Top 50 Nod & GDI Decks, June 2021

Greetings Commander! We have another analysis for you today thanks to Bart who gathered the data, and to shuukit for preparing it for us! Please note the last data we had gathered for us was back in Dec 2020, so some of the changes may be somewhat dramatic.

GDI

Our good friends over at the Global Defense Initiative have been sending out less core infantry (Rifles & Missiles -8%), likely due to the lack of personnel amidst the pandemic, whereas Shocks seem to be making their long awaited return (up 10%) and Grenadiers are also seeing 5x as much play at 8%. 

 

Dogs, Slingshot and Predator Tank are the stars of the War Factory, up 10%, 8% and a whopping 18%, respectively. Predator tank being the heaviest armor until tech & with tech being even more delayed in this patch and Shade significantly nerfed, this seems to make sense.

 

We're also seeing a Razorcomeback (comeback of the Razorback), which is up 12%, and Hammerheads (+18%)  to deal with all those pesky new Banshees.

Most air is down though, with the exception of Orca Bomber.

 

Tech remains more or less unchanged (with Titan seeing the largest cutback at-8%), which may suggest that the economy nerf was ineffective. However, tech is not played as much in upper tib league anyway.

Following the Strongarm nerf many people are still sticking with her (-8%), yet we are seeing many players move from Solomon (-20%) to Jackson (+18%). McNeil, everyone's favorite CM abuse commander, has also been dropped like a rock (-22%).

NOD

Nod, Brotherhood of and Glory to, has been hit by covid19 even harder than GDI, with less signups for basic volunteer Militants, which are down -14%. It seems NOD infantry are all trying to make for higher careers as Flamers (+10% parallel with GDI). But even the dropout addicts, otherwise known as Fanatics, have seen an increase (+4%) despite being nerfed again.

 

Marauders and chem troopers have only marginally increased (+2%) although their largest predator (Catship, -39%) was completely wiped from most decks (good riddance).

Nod's war factory is working overtime to pump out more wheels (+17%), more bikes (+13%) and more chem buggies (+12%). Stank is also up after a significant nerf (+9%), which shows how incredibly overpowered it was.

With Shade (-13%) receiving it's long overdue nerf Inferno is rising up to replace it (+16%).

Phantom has also been deemed less necessary at -17%.

Tech play on team red is even bleaker than with GDI, only Artillery (+2%) is seeing some play with everything else either completely absent or regressive.
On the commander front Jade remains unchanged even after the base HP increase. Seth is down -13% (apparently his ambition did find some bounds) who has been replaced for Kane (+6%) and Oxanna (+7%) almost evenly.

Player observations:

🇺🇸 Byah, whose core deck of Shocks and Predators has seen him moving up the ladder, and we see even the likes of 🇺🇸 AliciaDesinty & 🇬🇧 13lade playing Flamers again. The meta has not been as kind to other decks however, such as 🇳🇱 Maximus' signature Talon/JJT deck.

🇨🇦  Grape boy is holding on to the notorious Catship while maintaining a 89% win rate,

and 🇭🇰 54188 is doing a new movement by playing the GDI pendant to Artillery (Juggernaut).

Welp, that about wraps our analysis. Thanks for tuning in and keeping Rivals alive!

Written by Entsorger

Special thanks to Bart, shuukit & kennyemmy

Top 50 Deck Analysis November 2020

Thanks to 🇬🇧 ORO99 from Hellz Connection, we have this analysis again. The analysis is published late because of me; Oro had been very punctual and diligent. Apologies!

Nod Top 50 November 2020 (raw data)

Biggest winners:

• Scorpion Tank is up +14 ppt to 41%.  This is great news, as Tank metas are entertaining, and it shows people find ways to make tanks useful despite the Shade
• Laser Troopers up +10 ppt to 86%.  Not much to draw from it outside that fewer people play 🇺🇸 AliciaDestiny style decks that omit lasers (creating a hypothetical weakness esp when behind) for some additional power in mid / late game.
• Catalyst Gunship +8 ppt to 47%.  Function of more players levelling it up, and Catship being (too) strong.
• Militant +8 ppt to 80%, an all-time high.  Makes sense, as you want to pair Catship with it.

Biggest losers:

• Stealth Tank -10 ppt to 31%, the lowest since January.  Surprises me a bit, esp as Phantom is up only +6ppt.  So let's look in the data: There's 9 decks that play with neither Phantom nor Stealth Tank. 8 of them Banshee.  Banshee is of course not bad vs Shade/Catship decks.  The funny thing is that people switching out Stealth Tanks for Banshees could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as fewer Stealth Tanks make Banshees better.
• Marauders -8 ppt to 12%.  I think this is because the 20% in October were unreasonably high in a catship meta. On the other hand, some people have been playing Marauder pretty successfully, like 🇪🇸 Substancegiron.
• Bikes -8 ppt to 71%, the lowest since April 2019. Of the 14 decks without bikes, 8 use Buggy. only 3 Stealth Tank, and 7 Scorpion. One reason for this is that the Buggy/Scorp or Scorp/Stealth tanks with Catship/Phantom or Catship/Banshee seem pretty solid with strong players such as 🇬🇧 13lade or 🇺🇸🇩🇪 Entsorger playing them.  Just 2 people played no-warfactory decks in this set, 🇺🇸 AliciaDestiny with her Rockworm / Air deck, and 🇪🇸🇩🇪 Fortis with his long-established 3/3 Marauder/Inferno deck.

