First off welcome to the Village...
I'm very new at this as well and I have the same saw as you AND I bent a blade yesterday during a set up AND I have sanding strips AND I have used the box store plywood.
So here are my discoveries from a newbie scroller...
The bent blade - caused me more headaches to install and fret than was worth the cost so I threw it in the trash, got a new blade and no more headaches - worth the cost of the blade
The sanding strips - I have used them installed on my Wen, IMO they work great if you have no other means of sanding or getting inside a cut to sand. So IMO they work fine if you want to use them. However, they are not the most efficient means of working a project. I use home made strips from Popsicle sticks and I use needle files as well for touching up - I am new after all and I make lots of mistakes that I so far have been able to "clean" up with the files
Plywood - During the first few days of getting my Wen saw, I used the plywood I had on hand which was what I had purchased for other wood working projects -box store special. and I as well got so much blow out it was very frustrating! After being advised here about the quality of box store ply (which I had no idea before I came here there even was a quality issue, I thought the only difference was sanded or not), I opted to buy some BB from ebay (1/4 inch BB , 1/8 inch BB ) - once I got my plywood and glued up a pattern and cut it - it was night and day
Blades - You didn't ask about this, but the box store blades also are not the best quality - I've tried Dewalt, Olsen, Flying Dutchman (FD) and Pegas blades and I am a Pegas fan forever - or at least until something better is available.
Hope that helps somewhat