Whenever possible, avoid damage that you don't have to take. As soon as the monsters' cards are flipped, carefully check which monsters are doing what, how soon, how hard, and at what range. If you can stay out of range, kill/stun/disarm/immobilize/muddle particularly troublesome actions, or avoid AoEs before they happen, do so. Sometimes it's even worth completely scrapping & replacing your original plan to avoid a single high damage attack or summon. Consider playing the opposite top & bottom, burning a card you didn't intend to, or just switching to a default attack and/or move. This is where playing the highest initiative you can more often than not becomes valuable. If you go first, you can avoid a lot of unexpected headaches by improvising. When you start to get good, you'll even begin choose your card combos with such alternate plans in mind already.