GDI Top 50 November 2020 (raw data)

Biggest winners:

• Droneswarm +18 ppt to 46%, an all-time high.  14 of 20 APC decks employ them, and they are also core to the "Solomon r3bb deck", of which we have 6 in the set.
• Orca +12 ppt to 48%, another all-time high, also core to the Suzaku APC deck.
• APC +12%, see above.  Let me say that I don't think that this deck is fundamentally overpowered. It rather has been the quintessential "allround deck" for GDI since 18 months. In the current meta, it's a great choice as it's one of the few options GDI has to keep up with Nod, esp Catship/Shade.

Biggest losers:

• Jackson -16 ppt to 24%. No unhealthy level, and the 16 points went to Strongarm (38%) and Solomon (36%) in equal parts. Solomon hit an all-time high with this.
• Razorback -12 ppt to 10%.

GDI and Nod Top 25 -- June 2020 -- Titan domination

Due to lack of time, I only looked at the Top 25 this month. If you need help to understand the structure of the table below, please refer to the previous article.

I gathered the data around noon on the last day of the June season, and I'll combine both factions in this post.

GDI Top 25 / Data

GDI Notes:

• 36% Titan is huge. That's more than any tech unit ever since Apr 2020 (Mar 2020 saw 42% Avatar for Nod). Only one Titan deck didn't use the Razorback. Most of them followed the standard pattern of Rifle, Missile - Pitbull - Razorback, Hammerhead - Titan - Liang. If you want to complain about this deck, the inventor is likely Bulgarian Rivals prodigy srpss.
• Razorback / Hammerhead growth correlates with the growing popularity of the above specific deck.
• Zone Trooper at 24% is also an all-time high. Previus Zone high was 16% in November 2019.
• Liang is up another 12%. But if we look at the April 2020 Top 25 (not Top 50), the value actually was 52% already back then. This shows that Top 25 and Top 50 is actually not a like-with-like comparison. If the goal is to derive unit strength from these frequencies, I think looking at the Top 25 is actually even better. As it's not enough to "just" have L15 to easily get into the Top25 at season-end.
• All the units less played are not that remarkable if we remove the effect of the growth in popularity of this Titan deck. Means: Talon and Jumpjets are now not actually bad suddenly, just that even more people flocked to the Razorback decks, especially the Titan variant.

Nod Top 25 / Data

Nod Notes:

• Biggest increase is in Lasers, which are now at 96%. 
• Fanatics, Wheels and Stealth Tank are up +10 / +11 / +11 points respectively, with Fanatics and Stealth Tank reaching clear all-time highs of 44% and 56% respectively.
• Chem Trooper usage is up +9 points
• This points us towards the two decks that seem most viable at high Tiberium:
• Fanatic, Lasers - Wheel, Bike, Stealth Tank - X (X most commonly being Shade, also +9 -- but Scorpion is an option) which has possibly the best Nod play against Razorback decks
• Militant, Lasers, Chem Trooper - Bike, Stealth Laser Drone, which has decent play against Razorback and very good play against Fanatic (due to Chems) and Nod in general (due to Laser Drones)
• The new Catalyst Gunship was only played by a single deck. And, as I am this player, I did it just to play around with it. It's not that great, as it's hard to build a really good deck with it. It combos well with Chem Trooper and Chuggy, but this is an expensive combo that also takes up slots in the deck, which usually means that you end up with some glaring early- or late-game hole in your overall lineup.
• Overall though, Nod has some reasonable unit and deck diversity left.
• Commander diversity is at an all-time high with 36% each for Seth and Oxanna, 20% for Jade and 8% for Kane. Many Nod decks allow to chose 2-3 different commanders with reasonable argument. And there's ok-ish decks where Kane is a good choice, as it plugs a certain weakness (e.g. certain Infantry/Air decks vs Pitbull spam, which is why I played the Cata Gunship deck with Kane)
• All air units see play, and with the exception of the Cata Gunship, at least with 12%. The least played air unit after the Gunship interestingly is Laser Drones, despite the common complaints that they are OP against Nod

New Unit: Nod Catalyst Gunship

A new unit has been released!

The basics:

• Cost 50 Tiberium
• Primary attack 
• strong against infantry (1-shots light & medium, 2-shots heavy infantry)
• weak against vehicles
• if hitting a chem cloud, triggers an explosion that is strong against both infantry and vehicles
• does not hit air
• Secondary attack every 5 seconds, creates a chem cloud
• Synergy with other units that create chem clouds, i.e. Chem Buggy or Chem Troopers

A first deck suggestion: Militant, Laser - Chem Buggy, Stealth Tank - Laser Drones, Catalyst Gunship - Commander Kane or Oxanna

Some video footage:

13lade's first review of the Catalyst Gunship

A game prominently featuring the unit's mechanics

Top 50 Nod – April 2020

Since more than a year, I regularly analyze the decks of the Top 50 Nod and GDI players in Rivals. This is the April 2020 issue for Nod. Please find the GDI variant here.

