Basic deck construction principles for Rivals (Nod + GDI)

Newer players, or experiences players who want a change, often ask for new deck ideas, or what the current "meta deck" is. In this article, I want to cover deck construction rather than to tell you what "the best deck" for Nod or GDI is. The reason for that is that through balance changes, and shifts in the meta, the answer for "the best deck" is not a singular one and will change over time.

Fundamental principles about deck construction are:

1. You need at least one counter for each unit type (infantry, vehicle, air)
2. Ideally, you want multiple counters for the same unit type from different armor types. For example, you want an infantry unit that is good against infantry, and a vehicle unit that is good against infantry. Reasons for this:
• Being able to hard-counter. Opponent has Flame Troopers? Your own Flame Troopers can counter them (they are a soft counter), but not too effectively (especially in offense). Your Cyber Wheels on the other hand are a hard counter: They deal most damage against infantry, and are a vehicle, which takes little damage from Flame Troopers.
• Being able to react to what the opponent has on the field. Say your opponent has a Chem Buggy and 2 Laser Squads on the field. You can build Militants against this, but the Chem Buggy can kill them quickly. If you can build Venoms, which can't be attacked by Chem Buggies, you have a potentially better option.
3. Ideally, you want counters at different price points. Say you have two units for a generally similar purpose, it's good if one is cheaper and one is more expensive. This has two reasons:
• General flexibility. If every opponent's Rifleman always forces you to build Flame Troopers, you spend 40 to counter 10. If you also have Wheels in the deck, you can counter the Rifles for 10 Tiberium of your own.
• Accelerating Tiberium Income. Throughout the game, Tiberium income accelerates. That means it's useful to have cheap units especially for the early game. And it's useful to have some way to spend your money on more powerful units later in the game. Yes, you can always counter a Flame Trooper with 2 Rifles cost-efficiently (40 vs 20 Tiberium), but usually the Pop Cap (limit to units on the field at the same time)
4. You need to understand the pace and goal of your deck. What is your win condition, especially against very different decks? 
• Do you need to win the first two nukes against a Tech deck? Then you need a lot of flexibility with cheap units to dominate the early game. This can speak for taking in both Militants and Cyber Wheels into your deck as cheap 10 Tiberium infantry counters.
• Or does your deck (need to) allow you to fight for a third Nuke against strong units the opponent might have? That is a reason to include a strong enough counter for late game units, e.g. you might struggles against Zone Troopers and Cyborgs if your only anti-infantry options are Militants and Cyber Wheels.
• Or do you even want to prolong the game because you believe you have the better end-game composition? That might mean that your endgame unit is a great counter against even multiple unit types, such as Mammoth Tanks against vehicles and infantry. And it might mean that you outside of this unit want to be able to defend and stall with cheap units to save up for your Mammoth.
5. You need to understand what good & bad units (and commanders) are. Yes, generally, the developers try to balance the game to make every unit useful. But this will never be perfect for a number of reasons:
• Balance changes like the most recent one (this post is from July 2019) can make units stronger or weaker every month.
• Certain units might be strong against inexperienced players. This often means that they are bad against strong players, because they need to be balanced for all players. An example would be Scarabs, which can feel scary for new players, but are generally seen as one of the worst units in the game at high-level play.
• To get an idea for weaker or stronger units (and maybe get inspiration for specific deck ideas), you can check my monthly Top 50 reports, where I analyze the decks of the Top 50 players in the ladder, and which units they play how frequently. You can find the July 2019 versions here: Nod, GDI. You can find the latest version in the side bar.
• A key aspect of "good" is "maneuverability", which can be broken down to:
• Speed: Allows you to quickly capture / contest pads. It allows you to quickly disengage from an unfavorable matchup (e.g. Scorpion Tank running away from Missile Troopers). It allows you to quickly reposition units (e.g. swap two adjacent units) to let them deal with the right opponent units (e.g. you switch your Bikes and Missile Squad to allow the Bikes to attack the opponent Chem Buggy whilst protecting your Missile Squad from it)
• Attack Type: Most units need to stop to fire. Some units like the Pitbull and Tanks can fire while moving. This ability is called "Raider". It allows you to maneuver more without losing your shots (if you maneuver a lot with, say, Flame Troopers, they won't make much damage).
• Air/Hover: Can the unit hover over lakes, fly over rocks?

