intro for *absolute* new to nodecarousel types???

okay, i thought that it would be easy - i've got a content type story, in each an imagefield handled by imagecache preset that pulls to teaser etc, so i add a nodecarousel, pick taxonomy/nodetype, choose 'story' and in taxonomy i select all of the 'story categories' defined terms that i've created (not many, like sports, politics, etc)

data collection: static
horizontal
collect 8
wrap both first and last
autoscroll off
numeric index
numebr visible:1
button text (filled in with test text like But1, But2, Prev, next)

leave automatically load on page load checked

save and set in content bottom to test out and all that i see is a list of titles for stories of content type story - so that basic filter is working -but no buttons, nothing that i expected...

am i missing something VERY basic here? i thought that it would pull teasers into the nodecarousel or something...or some kind of content for the 1 visible story, with buttons to next stories and so on...

goal was to then use nodequeue to manage what is displayed and switch from nodetype to nodequeue....

i saw a request a while back for more basic non-technical documentation, a video how to and so on but haven't seen any of that yet - and so any insights would be greatly appreciated...