You can find the raw data here, including a full list of the decks including nicknames. The average deck has a level of 14.5, 2.1 infantry units, 2.3 vehicles (+0.4 vs February!), 1.6 air units and 0.1 Tech units. 38 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 0.2 higher levels compared to the average)

More used compared to January

• Fanatic usage is up +12 points to 36%, an all-time high
• Stealth Tank usage is up +12 points to 44%, the highest since September 2019
• Scorpion Tank +12 points to 30%, the highest since October 2019
• Inferno +12 points to 22%, an all-time high

Less used compared to January:

• Phantom -16 points to 34%, as more players opt for the Stealth Tank.
• Shade -14 points to 20%; the last issue was just shortly after the patch, so it makes sense that the nerf effect intensified
• Avatar -14 points to 0
• Venom -10 points to 20%;

Other observations:

• Air diversity is now very high, with the air unit frequencies being at 20%, 20%, 20%, 22%, 26% and 34%
• Tech usage has went down, mostly driven from Avatar and Cyborg. It doesn't feel like it though, with many of the top players playing at least some Rock Worm or other tech decks throughout the season. It's just that it's rarely the most-played deck. I.e. if we had a more complete picture of all decks used (vs the most frequent decks of each player), I think we'd see Rock Worm and Confessors more frequently than in the past.
• Commander diversity is decently high, with even Kane at 10% and Oxanna and Seth both at 36%

Players to watch:

• AgentShadow again rank 1, and now getting scarier with his L13 deck (2 months ago, it was L12.1). See a video of his Nod play below.
• Fortis with his 3 infantry, 3 air deck around Marauders and Inferno, who has the lowest deck in the Top50 at L12.9
• srpss with an impressive 88% winrate at L13.9 with his Marauder / Chuggy deck

AgentShadow vs 13lade

Game number statistics:

• Noid Hex and LukoZade both racked up more than 700 Nod wins this seaso
• samsthedog and taiga2 rotate decks so much that their most frequently played Nod decks represent just 12% / 13% of their Nod wins
• blitz, paflagon 2 and Elmoi sticking to their guns with 98%+ of their Nod wins with a single deck

13lade Tiers: If you're interested not just in this quantitative analysis of unit frequency, but also a qualitative assessment of unit strength, I highly recommend this video:

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

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.

"Shade" - New Rivals Unit for Nod

EA has announced a new unit for the Nod faction in Command & Conquer: Rivals. The Shade. You can read this directly on the EA page, but the link currently seems to work only on Mobile.

What are the key facts about this unit?

• Type: Air
• Cost: 40 Tiberium
• Speed: Fastest
• Attack: Burst attack on ground only (i.e. a bit like the GDI Orca)
• Special ability 1: Stealth (detected by Infantry, like the Stealth Tank) 
• Special ability 2: EMP discharge that is triggered by nearby units and seems to stun all air and vehicle units adjacent to the Shade

If you follow the link above, you can also see it in action in a short video. You can see there that it one-shots a GDI Slingshot, which means that it's damage isn't that far off an Orca. With higher speed compared to an Orca, and the EMP stun effect, it seems strangely strong for a unit that costs only 40 Tiberium.

We might not see it that much on ladder initially, as it's an Epic unit that is harder to get for most players. And of course, we didn't really see it in action at all, so far. But it certainly has the potential to become a strong unit in the meta game. To read what other players think, check out the discussion on Reddit.

Nod Top 50 November -- Dutch players have seen enough Bikes for a lifetime

Every month, I analyze the decks of the Top 50 Nod and GDI players in Rivals. This is the November 2019 issue for Nod. You can find the GDI variant here.

• Please find the raw data here, incl. a full list of the decks including nicknames
• Average deck level went up by +0.1 to 14.2
• Average deck composition and it's change since October can be seen in the chart below. How to read this: E.g. the big grey area in "Tech" shows that the vast majority of units had no Tech units in Oct/Nov. The Orange and Yellow areas in "Air" show that most decks have 1 or 2 air units. The small green sliver on top shows that some decks have 3 air units, which in October wasn't the case (hence the left "Oct" column has no green). 

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 June frequency, and a +/- number shows the change to the previous month. Lastly, 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. 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. decks utilizing the Marauders are 0.3 levels lower than the average)

Units with most usage gain:

• Giga Cannon +10 percentage points
• Inferno +8
• Phantom +6
• Chem Buggy +6
• Oxanna +6

Units with most usage drop:

