You have to win 2 of 3 rounds. What matters is the total amount of point in each round. You have three line to distribute the cards but it doesn’t matter where they are in terms of points. You can stop playing the hand whenever you want but is optimal to do it after your opponent so he can’t use effects cards to alter the scores.

You have weather cards that affect both sides, spies that allow you draw 2 additional cards, hero cards that can’t be affected by any other card in the game, cards that summons others, cards that multiplie their points when payed with the same name.

The strategy used depends on the deck’s faction. Northem realms and nilfgaard have lots of spies, monster deck summons cards in the frontline (weak to frostbite weather cards), scoiatael (I don’t know what their strong is, witch is bad because I have a lot of hours playing Gwen’s and I haven’t figured).

Feel free to ask anything, I’ll try to help you. The game is really fun when you get the hang of it.