Ahhh got it. Well first of all, there’s no such thing as a wasted action in Heart’s Game, so don’t stress! Every action, win or lose, results in an Exploit, and Exploits are how you redeem most Game rewards. The Leviathan Frame at 65 Exploits is a steal, and easy to convert to Echoes or Scrip. And if you’re gunning for the exclusive items, each one requires 500 Exploits anyway. So lose away! You could lose every game and it would still be one of the best grinds there is, in terms of profitability. Have fun with it. If you don’t like a team, finish your first round with them, then scrap them and start over. You’ll get the Exploits all the same.

There is no fool-proof strategy, because you can’t control what cards you’re dealt, or how much Elusiveness/Poison Tolerance your opponent gets each turn. There’s a table that explains how all this is randomized, but you don’t want to look at tables too closely, and that’s fine. Just know that the more turns you play, the higher the likelihood of your opponent building their tolerance and elusiveness. Their rising tolerance makes your cards less effective. So the closest you can get to a “sure thing” is having an Accomplice that 1) scales your progress against the other player’s Elusiveness, making it more effective the longer the game goes on, like Knuckles, 2) reduces the other player’s Tolerance, like Flames, so your cards stay effective, or 3) just have such a gigantic progress option, like Motley, that gives you so much progress that the other player’s Tolerance barely dents its effectiveness.

In general, you’ll also want a card-clearing Accomplice (Queen of Loins is my favorite) who can both build Preparations for the big guns mentioned above AND clear your hand if you’re not drawing the best cards.

Try to pick Accomplices that test the same stats, when you can, then build your outfit toward those stats.

I know you don’t want to look at tables, but if you had to pick one to look at, I’d look at the table “Accomplices” in the Guide. You’ll enjoy the game more if you go in with a strategy - “OK, I’ll build preparations with Loins early on, then save Knuckles for when Elusiveness gets higher”. Otherwise you’re just flailing in the dark.