• Marauders -8
• Stealth Tank -8
• Fanatic -6
• Seth -6

Observations

• The 3 players not playing Bikes are all Dutch (NaturalSky, Midnight.Nation and Suzaku). According to NaturalSky, this is because "Dutch players have seen enough bikes for a lifetime"
• The change in frequencies was smaller than with GDI, which makes sense as GDI had a new unit
• Despite so many people voicing concerns with "Jade ckm deck is overpowered", usage of this deck didn't grow. This might be driven by multiple factors: First, Razorback decks are strong against it. Second, people adjusted their decks and became better at playing against Jade. Third, even successful Jade players want a change (e.g. I switched to playing more Inferno for this reason). Still, there's 9 decks of this type in the top 50.
• Inferno/Phantom became more popular, 6 players now play it.
• Seth's -6 points shift to Oxanna reflects that fewer people play classic Aggro decks (there's only one classic 2-2-2 with Venom/Banshee left). Giga and Inferno are more often played with Oxanna.
• Marauder decks becoming less popular might be driven by a general growth in T2 anti-infantry in the recent months. First Snipers and Chems becoming more widespread, now Razorback. 
• Chem Buggy previously was mostly played in Marauder decks, now 6 of the 10 Chem Buggy decks don't have marauders. They are e.g. part of 3 Giga decks, and 2 Tech decks.
• Overall, the deck diversity seems very high. "Oldschool" 2-3-1 Aggro, 2-2-2 Aggro are still present with good winrates. Jade ckm, Marauder/Chuggy, Inferno/Phantom all represent popular options. Commander diversity is high. Some Tech decks are around. The Nod aggro has many variants with Fanatics vs Militants, Wheels vs Chem Buggy vs Venom. Air play is viable. Suzaku shows even Kane and no Bikes are viable.

Player highlights

• AliciaDestiny continues to be the standout Nod player with a 97% winrate on 210 games -- read our latest interview with her
• Cbpowerhouse sports an impressive 76% winrate on a L12.4 deck. He plays Fanatic Aggro (Oxanna - Laser, Fanatic  Wheel, Bike, Tank - Banshee)
• Bikerushownz shows his skill and the viability of Alicia's "Infernom" (Oxanna - Fanatic - Wheels, Bikes, Scorpion Tank - Phantom, Inferno) deck with a 89% winrate with L12.9.
• LiquidTiberium has a 81% winrate on 166 games with just L13.1. He plays Seth - Militant, Laser - Bike, Chuggy, Stealth Tank - Banshee
• paflagon 2, the best player from Turkey has "just" 50% winrate, but is on #18 with an L12.1 deck. Anyone who played him can testify that he's a standout player. Techniques he applies to beat decks with much higher levels include pop capping and base kills with Seth and Marauders. I can highly recommend to watch his replays in the app.
• KlarJK isn't just a standout player in RTL, but also in ranked/ladder. He shows that the good old Nod 2-3-1 aggro (Seth - Militant, Laser - Wheel, Bike, Scorpion Tank - Banshee) stays viable.

Thoughts on Bikes

• Bike usage dropped minimally from 98% to 94%. But they are still ubiquitous
• They also beat Pitbulls and Tanks for cost in the right circumstances
• That's why many say Bikes are overpowered and should be nerfed
• I disagree! I think Bikes are so ubiquitous more because of their versatility and necessity than being "overpowered"
• It's very hard to play without Bikes due to units such as Talon, Venom and Droneswarm, as Nod doesn't have good cheap anti air outside of Laser Troopers (slow) and Bikes
• Another aspect is that nerfing Bikes would make Tech even stronger, as Tech decks often rely on light air plus cheap infantry to stall for time
• Also, I think that claims that Bikes beat Pitbulls and Tanks are overstated. Yes, in very capable hands and with enough space, they do. But it's far from easy, and capable Tank and Pitbull players, making use of terrain, raider and blocking, can often beat Bikes for cost. Once 2 Pitbulls are stacked, it's hard for Bikes to be efficient if they don't get the perfect angle and timing. This observation might be subjective as I'm not one of the very top players in terms of skill.

Go to the Nod Top 50 analysis for November 2019

Deck Spotlight: Jade Chem Warrior Laser Drones

Since about 6 weeks, the following deck has gotten a lot of popularity:

• Commander: Jade
• Infantry: Militants, Laser Troopers, Chem Warriors
• Vehicles: Nod Bikes
• Air: Laser Drones, Phantom

What's the idea of the deck?

The core threat of the deck is that it has a lot of power to win the first nuke, and then close the game with nuking the opponent base with Chem Warrior + Jade Catalyst Missile.

Read the interview with #1 player Suzaku, where this deck also is mentioned

Phase 1: 

• Open with Militants, before or after harvester. Both viable, and opponent / map dependent. On maps with a "choke pad" in the middle (i.e. a pad where it's not easy to move in with superior numbers due to terrain), Militant before harv can be advantageous against Militant/Rifle openers.
• If there's a Militant/Rifle war, win it with clever positioning and micro. If you cannot, there's always the option to bring in a Chem Trooper. But if you do it too early against a deck that has Venom, Talon etc might mean that you cannot immediately counter the deck. So it can make some sense to stay on Militants until you have a bit of Tiberium left after building your chem.
• If the opponent is Nod, Laser Drones are very strong on the first nuke. Defensively, they can beat Bikes (except if the opponent has Alicia-like micro), and in a Chem-vs-Chem mirror, they can hold pads.
• If the opponent is GDI, more often than not you will need Bikes as second type of unit, to counter dogs, Talons, Droneswarms and Pitbull.

