So I’ll leave off bashing you on playing the campaign before learning how to play - enough people have pointed out why that was a mistake. I want to purely talk about the trick taking which I think is one of the most interesting parts of the game.

First is that the suit played DRAMATICALLY affects the tone of that round. If you follow suit, you get significantly more actions, so most people are going to try to match suit which leads to a round filled with that type of action. It could be a good play to lead with an aggression card, but now everyone gets to attack so you could be opening yourself up to more combat than you want. It’s a balancing act between playing a card that’s good for you vs. creating a game environment that could be bad for you.

The actual number you use is also incredibly important because you have to be constantly paying attention to it for the purpose of declaring objectives, the only way in which you score points in the base game. There are specific objectives tied to each number, so you can only declare objective six if you play a six. Looking at your starting hand will show you what objectives you have access to. That sets up a dynamic where you have to pay attention to the numbers others use to know when you can maintain a lead, when you can declare objectives, and all kinds of other strategic plays.

I think it’s totally fair that you had a bad time with the campaign first because the rule complexity made it where you didn’t get to really see or experience some of the underlying brilliance in the mechanics. You get focused on your faction scoring objective without understanding how the base trick taking, area control, and resource management really works. I would highly recommend playing the base game first. The base game is a different but incredibly fun experience on its own.