCG Night City Brawl and Showdown Prizes

Before anyone plays for a World Championship invite in Chicago, local stores get to crown their own champions. The Night City Showdown window opens on 13 November 2026 — one week after Welcome to Night City goes on sale — and closes five days before the Regional starts.

The two biggest blanks in our Organized Play breakdown were what a Night City Brawl kit contains and what a Showdown actually pays out. WeirdCo filled in both in September: the Brawl on 11 September, the Showdown on 16 September, then the Pre-release Kit on 23 September and round counts for all three in the Tournament Rules on 25 September. The official card database already carries every one of those promo cards as its own set: Night City Brawl S 1 with 37 printings, Night City Showdown S1 with 5, and Pre-Release Retail with 11. Everything below was checked against the database on 28 September 2026.

Three store events in five weeks

The Showdown row is the one that changes plans. WeirdCo's Organized Play page describes Showdowns as usually running "once per store, per set, toward the end of each set cycle," then adds that Welcome to Night City gets "an additional Night City Showdown window, taking place shortly after the game's retail release." That extra window is 13 November to 6 December. So the first set gets two Showdown windows rather than one, and the first opens a single week after retail.

The window also closes on 6 December, five days before the Chicago Edgerunner Open starts on 11 December. Anyone holding a Regional badge can fit a store Showdown in first.

What is in a Night City Brawl kit

Brawls are the weekly constructed rung, and WeirdCo is supplying the prizes to every approved Organized Play store. Per the 11 September preview, each Night City Brawl kit contains:

That is eight Participation packs for every Champion pack. What WeirdCo has not published is how often a store receives a kit or how many packs it should hand out per event — the preview gives kit contents, not an allocation rule.

The database confirms the structure exactly. Night City Brawl S 1 holds 37 printings: numbers 001 to 018 are the eighteen pool cards, 019 to 036 are the same eighteen a second time, and 037 is a third Maman Brigitte. WeirdCo's own Brawl Champ render of Secondhand Bombus carries collector number 023 — Bombus is 005 in the first run, plus eighteen — and its Judge render of Maman Brigitte carries 037. That points to 019 to 036 being the Champion-stamped run, and it makes Maman Brigitte the only card in the set with three Brawl printings.

The 18-card Brawl pool, sorted

Base rarity is the card's rarity in Welcome to Night City Retail boosters. "Also in" lists the two retail starter decks, Embracing Power (EP) and The Heist.

Four things fall out of that table.

Red is short. Yellow, Green and Blue get five cards each. Red gets three, so a Red player has fewer cards in the pool for their own colour than anyone else.

No Legends, and almost no chase rarities. The eighteen split 9 Units, 5 Programs and 4 Gear. By base rarity it is 6 Commons, 8 Uncommons, 2 Rares and one Epic (Jackie Welles: Ride or Die Choom), plus Minotaur. This is a premium-treatment layer on playables, not a second route to the set's highest rarities — which fits WeirdCo's promo pledge that promos will only ever be variants of widely available cards.

Eight of the eighteen are starter-deck cards. Minotaur, Satori and Corpo Security are in Embracing Power; Secondhand Bombus, Mandibular Upgrade, Delamain Cab, Dying Night and Floor It are in The Heist. If your first constructed deck is a $29.99 starter, a Brawl pack can hit a card already in your list.

Minotaur is the interesting one. It is one of the eleven cards you cannot pull from a booster — until now its only printings were the two Embracing Power starter decks and the Arasaka demo deck. The Brawl promo is the first route to it outside that deck. It still has no booster printing, so the eleven-card list stands, but the pledge's wording covers this exactly: promos are variants of cards in "Booster Packs and/or Starter Decks."

How a Brawl actually runs

You need your own constructed deck — exactly 3 Legends plus a 40-to-50-card main deck, inside your per-colour RAM ceiling — a six-die set, and a cyberpunktcg.com account linked to Melee. Decklists are not required at store level, though section 2.1.3 lets a store require one.