Phase 2: Once you on the nuke, you can either continue to play straight up, or nuke the opponent base. For that, there's two options:

• If you can get through to the opponent base with Chem Troopers, you can devastate it by making the Catalyst missile blow up on a base hex that has a Chem Cloud on it. If you get a total of 5 explosions (Clouds or Chem Troopers), a single Catalyst can take out the full half health of the base at equal levels.
• If you can't do that, you can still shoot the base with normal Catalyst missiles and your air units. It's hard to defend against it, but of course costs some time and money due to the cooldowns. That's why some players opt to build a second harvester after winning first nuke, to be able to always pay for Phantoms (good base damage and fast) and Catalyst missiles.

If you play straight up, you still have an answer against most opponent's units. Against large clumps of enemy units, or expensive Tech units, you still have the out of your Catalyst missile as a superweapon, especially if you use a Gas Cloud or Tiberium patch for a bigger explosion in the right spot at the right time.

Chem Troopers in position and a ready Catalyst missile grant defensive options even if the opponent gets their tech out. (Also see the article on how to play against Tech.)

What's good against this deck?

• On maps where snipers are viable, Sniper and Pitbull alone can win against this deck. Pitbulls can hold their own against Laser Drones, and in the course of the game also often against Bike. Stricly speaking, Bikes beat Pitbulls for cost. But in the late game, cost is not as big of an issue, and if you can stack multiple Pitbulls, their raider ability becomes stronger.
• Talons are good early game, as they beat Nod Drones and Militant/Chem. But it will be a micro battle, as they are weak against Bikes.
• An early Banshee can be strong, as it beats the Laser Drones and can hold a while against Bikes. But you need something in addition to clean up the Chem Troopers.
• Chem Buggy can win against this deck, but it's a micro war of trying to keep the enemy Laser Drones from killing your Chem Buggy before it does enough damage against Chem Troopers. I would say with most players' micro, it's easier to play this matchup against Chem Buggy than with it.
• With good timing Borca decks can win. It will of course then depend on the Phantom-vs-Borca battle.
• Inferno decks can win, but it will depend on the Phantom-vs-Phantom battles.
• GDI Fortress decks can be ok vs this, but they need to win first nuke -- which is far from easy.
• Confessors can be good against the deck. But as Confessors are generally not great, this is not too relevant in practice. If you want to play Confessors, I recommend this deck.

Watch the Deck in Action in these videos from Nukin and 13lade:

History of the deck

ckm111 was likely the first high-level player to regularly play this deck on ladder. He started using it after a hefty buff to the Laser Drones that since has been partly reverted. In the recent six weeks, strong players like the current #1 Suzaku have adopted this deck.

The reason why it's gotten popular only recently is probably a mix of ...

1. It's strength against Tech decks, which have become more popular at the higher end of the ladder since the July balance patch. Why is it good against Tech? It can win first nuke and then create the double threat of either winning second nuke, or nuking the base.
2. Nod overall is stronger than GDI, and this deck is particularly strong against Nod, as Laser Drones only really get countered by Laser Troopers (slow + killable with Chems/Militants)
3. Players started to think more about the early game and how to win first nuke. Some months ago, many people would have said that "wheels instead of militants" is far better in this deck (me included). But the option of being able to skip factory for the first nuke, mostly against Nod, is reason enough to skip Cyber Wheels.
4. The Chem Buggy nerf in September meantt hat (a) people looked for an alternative as hard-hitting anti-infantry and (b) it meant that Chem Buggies got especially worse against Chem Troopers, as they are immune to the Cloud Damage.

If you liked this article, maybe you want to check out these articles:

• Deck Spotlight: Confessor / Basilisk
• Which units and decks should I play as a beginner?
• How to play and win against Tech decks / dual harvester decks

Spotlight: lessqq's Basilisk Confessor deck

If you play Rivals in the leagues up to Masters, you will see all kinds of Tech decks -- and many of them. So much that I recently wrote an article on how to beat Tech decks.

But if you look at higher Tiberium (e.g. the Nod Top 50), you can see that "up there" basically no one is playing Tech. A notable exception is lessqq with his Confessor-Basilisk deck (currently on rank 14 with Nod).

Who is lessqq? He's a prolific Twitch streamer with more than 100,000 followers and YouTuber withmore than 100,000 subscribers (German language). Whilst he focuses on other games, he also plays Rivals since January, seemingly as a passion rather than a seriouus part of his Twitch/YouTube business.

What's his deck like?