An illustration of the accelerating Tiberium income throughout a match, in Tiberium / second

Let's apply these principles in practice to a Nod deck!

1. We want two good counters against Infantry, Vehicles and Air.
2. Our opening buildings (Infantry & Vehicles) ideally contain a counter against each, so we can counter early all game threats. This automatically means we also have counters to all unit types from two different buildings.
3. The counters should be at different price points, but all be rather not that expensive, as we want to play with a single harvester.

This gives us:

• Infantry: Laser Troopers (20 Tiberium, good against Air and Vehicles), Flame Troopers (40 Tiberium, strong against Infantry)
• Vehicles: Cyber Wheels (10 Tiberium, good against Infantry and much cheaper than Flame Troopers), Bikes (30 Tiberium, good against Air and Vehicles), Scorpion Tank (70 Tiberium, strong against Vehicles)
• Air: Banshee (50 Tiberium, good against Air and Vehicles).
• Commander: Seth or Oxanna. Seth is considered better here generally, allowing you situational infantry counter and the option to take over / contest pads "remotely". Oxanna can be used well especially on the Scorpion Tank, and the Banshee.

Strengths:

• This gives you a good set of mostly cheap and mostly fast counters to all unit types. 
• It allows you to deal with all situations in the early- and mid-game.
• It still has reasonable counters against all units as long as they appear independently (e.g. you can counter Kodiaks with Banshees and Lasers, you can counter Zone Troopers with Flame Troopers etc.)

Weaknesses and how to play around them:

• You will not be strong against a good setup around a key unit like Giga, MLRS or Artillery.  This means you need to keep map control (vision of most of the map to see what the opponent is building when) and to strike quickly if the opponent tries to build such a setup.
• You will not be strong against a good late game composition (say, Zone/Disruptor). So you need to make the game fast, and try to always keep the pads charging so the game ends as quickly as possible (remember, Tiberium income accelerates throughout the game, so the player with strong late-game units will benefit from the game taking longer).

How to build variants of this deck:

• You can replace Flame Troopers with Militants. This gives you a bit more control and options in the opening moments of the game, and you save some Tiberium to e.g. get a Tank out quicker. If you do this, you have even more reason to play Seth over Oxanna, as it gives you additional anti-infantry power. This variant is popular since many months and highly viable.
• You can replace Laser Troopers with Scavengers. They are more expensive, but a bit faster and can earn you money back. The extra money isn't critical for this deck, as it has few ways to spend a lot of money. So usually this is not done, and such a replacement makes more sense in decks with more expensive units (say Inferno/Phantom or Tech)
• You can replace Cyber Wheels with Buggy. This is in today's balance not recommended. The buggy has less vision, and costs 30 instead of 10. It dies quickly against tanks and still dies vs anti-vehicle air (like Mohawk, Laser Drones).
• You can replace Banshee with Phantom. This means you have less options aginst e.g. Giga Cannon, MLRS, Artillery (but often, Banshee anyways doesn't cut it against them, set up and protected properly). And you might miss the Banshee in situations where the opponent builds many Tanks. On the upside, you get an air superiority unit that is better against e.g. Inferno or Orca Bomber.
• You can replace Militants with Fanatics. The idea is to have Fanatics die next to other units, especially Scorpion Tanks, which gives them a boost. This is then often combined with also replacing Banshee with Phantom and Seth with Oxanna. Before I get into the logic of that, better watch this video where top Rivals player 13lade explains these options in detail:

Now, your homework is to think about the same logic for GDI. What would be a good default deck that covers all bases? How could you make variants within it?

This is just a starting point for newer players. There's way more options and nuances in deck building. Just to mention some that are not covered in this post:

1. Building deck around other key ideas like Air decks with 2-3 air units, e.g. the Nod Inferno/Phantom deck variants.
2. Building decks around key anchor units like Artillery or Giga Cannon. You can watch this video on the "Airtillery" deck as an example.
3. Building decks around super units like Avatar or Mammoth (they kind of become your "win condition").
4. Different Harvester builds. This post focuses on classic "single harvester" decks. You can build two harvesters, or "situational single or dual harvester" decks. And even "zero harvester" decks are an option.
5. Impact of maps on decks, i.e. which maps are more or less suitable for certain decks. This becomes important in Tournament Play, where you know in advance which map you will play next.

If you have any feedback or questions, let me know!