I've been paying as much attention as my attention span allows to the tutorial, but I cannot for the life of me fathom the point of casting Timidity, which forces me, the owner of the enchantment, to spend one Ether every time I assign a creature to attack (Kinet cantrip). Can anyone please help me out here?

Yes it does force you to do that but your missing the point here. It also forces your ENEMY to do that as well. Considering that you have to face Synthets with their Hasted wyrms (attack same turn as summon) and even the Chaots Rats this can really help you survive the early onslaught.

This is mainly because the basic Kinets deck cannot do anything until it gets 3 mana unless you count the occasional unsummon. And really you want to use those ounce the enemy has wasted enchantments on them for max effect.

Just imagine being level 1 and facing a Synthet hero and having 2 Timidity spells in hand. The enemy would hardly ever be able to attack you and even when it started to the attacks would be really weak.

Hope this clears things up for you.

Why thank you very much, it does indeed! Suddenly the Kinets are sounding so much less useless. In fact, they're even sounding playable now.

Yeah they are probably the hardest race to start with because their first creature needs 3 ether to summon. With a level 1 guy that won't happen until you hit like turn 5 which means upto then your pretty much just a punching bag. And with only 10 HP your going to run out of stuffing rofl.

Synthets and Chaots are probably roughly equally easy for starting followed not to far by Vitals.

Timidity is also a really handy spell if you're using a Diamanda-like strategy where you:

A: Sap most or all of your opponent's ether before his turn even begins using Thirsty Creatures.
B: Use a spell called Gift after summoning Walls of Air to give your opponent both a useless wall and bring him two turns closer to Ether Disturbance for each Gift.
C: Use Summoning Ward spells (I forget what they're called exactly) to make it nearly impossible for your opponent to summon anything.
D: Use Stasis to trap your opponent and bring them closer to Ether Disturbance while replenishing your hand as well.
E: Use Timidity in conjunction with Thirsty Creatures so that the opponent doesn't have enough ether to send anything forward.

Timidity is a great multi purpose spell.

Other uses include, when ether burn is cast on you, you can just continuously click your creatures to attack, (losing an ether) then retreat it, rinse and repeat so you have no ether in your pool, thus no burn.

Timidity also renders fury useless (dispels it so to speak), though unfortunately the kinets don't have any creatures with fury afaik.

Modern games could learn a thing or two about depth from this game...

You can extend the life of the game by designing decks and using the "Duel" to play vs computer decks.

Main use for timidity is slowing down an opponent. But as someone mentioned above, you can also lead with timidity and follow up with "thirsty creatures". You put up enough timidity that 1-2 creatures get to attack... but the computer keeps summoning more. When he has enough, you cast "thirsty creatures" a couple times - and whenever it comes up - and your opponent may hit 0 ether at the start of each turn. In that situation, you can then summon a dragon and have an easy time of it. A dragon / timidity / thirsty creatures deck is fun to try out and play, if you get the chance.

An opponent with zero ether to spend also tends to hold 5 cards every turn. So you can make a "mind blast" deck in a similar manner. It's a creatureless deck where the thirsty creatures and timidity have no impact on you at all. You alternate "fresh wind" to put cards in his hand, and "mind blast" to deal damage.

It's worth giving the "Duel" section of the game a try if you ever find the campaign frustrating. It even offers random decks to you and/or your opponent for variety.