Top 50 Nod Decks: Buggies up! -- February 2020

Every month, I analyze the decks of the Top 50 Nod and GDI players in Rivals. This is the February 2020 issue for Nod. Here's the GDI variant.

You can find the raw data here, including a full list of the decks including nicknames. The average deck has a level of 14.4, 2.0 infantry units, 1.9 vehicles, 1.7 air units and 0.4 Tech units. 35 of the top 50 decks employ exactly 2 infantry, whereas the diversity of vehicle and air numbers from 1-3 is significantly larger.

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. Fanatic decks had a 3% 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. Fanatic decks had 0.1 lower levels compared to the average)

More used compared to January

• Cyber Wheels +14 points to 42%.
• Buggy +8% to 20%.There's a wide range of decks employing the Buggy: 3 Inferno decks (possibly inspired by VictorBansemer), 3 Avatar decks, a Tick Tank deck, 3 Shade decks. It's attractive to some players as there's relatively few Tanks around, as it can be quite strong for the first missile in general, and as it provides a good option against Missiles when there's a Razorback hovering over them. 
• Oxanna +8% to 38%. Tech decks, Inferno decks, Marauder decks and some Fanatic Aggro decks employ this commander.

Less used compared to January:

• Shade -8 points to 34%. This might look odd, as the majority of the February season was pre-nerf.  And indeed, I'm pretty sure that 2-3 weeks into the season, there were much more Shade decks in top Tiberium. One explanation is that especially Shade users enjoyed these weeks before the nerf, and it was some lower level Shade users who used the opportunity to climb into the Top 50 for once. Near the end of the season, with more people in Tiberium, their lower levels would not carry them as far. And then, the Shade nerf made things worse. 
• Venom -8 points to 30%. The Shade/Venom combo isn't as dominant anymore, and with lots of Strealth Tanks around, Venoms aren't that attractive.
• Chem Trooper -8 points to 12%. I believe the Chem Trooper is still strong in the current meta: Chem/Stealth Tank/Laser Drone has good play against Razorback, and very good play against Fanatic Aggro. Shade was nerfed. So I think this is a mix of "fashion" (in Sep-Nov, the Chem Trooper deck was all the rage) and the connoisseurs of Base destruction style could switch to Shade/Seth or Solomon.

Players to watch:

• AgentShadow got rank 1 with a L12.1, which is just insane. He employs a Fanatic Aggro deck with Stealth Tank and Shade. If yo want to understand why Fanatics are good, watch him win games against L13-L15 with building lots of L11 Fanatics.
• VictorBansemer, if you like seeing a top-tier player utilize Infernos. He also streams regularly.
• lessqq, if you like seeing a really strong player utilize Confessor/Basilisk for the late game. Streams as well, but not that often Rials.

Number of Games: I also added data on the total number of GDI wins and the sample size of each deck. That way you can see if people played a single deck, or many different decks in a season. Some simple view on this data: ckm111 isn't just an innovator, he also is a grinder: 747 Nod wins for him in February! He's followed by the 4 Horsemen of the Shadoalypse nickcool, LukoZade, CrazyPsychopath and dukeofearl, who racked up 530-650 wins each.

Deck Switchers: ckm111 had 164 games with his "main" Tick Tank deck, but this was just 12% of his total Nod wins. taiga2, dukeofearl, and Nukin also had no single deck that racked up more than 20% of their Nod wins.

Single-Deck Players: blitz, Noid Hex, shuukit, AgentShadow and GGGG all played more than 90% of their wins with their main deck. 4 of these went into the Top100. Mastering one deck might help if you want to grind a lot in a season.

13lade Tiers: Beyond the data on what the Top 50 play, I also recommend to check out 13lade's video on what he thinks are the strongest units and commanders in Rivals currently.

I also applied 13lade's tiers to the Top50 decks by giving each deck a score according to each unit's tier:

• S is 0 points
• A is 1 point
• B is 2 points
• C is 3 points
• D is 4 points

From this, I can give each deck a score. The lower the score, the better the units in the deck according to 13lade. Of course, deck composition and balance are huge, so the lowest number isn't necessarily the best deck. I still thought this would be fun to look at. I chose this score as the default sorting of the raw data (see column A) this time. Some notes:

• nickcool's Fanatic - Wheel, Bikes, Stealth Tank - Shade, Phantom - Seth is the peak agglomeration of strong units with a 13lade score of 6 (one S, rest A)
• CrazyPsychopath's Shade/Seth base buster scored 7.0, Lasers as the single B.
• AgentShadow's Oxanna variant pulled him "down" to 7.5
• Just as with GDI, taiga2 also has the "weakest powered" unit selection for Nod with Kane - Lasers, Maraders - Buggy, Stealth Tank - Venom, Banshee and scores 16.5. 
• Good meta decks range up to 11 (Fanatic Aggro, Jade Chem)

Here's the GDI analysis for February