Scrolls is online. Things that are online have data.

Of course, I don’t have access to Mojang’s servers, so the data set I’m working with is limited. This “analysis” comes from replays recorded and shared by players. That means that the data set is a nonrandom sampling that suffers from every sort of bias imaginable, and that any analysis is flawed and the results of which should not be relied upon as a valid interpretation of anything. But what the hell, it’s fun to look anyway, right?

Hover over the pie charts to get counts; add them together to get an idea of sample size. But again, this data source has so many biases, you can’t trust it.

Since Decay just launched, I’m going to restrict this post to v0.103.0.

How do the factions stack up individually?

Which faction is strongest? To start to answer that question, let’s look at PvP matches between mono-color decks. Since this data comes from replays, I don’t actually know if a deck only had one color in it; I only know if they only played cards of one color.

These pie charts show total games played between the factions in my data set, colored by which faction won.

vs Unranked Ranked

vs Unranked Ranked

vs Unranked Ranked

Anecdotally it looks like growth has an advantage over energy, energy has an advantage over order, and the order/growth matchup is… confusing. Ranked players might be more skilled, or might not. I have no idea. This data source sucks anyway so who knows. Moving on.

Oh pother, I forgot something. What about decks that just splash another color? Here’s the same set of matchups but including decks that splash another color. In this case I’m defining a splash as playing no more than 2 cards of the secondary faction.

vs Unranked Ranked

vs Unranked Ranked

vs Unranked Ranked

Here we see that growth seems to increase its edge over energy when it splashes; a Pother goes a long way. Energy keeps its edge over order, and the order/growth matchup stays order-friendly in unranked and growth-friendly in ranked.

What about at the different rating levels? Here I’ve averaged the opponents ratings (before the match) to group them into buckets.

vs 1300-1399 1400-1499 1500-1599 1600-1699 1700-1799 1800-1899 1900+

vs 1300-1399 1400-1499 1500-1599 1600-1699 1700-1799 1800-1899 1900+

vs 1300-1399 1400-1499 1500-1599 1600-1699 1700-1799 1800-1899 1900+

This seems to imply that energy sucks less when you’re a really skilled player, and order improves with skill too. Of course, the sample sizes here are necessarily smaller, and this data source sucks in general, so this could all be bias talking.

Since I ran some splashing calculations, as a bonus here are the cards most often splashed in the games depicted above.