• Starting out with a single harvester, and trying to get a second one out depending on the opponent and how the game goes. Especially against aggro decks, lessqq wants to delay the game, so might sometimes forego the second harvester until the first nuke is decided.
• Militants to open the game before or after the single harvester to scout and as a cheap unit to delay the charging of the nuke and fight enemy infantry.
• Scavengers as the cheap anti-vehicle / anti-air option. Lasers are an alternative. An upside of scavengers is the opportunity to earn some extra Tiberium (to get Tech out). Also, Scavengers can force the opponent into hard decisions, e.g. between accepting delaying the nuke and gifting lessqq some Tiberium. This can psychologically help delay the nuke compared to lasers.
• Chem Buggy as the early-/mid game counter to enemy infantry if & where the Militants don't cut it. 
• Stealth Tank as the counter to vehicles and air where Scavengers are not strong or fast enough,  or are countered (e.g. Venom, Talon).
• Confessors as a very strong anti-infantry unit that is also good against most air units. They e.g. can beat Chem Warriors, and against the current "Jade meta" deck, lessqq will try to delay the game so much that he ideally can play Confessors instead of Chem Buggy as a counter to Chem Troopers, as he knows the Jade decks have the Laser Drones against the Chem Buggy.
• Basilisk as the option against fortress decks (e.g. Giga, MLRS defended by other units), opponent heavy Tech (like Mammoth) or APCs.

I'd go out on a limb and say that besides the GDI "Air Mammoth" deck (described here), it's one of the more viable Tech decks right now. GDI has some more options e.g. with Sandstorm, but in Nod, you barely see Tech played except for Artillery in tournament games.

Below, find a sample video of how his deck plays (apologies for the mediocre sound quality). Here, lessqq plays against top Rivals player Suzaku, who commands the very deck named after him ("Suzaku APC"). 

Some notes on the game:

• A skilled Rifle vs Militant fight in the centre, that in this case benefits lessqq, as he prefers the game to go on longer.
• lessqq probably could have built his harvester one Militant earlier, and at the end of the Militant/Rifle fight got a bit popcapped whilst charging the nuke for Suzaku -- but overall, good start for lessqq, as the first nuke goes off late at 1:45m
• The first Orca doesn't get the harvester, but then a bit later gets a ton of damage done afterwards, killing a Stealth Tank and Chem  This is trademark Suzaku with this deck, he often gets so much utility out of a single Otca.
• This map is great for Strongarm because of the spot of the turret chosen at 2:39m. Yet, in this case, it's so late that lessqq alread has his Confessor/Basilisk late game combo out, against which Strongarm isn't that scary anymore.
• The rest of the game is then favored for lessqq thanks to the strong late-game combo, illustrating the general issue of Aggro decks against Tech if they don't make the game fast enough (see this guide on how to play vs Tech).

I chose this game to illustrate that lessqq can go head-to-head even against top opponents playing a strong deck on a map that fits the deck (Strongarm turret is strong on this map).  Admittedly, lessqq lost more games against Suzaku than he won in the recent session.  I selected this game for this article to show a great win with it. :)  Look up lessqq and Suzaku in the app in the Nod top rankings to see more of their games!

Top 50 Nod in October: Chem / Drones / Jade meta deck

Every month, I analyze the decks of the Top 50 Nod and GDI players in Rivals. This is the October 2019 issue for Nod. You can find the GDI variant here.

• Please find the raw data here, incl. a full list of the decks including nicknames
• Average deck level went up by +0.1 to 14.1
• Average deck composition is 2.2 infantry (+0.1), 2.3 vehicles (-0.3), 1.2 air (+0.2) and 0.3 (+0.1) tech units. In the chart below, you can see how often decks have which unit type in the deck. As you can see, the typical deck has 2 Infantry units, 3 vehicles and 1 Air unit. In contrast to last months, no deck has 3 or more air units anymore.

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 June frequency, and a +/- number shows the change to the previous month. Lastly, 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. Fanatic decks had a 5% 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 Marauders are 0.3 levels lower than the average)

Observations:

• 8 decks were the "new Jade meta deck" consisting of Militant, Lasers, Chem Troopers, Bikes, Laser Drones, Phantom and Jade
• This made Chem Warrior usage jump from 14% to 28%, Laser Drone usage jump from 12% to 26%, Phantom usage from 20% to 34%, and Jade usage from 16% to 28%
• There's calls to nerf this deck, and I tend to agree. Primarily, I'd do this by reducing Jade base damage (especially direct Catalyst missile, less the Clouds). Omeleet makes this point on reddit.
• Whilst Banshee usage dropped from 56% to 38%, Venom usage stayed constant. This makes sense as the strong Laser Drones (esp with Phantom) can take the Banshee's role. Whereas the Venom stayed popular in the 2-2-2 Aggro deck, and as a role player in some other decks.
• Bike usage increased from 86% to a record 98%. They are now often the single factory unit played, e.g. in the above-mentioned Jade deck.
• Fanatics usage stayed constant, but it's notable for it's strong win rate (5% higher than average), and it's popularity in tournaments
• Within commanders, Jade is still in third place despite the increased popularity. Oxanna is very useful for Tech decks, Giga decks, and even some aggro decks. Seth is still very powerful overall and a preferred choice for the lower-level players that make it into the Top50.
• Chem Buggy usage dropped from 30% to 14%. This might partly be driven from the nerf, and partly driven from their weakness to Laser Drones. 
• Scorpion Tank usage is at an all-time low of 36%

Click here for the GDI variant of this analysis.

Fanatics Strength and Stealth Tank Comeback -- The Nod Top 50 in September

Every month, I analyze the decks of the Top 50 Nod and GDI players in Rivals. This is the September 2019 issue for Nod. Go here for the GDI version.

