It's an amazing game, but really hard to get into as a new player. And playing with friends of wildly different skill levels tends to ruin the experience.

If you play with experienced friends, you'll quickly learn that the best way to win is to do nothing and effectively stay out of the way. You learn to minimize your negative effect on the game, which just isn't a fun way to play.

If you play solo, you have to get beat down at least the first ten games until you get to a level with other new players and small children. Then you can spend the next 20 games learning until you can apply enough that the game starts to be fun.