What are the strengths of each resource in Scrolls?

Question

I'm new to deck-based card battling games (as seen in the amount of times I've lost to the easy AI) but I have a general understanding of the basic mechanics. One of the things I keep hearing about are the different strengths of each resource type, i.e. inherent playstyles that are beneficial to play with each type. I'm just going with whatever I see as I play but I feel like I could be more focused with a strategy that fits my resource (currently growth).

For example, I heard that energy is hard-hitting but takes quite a bit of time before it can strike (high resource cost, I guess?).

What are the different strengths for each resource and what play styles can I use to exploit those to my benefit?

Answer 1

My experience, paired with documentation gives this simple explanation.

• Growth: Cheap(ish) units that have a lot of effects or have spells that help them grow or summon other units.
• Energy: These scrolls hit hard and are intended to do a lot of damage, quickly.
• Order: Order scrolls tend to be rather weak as single-units but can gain strength when other order units are played in close proximity to them. Many of these units give a lot of bonuses to their fellow units when they are near by.

In my opinion, the Order type requires the most game-play strategy while the other two types can do well from a basic deck-level strategy and a bit of luck. It's been argued that this makes the game rather unbalanced, against Order.

Answer 2

• Growth fills the board with relatively cheap and weak creatures, and applies buffs that make all of them attack more powerfully or more often. There are synergies between units which are independent of positioning. Growth also has the most healing of any resource, but this is rarely used in practice. Growth is the faction most suited to early-game aggressive play.

• Energy has powerful attacks, including targeted direct-damage spells. Playing Energy involves gaining large amounts of Energy resource so as to be able to afford the powerful spells and abilities, and has many ways to gain temporary (“current”) Energy. Energy also has many structures which actively make attacks rather than providing buffs to other units, and scrolls which buff or synergize with structures; it is the only faction which has viable mostly-structures decks.

• Order focuses on board positioning and tactical play; units which give benefits to other units in the same row or adjacent, and spells which reposition units or increase Move. Like Growth, it has Attack and Countdown buffs, but ones which generally apply to single units rather than many at once. It also has ways of interfering with the opponent's play by increasing Countdown, decreasing Move, or repositioning their units.

• Decay interferes with the opponent by poisoning and debuffing units. It has many ways to benefit from your units taking damage or dying; as a consequence it has more cheap units with high Health than other factions. It also has many abilities which deal direct damage to idols (disregarding blocking creatures).