Nod Top 50: Shades of Seth

Every month (exception December 2019), I analyze the decks of the Top 50 Nod and GDI players in Rivals. This is the January 2020 issue for Nod. You can find the GDI variant here.

You can find the raw data here, including a full list of the decks including nicknames. The Average deck level stayed constant at 14.2.

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

• "Frequency" is the share of Decks that run this unit or commander. First, the frequency in % over last months is shown. Then, a bar chart visualizes the frequency this month. A trend line illustrates the change over time, and the ppt change compared to previous month is given as a number at the end.
• "Δ vs average winrate" is how the winrate decks utilizing this unit/commander deviates from the average (e.g. the single Confessor deck had a 12 points higher winrate than the average)
• "Δ vs average levels" is how the levels of decks utilizing this unit/commander deviate from average (e.g. the single Giga deck had 2.9 levels lower than the average)

Units seeing more play:

• A whopping 42% of decks employ the Shade. Crazy stats for a new unit that usually is still heavily underlevelled, and further evidence of it's overpowered strength. Plus, it has to be said that a number of good players don't play Shade because it's too strong. 
• Seth usage climbed from 28% to 46%, as it harmonizes well with Shade decks and some of the other decks that people play around with to counter Razorback/Shade without playing these units themselves.
• Venoms up from 22% to 38% because --guess what-- they harmonize well with Shade. This combo allows air tower opener especially against Nod.
• Stealth Tank up by 12 percentage points to 28%, as it's a core answer to Razorback/Mohawk. We can for example see a variant of the "classic" Fanatic Aggro which switches in Stealth Tank for Scorpion Tank. This also allows for Banshee over Phantom, which can help as Banshee is earlier available against the OP Razorback and Shade, whilst also being less specialized than Phantom. Four strong players (13lade, GGGG, r3bb and TheCopyCatTV) play this Laser, Fanatic - WHeel, Bike, Stealth - Banshee - Seth deck
• Phantom +12 points to 52%! Phantom has been core to some of the best Nod decks before Razorback and Shade were introduced, and the current air meta unsurprisingly makes them even more attractive.

Units seeing less play:

• Attack Bikes -22 points down to "just" 72%. They were hit by a slight nerf, and by the popularity of both Shade and to a bit lesser degree Razorback/Mohawk decks.
• Laser Drones from 30% down to 10%. Why play them if you have Shade levelled up?
• Giga Cannons, from 16% to 2%, have vanished. They don't fare well against Shades...
• Chem Buggy -12%, guess why?
• Oxanna -12%. Shade has such a low reload time, it doesn't really need it. Oxanna still sees 30% play as it's versatile and useful in the three left Marauder decks, Tech decks and some Inferno decks.

Further observations:

• All-time low reached by Scorpion Tanks at just 22%. A bit sad for such a great, action-packed and micro-intensive unit.
• Shade decks have just 1% higher winrate compared to the average. Yet, this is explained by (a) many Shades still being underlevelled, (b) many of the top players declining to play Shade, (c) some players entering the Top 50 just because of Shade (i.e. they don't have the skill+level strength to be Top50 without Shade, so their winrate doesn't show the full Shade potential.
• The most active Nod players in the Top50 are exem (776 wins so far in the January season), ShadowFenix (556), one of the Koreans, and eva42 (506). 
• ShadowFenix among them is worth a mention as he has the lowest levels (11.3!) and is the single Giga player, and still has a great winrate of 72%. Possibly the winrate is pushed up as this also might be an event deck for ShadowFenix.
• As with GDI, AgentShadow also has low levels (L11.9) and still manages Top10 and a pretty good winrate of 61% for these levels.
• High deck diversity: Midnight.Nation, Bikerush and Nukin all played their most common Nod decks rare enough that it contributed less than 20% of their Nod wins. 
• KlarJK and car1286 only played one single deck.
• There's 9 decks with full L15s. The honorable mention here goes to AliciaDestiny, who reached a 98% winrate on 154 games with her "classic" Inferno deck.

Jump to the GDI analysis here.