The round count is where WeirdCo's own documents disagree. The 11 September Brawl preview says the number of rounds "will depend on the number of players in the tournament, and will scale" to find a winner. The Tournament Rules published two weeks later say the opposite in section 3.3: Pre-release and Night City Brawl events "should always be 3 rounds, regardless of attendance." The newer document is the reference for judges and stores, so expect three rounds — but it is worth knowing the preview says otherwise.

Match format is the store's call. The preview recommends best-of-3, which under the Tournament Rules means 50-minute rounds and a 7-card sideboard (Appendix D.1). A store may instead run best-of-1. Section 1.2.1 allows 30-minute best-of-1 rounds with three minutes of pre-sideboarding, and Brawls and Pre-releases can also use "Quick" best-of-1 (Appendix C.2.2): one 30-minute game with no sideboard. Only the Quick format lets you skip the sideboard, so check the event listing before you build.

Sleeves are the second place the rules argue with themselves. Section 2.1.5 says sleeves are not required at store-level events except Showdowns. Appendix D.1, the constructed format rules, says decks "must be sleeved with opaque standard-sized card sleeves." Bring sleeves and the argument never happens.

What a Night City Showdown pays out

Showdowns are the top of the store ladder. Any approved Organized Play store can apply to host one per window, and WeirdCo says retailers were emailed application instructions directly. Prizing comes in a Showdown kit, and the 16 September preview breaks it down by finish:

WeirdCo does not say whether the bands stack — whether a Top 4 finisher also receives the Top 8 card, for instance — so do not assume it.

The database's Night City Showdown S1 set holds exactly five printings — Sandevistan at 001, 003 and 005, Adam Smasher at 002 and 004 — which matches the kit's five treatments one for one: three Sandevistans (non-foil, foil, Judge) and two Adam Smashers (foil, Champion). WeirdCo's renders pin down two of them: 004 is the one wearing the SHOWDOWN CHAMP stamp, and the Judge Sandevistan is numbered 005. The database records no finish for any printing, so which of 001 and 003 is the foil Sandevistan is not something the data can tell you.

The trophy card needs three Yellow Legends

The two Showdown cards ask very different things of a deck.

Sandevistan is a Green Cyberware Gear: cost 3, RAM 3, +2 power, "At the end of your turn, ready this Unit or Legend." An Uncommon in boosters and already in the Embracing Power starter deck. RAM 3 means a constructed deck needs two Green Legends to run it.

Adam Smasher: Metal Over Meat is a Yellow Unit: cost 9, RAM 6, power 15, and its whole text is "{Play} Defeat all other Units." An Epic in boosters, with an Iconic printing (#160) on top. RAM 6 is the highest value in the set, and — as the RAM guide works out — every Legend that prints a RAM value prints 2, so the only way to reach 6 in Yellow is three Yellow Legends. The database lists six Yellow Legends, and one of them, Viktor Vektor: Sit Down and Relax, has no booster printing: it comes in The Heist starter deck or as a random box topper.

So the Showdown's headline prize, the card on the champion's playmat, is one that a two-colour or three-colour constructed deck cannot legally put in its main deck at all. That is not a complaint about the prize. It is a fact to know before you decide what you are playing for: the Top 8 and Champion copies are playable only in a mono-Yellow list.

Showdown rules: sleeves and sideboards

Showdowns are the one store event the Tournament Rules treat as a small taste of competitive play, and a few requirements follow from that:

• Sleeves are required (section 2.1.5), unlike other store events.
• Decklists are "not required but highly encouraged," and a store may require them.
• No Quick best-of-1 option. Quick matches are only allowed for Pre-releases and Brawls (Appendix C.2.2), so a Showdown deck needs its 7-card sideboard.
• Swiss rounds scale with attendance, and a top cut is optional. The Tournament Rules recommend a Top 4 at 9 to 16 players and a Top 8 at 17 to 32-plus.

