Banshees at an all-time high – Top 50 Nod Decks in August 2019

Welcome to the monthly Rivals meta analysis: What units and commanders do the top 50 players in the ladder play? This is the Nod article, please find the GDI article for this month here.

• Please find the raw data here, incl. a full list of the decks including nicknames, if you want to find a player who plays a certain unit or deck.
• Average deck level was constant at 13.9 (+0.3, and higher than GDI, indicating that more players prioritize pushing their Nod deck e.g. with Cloning Vats)
• 2.1 infantry (+/-0), 2.1 vehicles (+0.2), 1.4 air (+0.1) and 0.4 (-0.3) tech units make up the average deck (changes to last month in brackets)

Now to the main data, the unit frequency. How to read the table below:

• "Frequency" is the share of Decks that run this unit or commander. First, the frequency in % over last 4 months is shown. Then, a bar chart visualizes the June frequency. Third, there is a small line chart that shows the trend over the last 4 months.
• "Δ vs average winrate" is how the winrate decks utilizing this unit/commander deviates from the average (e.g. Inferno decks had a 6% higher winrate compared to the average)
• "Δ vs average levels" is how the levels of decks utilizing this unit/commander deviate from average (e.g. decks utilizing the Inferno are 0.3 levels higher than the average)

Observations:

• Winners
• Banshees, after their cost buff, are at an all-time high of 64%
• Chem Buggy has become popular outside of Jade decks (14% to 22%, with mostly Oxanna decks employing it)
• Giga Cannon became pretty popular, from 4% to 16%
• Fanatic usage went up from 8% to 18%, and it makes appearances in Aggro decks, Giga decks and even tech decks
• Marauders made a bit of a comeback (up from 8% to 14%)
• Bike usage went up even further from 72% to 84%, likely related to the popularity of light anti-infantry air (Talon, Venom)
• Oxanna usage went up, which is a function of deck mix (Seth might be the strongest commander, but it's used mostly with Aggro decks, whereas Tech Decks, Inferno Decks, Giga Decks usually leverage Oxanna)
• Losers
• Artillery disappeared. This is a bit surpising, as it's still a strong unit, as shown by e.g. AliciaDestiny just winning the RIFLE 2 tournament with an Artillery deck
• Militant usage went down by 8 points, related to the increase in Fanatic usage
• Laser Drones expectedly dropped sharply from 32% to 12% after their hefty nerfs
• Venom usage also is down from 40% to 28%; I'd say less because it's weak, and more because other decks have become more popular. 
• Seth is down, with less standard Aggro decks being played
• Reduced play of Scavengers is also a bit surprising, considering how much play it sees in tournaments. Might still partly driven by people having their Lasers at higher levels, but that was the case a month ago even more so.

Balance & Diversity

As with GDI, balance and diversity seems in a reasonable spot.

• 8 Giga decks, most commonly with Scavengers and Banshees
• A constant 11 Jade decks despite a cost buff to Jade. Surprised me a bit, my perception was that there were more Jade decks compared to the previous months
• Less aggro decks (Seth + 2-3-1 or 2-2-2), the most common being 5 decks with Militant, Laser - Bike, Tank - Venom, Banshee
• 7 Marauder decks in a surprising variety (e.g. just 3 with Chem Buggy)
• 6 Avatar decks
• 4 Inferno decks, none of them identical

As mentioned above, it's interesting that Artillery doesn't see more play on Ladder. It's probably because it's not great on some maps, so it makes more sense in tournament play where you know the map in advance.

Interstingly, the average cost of Nod decks is at an all-time low (last 6 months 54, 48, 47, 47, 48, 46), and lower than the GDI average deck cost.

One deck I want to highlight is lessqq's unorthodox Oxanna - Scavenger - Bike, Chem Buggy, Stealth Tank - Confessor, Basilisk deck. 72% winrate with L12.5 is quite impressive. lessqq is a Twitch streamer, you can watch him play this deck for a large part of this video (I recommend to start watching at 1 hour, 57 minutes for a challenge match against a high-level Jade deck).

How many decks contain how many units of which type? This chart shows that more than 75% of decks don't use any tech, and more than half of decks use 3 vehicles. This illustrates that the "most typical" deck shape is 1 infantry, 3 vehicles, 1 air.

Jump to the GDI version of this analysis