• Please find the raw data here, incl. a full list of the decks including nicknames
• Average deck level went up by +0.1 to 14.0
• Average deck composition is 2.1 infantry (+/-0), 2.5 vehicles (+0.4), 1.1 air (-0.3) and 0.2 (-0.2) tech units. In the chart below, you can see how often decks have which unit type in the deck. As you can see, the typical deck has 2 Infantry units, 3 vehicles and 1 Air unit.

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 June frequency, and a +/- number shows the change to the previous month. Lastly, 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

• Fanatic usage is up to 26ppt, and their winrate is 5 points above the average. Expect to see even more decks with Fanatics (usually built around Scorpion Tank or Giga).
• Laser Troopers usage is up +18ppt, and Scavengers down by -20ppt. A direct consequence of the recent Scavenger nerf.
• Stealth Tank is up +14ppr and Chem Buggy +8ppt
• The average deck cost decreased to an all-time low of 54 Tiberium per Unit, driven by lower popularity of tech (Avatar -4ppt) and gains from Militant, Laser, Wheel
• Seth usage increased by +10 ppt, taking 6ppt from Jade and 4ppt from Oxanna
• Venom and Banshee usage dropped after their nerf by -4ppt and -8ppt. Their winrates are a bit lower than the average, so we might see further reduction (players take time to adjust to balance and meta, partly because it takes time to level up other units)
• There's 2 Rock Worm decks, including a pretty strong one from Benven2, who plays Militant, Laser - Drones, Venom, Phantom - Rockworm - Oxanna with a 87% winrate and a L14.8 deck.

"Statistical Decks"

• If we take a deck that fields units with higher winrates, we get Fanatic, Scavenger - Wheels, Giga, Stealth Tank - Phantom (ignoring very low sample size Inferno and Kane). This is not far from what some strong players play, if we flip Stealth Tank for Bikes,
• High-level decks are more likely to contain Chem Troopers, Scorpion Tank, Giga Cannon, Venoms and Avatar.

Levels and Winrate

Obviously, it's easier to get a high winrate with high levels. The below chart illustrates the two variables. The trend line shows the "average impact" of levels on winrate. The winrate is shown as "X games per 1 loss". AliciaDestiny e.g. has 32 wins per loss. And Alarak has 5.3 wins per loss, which is impressive for L12.5.

Click here for the GDI version of this analysis.

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

Nod Air took off this Summer – Top 50 Deck Analysis July 2019

Welcome to the monthly Rivals meta analysis: What units and commanders do the top 50 players in the ladder play? This time, I released GDI and Nod data at the same time, you can find the GDI version 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 went up from 13.4 to 13.6, and there's 6 full-L15 decks in the top 50
• 2.0 infantry (-0.1), 1.8 vehicles (=), 1.6 air (+0.3) and 0.5 (-0.1) 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 10 percentage points higher winrate than the average winrate)
• "Δ vs average levels" is how the levels of decks utilizing this unit/commander deviate from average (e.g. the Avatar users used had a 0.9 higher deck level than the average level)

Observations:

• Winners
• Scavengers made a strong entry now after people levelled them up. 36% of all dekcs use them. And this is despite the recent nerf
• Militant usage is at an all-time high, coinciding with the decline of wheels and increase of air usage
• Laser Drones, after their hefty buff, unsurprisingly went up a ton from 4% to 32%
• Venom the same, from 15% to 40% after being buffed. 
• Phantom also jumped from 11% to 30% and is popular in Artillery decks, Inferno-decks and and in 3-air decks
• Artillery, despite it's nerfs, grew in popularity -- usually as the single tech unit (aka "Tech splash")
• Jade became more popular with a jump to 22% of decks. 9 of the 11 Jade decks utilize the Laser Drone. This could help explain the growth of Jade: First, Jade is an expensive commander so benefits from a cheap efficient unit from a different building that the opponent has to counter. Second, they can relatively easily get to opponent's base to add some chipping damange and get vision for the Jade missile
• Losers
• Lasers dropped from 83% to 56%. Because who would have both lasers and Scavengers in their deck?
• Wheels fell from 66% to 32%, mirroring the raise in venom and the general replacement of Vehicles with Air in many Nod decks
• Scorpion tanks continued their decline from 88% in March to now 42%. This is mostly due to the current air meta, e.g. Laser drones are a strong counter to them
• Marauders declined from 21% to 8% and Chem Buggies from 21% to 14%, as the "Marauder Chuggy" combo fell a bit out of the meta

Unit Type Distribution

This chart shows how many decks contain how many units from which building. 

• Nearly all decks contain some infantry, most of them 2
• Vehicles are the most common building type to have 3 units in a deck
• Air play sees most diversity from 0 to 3
• There's about a third of unit with at least one tech unit

Click here to switch to the GDI analysis

Nod Top50 in June 2019: Calm before the Scavenger Storm?

Edit: The GDI list for June is out!

It's this time of the month again: What decks do the Top 50 Nod players in the Command & Conquer Rivals Ladder play?

Note on methodology: I try to pick the most relevant deck of the players, which is ideally the deck that has the largest sample size this month and was recently used in ladder play. I excluded two decks that had a sample size of below 30. You can find the raw data here, including detail on the decks of the Top 50.