The kit is sized for 32 participants, which is the top of the 17-to-32 bracket. Run that bracket in full — five Swiss rounds at 50 minutes, then three top-cut rounds at 75 — and it adds up to 475 minutes of round clock, just under eight hours before deckbuilding, breaks or pairings. Plan the day accordingly.

The Pre-release kit swapped four Legends

Pre-releases run 30 October to 1 November, and the format is the same sealed format the Beta Events used — the sealed deck rules cover the build, and the Tournament Rules now add that sealed decks may run any number of copies of a non-Legend card, and that opened cards left out of the deck can serve as a sideboard in best-of-3 events. What changed is the kit. Per the 23 September preview, a Pre-release Kit contains six Welcome to Night City Retail boosters, three random Legends, a Gorilla Arms promo and a full six-die set. The Legends and the Gorilla Arms carry a foil "WTNC 2026" stamp that WeirdCo says is exclusive to Pre-release kits.

The Legend pool is not the Beta pool. Six Legends carry over; four are swapped out:

The four additions are not random. They are the four FIXER Legends that share one template — a CALL that says "Choose one effect" between a small effect and Draw 1, then a Spend ability that changes a Gig's value — the pattern the keywords breakdown picked out of the Call-and-Spend pairings. And they are one per colour: Dexter is Red, Muamar Yellow, Padre Green, Wakako Blue.

The swap shifts the pool in three measurable ways, all read off the database's Pre-Release Beta and Pre-Release Retail sets:

That last row matters in play, not just on paper. Only a Legend with a printed cost can be played to the field — Comprehensive Rules 4.5.3 bars the null-cost ones — and all four additions are null-cost. With Jackie Welles: Mama's Favorite (cost 6) gone, seven of the ten possible kit Legends can never be played to the field and do their work through abilities such as Call and Spend.

The kit promo changed too. The Beta kit's Mantis Blades was a 1-cost Red Gear for +2 power. Gorilla Arms is a Yellow Cyberware Gear, cost 4, RAM 3, +3 power: "The first time this Unit steals 1 or more Gigs each turn, steal a rival Gig with a value not shared by a friendly Gig." It is a Common in boosters. RAM does not apply in sealed, so the only question is whether Yellow is one of your three colours.

Two practical notes from WeirdCo's own pages. Events are now listed directly in the cyberpunktcg.com store locator, which links through to Melee for registration. And the convention calendar lists an on-site Pre-release tournament at Lucca Comics & Games (28 October to 1 November).

What is still unpublished

• Brawl kit frequency. How many kits a store receives, how often, and how many packs go out per event.
• Whether Showdown prizes stack across finish bands.
• Which Sandevistan printing is the foil, 001 or 003. The database carries no finish field.
• The second Showdown window's dates. WeirdCo says only "early next year," with details in 2027.
• The Judge program. The Showdown preview says details on how to qualify as a Judge arrive before the first Showdown window; the Tournament Rules' penalties appendix is still a placeholder.
• Pre-release Kit pricing. The 23 September preview lists contents, not a price.

Quick Action Checklist

• Ask your store now whether it applied for a Showdown kit. Hosting needs an application, and each store gets one Showdown per window. The first window runs 13 November to 6 December.
• Build your Showdown deck with a 7-card sideboard, and sleeve it. Showdowns cannot use the no-sideboard Quick format, and sleeves are required.
• Check each Brawl listing for its match format before deciding whether you need a sideboard (only Quick best-of-1 drops it), and expect three rounds whatever the turnout.
• Want to play the Adam Smasher prize, not just frame it? It is RAM 6, so it needs three Yellow Legends.
• At the Pre-release (30 October to 1 November), expect Fixer Legends. Four of the ten possible kit Legends are the null-cost Call-and-Spend Fixers, and River Ward and Judy Álvarez are no longer in the pool.
• Starter-deck owners: eight of the eighteen Brawl promos are cards already in Embracing Power or The Heist, including the booster-less Minotaur.