many ways to skin the cat...
and this is true for systematics ref. calculations using Hess' law, also.
Very early on I personally did discover that too much thinking about when to subtract , when to add, is kind of overdoing for me.
so , consequentely, I brought everything down to "just adding".
I'm looking at my starting equations "what is where" , and compare it to "where should it be by the end of the day" ( in this case: KHCO3 and K2CO3 were my substances of orientation, and the target equation gave me the answers)
then, if necessary, I rearrange accordingly, or multiply to get the desired stoechiometric factors (ALWAYS keeping in mind to maipulate the ΔHf 's accordingly)
... and then I just add up.
Usually, with just one addition, everything falls in place as desired.
I like my way
regards
Ingo