A new feature this month is that I show the frequency of the previous 4 month both in %, and as a small trendline. This should give you a better feeling for how the meta changed over time.

How to read the table:

• "Frequency" is the share of Decks that run this unit or commander.
• The months show the % for the last 4 months
• The bar chart is a visualization of the frequency this month
• "Trend" shows a small trendline for the last 4 months 
• "Δ vs average winrate" is how the winrate decks utilizing this unit/commander deviates from the average (e.g. Artillery decks have a 11 ppt higher winrate)
• "Δ vs average levels" is how the levels of decks utilizing this unit/commander deviate from average (e.g. the 5 Inferno decks on average are just L12.3, 0.7 below the L13.0 total average) 
• "Tier" shows a tiering assigned by 13lade and StrikerVX in a video about a month ago, order being S, A, B, C, D from top to bottom. As some new units were added, and some balance changes occurred, I assigned some tiers in a second column (purely my opinion, not vetted by 13lade or StrikerVX)

Major Trends:

• Anti Infantry
• Venom made a comeback after it's buff. As it's just at 15%, this buff seemed to have been very balanced
• Wheels were nerfed, and usage went down to a still-strong 66%. Also a good sign, especially 
• Fanatic was introduced and enjoys signifiant popularity at 23%, despite most players not having it at strong levels. It's a strong unit with some map dependence (stronger on maps with connected pads or key choke points, as it benefits from pitched battles with multiple units it can buff when dying
• Overall, a very nice increase in diversity of the anti-infantry play
• Artillery is widely recognized as being very strong now, and there's complaints about it being too strong. Yet, there's just 13% decks with it in the Top 50. It might be partly down to taste or levels, but I'd say that it's the fact that Artillery decks are a bit too hit-or-miss for the taste of many top players. Especially against Borca decks, it's not a great option. And with Borca's prevalence, top Nod players might just prefer more all-round decks. 
• Cyborg sees a bit of a resurgence thanks to Artillery, as some players like to pair these two (albeit the better option seems to have Artillery as the sole Tech unit and to play on single harvester)
• Marauder usage went up to 21% despite the nerf, which is of course also because last month, the Marauder was still pretty new
• Stealth Tank usage is still strong at 40%, but down from the 58% last month after it was nerfed
• Jade usage went up a small notch and is at an all-time high. 
• This includes strong players like CrazyPsychopath and Magni, whose Jade decks are at L12, which illustrates that Jade works reasonably well without level advantage 
• Jade decks are pretty diverse. Of the 7, there's 5 different decks (i.e. just 2 duplicates). 3 Chuggy/Marauder decks, 3 with air 3 without etc.
• Scavenger sees no major play yet, albeit many of the top players tested it. Below, find a great video from 13lade that indicates their strength.

Other Observations:

• Average level of the Top 50 decks increased another 0.4 points month-on-month to 13.4. You would expect this to slow down due to the exponential nature of upgrading cost. My theory why it's still growing fast is that there's a high frequency of events with premium tracks which are comparatively attractive compared to most other paid options. So the players who are willing to pay a certain amount per month can progress faster than in the past.
• The ladder seems a bit bugged: RussoMau is still on #6 even though he didn't play a single game. I also ignored him in the analysis.
• The number of games played by the top 50 decks trended 10k, 8k, 10k, 8k in the last 3 months. As the top value was in May, there's no clear downtrend in my view. Some top players like AliciaDestiny Bikerush certainly play less than in the past, but there's other players "picking up the slack". Another factor is of course deck diversity. My guesstimate would be that there's more players than in the past who play more than one deck a significant amount in a month, which might mean that the share of these 50 decks of the actual total playing volume of the 50 players has decreased.

Highlighted players if you look for new sources for interesting replays:

• Alarak plays a Nod aggro with Phantom, and doesn't even have full L12, yet. The clou: He plays Phantom, which gives him a hard counter against certain decks/units, but sacrifices some flexibility against many widely used decks. For example, without a Banshee, Predators are a menace. Watch his games if you love Scorpion tank micro. Here's a step-by-step analysis of one of his games.
• VictorBansemer is the sole Inferno player in the Top50, and he does it with an L11 deck and at a strong winrate of more than 70%!
• Lopatka is an impressive player, who made Top50 with an L11 Marauder/Chuggy deck. He also plays some other intreresting variants and is another recommendation if you love to see outlevelled underdogs take wins. 
• CrazyPsychopath plays different decks, but this season used a Jade/Chem Warrior/Marauder deck the most. He and Magni are my recommendation for Jade fans!
• HayprO is your go-to-guy if you love the Giga Cannon. With an L12 deck, he racks up a very impressive 79% winrate thanks to his skilled Broodwar / StarCraft 2 pedigree
• There's a Tick Tank deck in the Top 50! See the deck below. Admittedly, the reason why the deck works is not the Tick Tank, but the L15 buggies. This player usually (always?) rushes with Buggy and then follows up with either more Buggies or Bikes, depending on what the opponent builds. If you don't have high enough levels, this can be so tough.