In lane, you are quite vulnerable but not weak. You have lower autoattack range than other ranged champions, but you have insane ability spammability and your long q range to make up for it. Poke as much as you can whenever you have First strike up. Do this as described earlier, by using q, using your redcard on minions next to your enemy laner or on your enemy directly if possible. Don't play too greedy though, you are an immobile mage and your w is not immediate so you are quite vulnerable. Focus on keeping your cs up and spamming first strike, kills are not your priority at this time. Once you have ult, you can start looking for roams, but don't be too aggressive with it. In hard lanes, you can use your ult to get back to lane faster and recall more frequently.

Once midgame comes around, you will want to have ludens and boots complete, you can sidelane pretty effectively, due to the safety of your ult and the speed at which you clear waves. Keep everything warded up well though, your ult gets canceled by cc, but if you see them coming in advance, you can easily just ult out of bad fights or ult into skirmishes from your team such as objective fights. On top of that, your w allows you to deal a surprising amount of damage to turrets, letting you push really effectively if you are allowed to. Once your lich bane comes around, you can start playing more aggressively, trading more aggressively with enemy laners and picking fights for the fun of it. This means you will start racking up more and more gold from first strike.

Once your third item, deathcap, comes around you can start really looking to play aggressively. Around this time, if you are not too far behind, you will be able to oneshot any squishy targets. This includes your enemy laners, adcs, enchanters and non-tank junglers. Try to keep your e ready and stacked whenever you are out of combat, do this by keeping track of your autoattacks on minions, attacking plants, structures or jungle monsters to stack it up. Whenever you see an enemy squishy overextended or separated from their team, simply ult to them and force a fight. In these situations, prioritize blue card if you are ahead or confident in your ability to land your q, use your red card if you are not confident, try to avoid using your gold card unless you have allies there or you are in danger(in which case you shouldnt ult in, dummy) The difference in damage is incredibly noticeable. If you use blue card, you will oneshot squishy targets in most situations. If you use red card, you will not oneshot them, but you will still deal an incredible amount of damage and allow you to hit your q more easily and either chase them with the slow, or kite away if they are out of your league.

During teamfighting, you are both the utility box of your team and a huge portion of your team's damage. If you can, try to pick out targets ahead of fights with your bluecard oneshots, if you can't, try to focus on front to back fighting. You have really low cooldowns and your q and red card cover large aoes. Use them constantly to apply damage and pressure enemies. Only use your gold card on high priority lockdown targets such as assassins to peel for your adc or on the enemy adc if you can't oneshot them due to them building MR. In general, blue and red card are more useful though.

Play lane slow, play around your item spikes. Your passive and first strike give you a large amount of extra gold generation, allowing you to hit your item spikes reliably and swiftly. Once you get your items, you can play highly aggressively as your damage increases almost exponentially with your first few items. Your ult allows you to exert constant pressure over the map and you will have access to bountiful information whenever you want it. You can push really effectively and take towers really fast, while being a massive damage threat in teamfights. Do not waste your potential by building purely for utility!!!!! Enemies will generally not expect this damage as people are mostly used to Twisted Fate being a utility stun bot, they will not play accordingly. Meanwhile, you are more like evelynn, being able to appear and delete a target out of nowhere, anywhere on the map whenever someone is out of position.