The six factions in a nutshell:



Academy -- Academy is all about diversity in magic (they are the only faction that has access to all spell schools), and every one of their heroes feel like a different faction / gameplay. They have stall-oriented creatures and excel in late game. Some of their specialties (other than spell schools diversity) are creatures with spell resistance, drawing cards, milling cards (sending enemy cards from their card stack right towards the graveyard) and "tricky" to damage evasive creatures. Require more knowledge about the game and cardgames in general to pull off, but otherwise overpowered and ridiculously frustrating to play against. Not recommended to start with.



Haven -- Used to be considered weak by many, Haven are actually one of the easiest to build and strongest faction in the game in my opinion.. Their specialties are healing, creature synergy, and are a defensive oriented faction. Their major drawback is that all of their heroes come with "Light Magic", which is a fairly bad spell school at the time of writing this. Not recommended to start with without knowing what you are doing, BUT, just reading my guide will tell you very precisely what to do to get to the level where they are definately one of the strongest decks you can get you hands on from the get-go. They require very little investment and all of their super good vital core cards are obtained from 1 or 2 expansions (making it easy to complete a super powerful deck with).



Inferno -- Considered the most overpowered faction in SoB meta, inferno is a faction that is all-out offensive. Not always in their creatures' stats, but the effects they come with more or less always involve damaging your own creatures / hero / whatever to gain an aggressive effect on the board / game (for example, they have creatures that blow up and deal damage to an entiere lane, or creatures that force the enemy creatures in front of them to attack them to deal damage to them, etc.). Inferno's specialties are discarding and direct damage to heroes. Their creatures usually have HORRIBLE hp. They are very easy to play and start with, but not that easy to "master". Short term planning? You can abuse the inferno and win games you shouldn't win. Long term planning? They will surely get nerfed very hard in the up-coming expansions (or won't receive a single good card), so investing in inferno is probably not wise.



Necropolis -- It was a general consensusby "pro" players that necropolis was one of the weakest factions in the game.. But I always disagreed hardly on that (and they were always the second most picked faction for as long as I was here). They were not the strongest, perhaps, but they were the serious title defenders for most annoying faction to play against (with close back and forth for that title with academy). Problem is they added more annoying / disgusting cards to them (claims the faction was too strong were denied) and so Necro is the current holder of most overpowered and biggest ******** faction in the game.... Faction specialties are creatures that are near unkillable other than via spells (creatures with massive regeneration, lifesteal, 50% physical damage resist, etc.), creatures that put permanant doom sentence on enemies on hit, along with creatures that make your creatures deal zero, creatures that instant kill, super cheap stat requirement to drop the creature, creature recursion (bring them back from the dead at little to no cost), and almost all of their heroes come with dark magic, which is the number one ******** spell school of the game in my opinion, 100% oriented towards pissing players off. What a ******** faction...If you want to piss people off, and think using a map hack in a shooter game is perfectly legit, pick noobopolis, it's the cheat code faction of DoC.. With that said, their starter deck also happens to be one of the strongest of the six.



Sanctuary -- Huge potential to be the strongest faction in the game, but all of that is screwed because of the popularity of 3-4 cards that should be nerfed / balanced, making them arguably the weakest faction of the game. They require knowledge about the game, card game skills, and all of that will be countered by a single cheap fire spell, making your entire game a mess the moment it is dropped. The faction's specialties are controlling the enemies' movement (placing the enemy where you want them, preventing them from moving from a spot, etc.), and they have a mechanic that allows adjascent creatures to gain +1 to their damage (which opens you up to water spells that will obliterature your creatures...). The faction's major weakness is that they probably have 3 creatures total that exceed 5 HP, making them prime targets for the most annoying fire spell of the moment that deals 5 dmg to all creatures on the board. Since your creatures are fairly costy, it is hard to come back from that spell.. and it is ridiculously popular at the moment. Sanctuary is super cool and has one of the funniest gameplay in the game, but they are definately not recommended at the moment (their starter deck is also horrible, and they require a lot of investment in cards to have very decent decks...)



Stronghold -- Strong is part of the faction's name. Their creatures have higher stat than any other factions, they very easily have the highest damage potential in the game (far surpassing even inferno in that department), and their creatures come with great mobility (some can attack and move on the same turn). Stronghold's faction specialties are creaturs that gain damage everytime one of their creatures die, creatures that gain damage every time an enemy creature dies, creatures that attack the turn they are deployed, damage increasing buildings and fortunes, as well as fortunes that are cheap and serve as instant kill that bypass magic immunity. They also happen to have the strongest starter deck out of the six. Their weakness is that none of their heroes have access to "Prime", which is the second (or first, depends) strongest magic school in the game, meaning their have a harder time to dispel some cards that will RUIN the game for them.