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Magic is the granddaddy of all collectible card games. Created in 1993 by Richard Garfield, it is a game of almost limitless potential. You take the role of a planeswalker, using your deck of spells to duel other planeswalkers in control of your portion of the multiverse. The basics of the game are fairly simple to learn, but some of the deeper strategy can be a bit tricky.
The average game starts with each player at 20 life and a deck of at least 60 cards. Using whatever method you want, you decide who goes first. The person who goes first skips their first draw step. (I'll get into the turn order shortly) Then each player draws seven cards and the game begins.
There are several different types of cards and it's important to know how to use each one to maximixe your chances of victory.
There are five colors in the game of Magic, all of which are good at different things, I shall explain them below.
Black is the color of death, decay and evil in general. Its land type is swamp and it primarily specializes in doing three things: Killing creatures, manipulating creatures in graveyards and discard spells. The first one is accomplished through Black's countless creature removal spells, whether they're targeted ones like Terror, Dark Banishing and Doom Blade, or non-targeted like Damnation, Mutilate or Diabolic Edict. Graveyard manipulation ranges from spells that simply return a creature from the graveyard to your hand such as Raise Dead, or it can rip them from the graveyard and put then right into play with spells like Zombify, Recurring Nightmare or Exhume. This also extends to spells that pull creature spells out of your library directly to put them in the graveyard for reanimation later. Discard spells are another way to take advantage of reanimation spells since it can force an opponent to potentially get rid of one of their best creatures for you to use against them later. It also severely limits their options of what spells they can play. Classics like Hymn to Tourach, Duress and Mind Twist are some of the best discard spells in the game, but there are plenty to choose from. Other nice things Black used to be able to do but really aren't part of the color in newer sets is generate fast mana, primarily from the use of Dark Ritual. Black's creatures are pretty solid at what they do. They're not the strongest creatures for their cost, but many have flying or some other evasive ability, many even come at a cost to the caster that plays them, so be cautious! One of the types of creatures that is fairly unique to black is the "pump" creature. Other colors may let you pump either power or toughness with mana to improve the creatures abilities in combat, but only black has creatures that let you do both. Attacking with such a creature before pumping them is a good way to slink past an opponenet's defenses since they're not always sure what you might do with that extra mana on hand to beef them up. Life draining is another ability that black does best, spells that inflict damage AND give you life back in return. The main weaknesses of black comes into play when they have to deal with enchantments or artifacts that aren't creatures.
Blue is the color of the mind, spells and creatures that mimic the flowing currents of air and water. Their land type is the island and they have many abilties that no other color can do well, or do at all. Their most well-known ability is to counter spells, such as Mana Leak, Cancel, and of course, Counterspell, removing a threat from the board before it can even enter play and do anything. If they can't stop something from countering it in time, their next best option is bouncing. Bouncing means magically removing a permenant from the field of play tossing it back in the opponent's hand, forcing them to play it again, with which you have another opportunity to coutner it. This can be accomplished by single card spells like Unsummon, which only works on creatures, Boomerang which can target any permenant, or Upheaval, which bounces EVERY permenant back to everyone's hand, even your own, so smart play is required for the last one. Their third specialty is what makes them one of the most popular colors to play: drawing cards. Sure, other colors have spells which let them draw cards, but they're either too expensive of a spell for what you get, or they have a serious drawback. Blue's card drawing spells are the best of the lot, Ancestral Recall being the best one available, but there are other great draw spells like Brainstorm, Impulse, Prosperity, (which lets your opponent draw too) Stroke of Genius, Intuition and Fact or Fiction just to name a few. Blue's creatures are fairly weak for their cost most of the time, but they have a LOT of creatures that can fly. They also have a creature called Phantom Warrior that can't be blocked at all! Many of them come in with an effect that lets you peek at cards coming up, lets you bounce something, or draw cards. Blue does have a few giant creatures, like the great Leviathan and Polar Kraken, but they're extremely expensive and hard to implement properly with just blue alone; black is often required to make the most use of such giant creatures. Blue is also good at deck destruction, where you use spells to make your opponent put cards directly from his library straight into his graveyard. Their main weaknesses are that they take a while to get going, so a fast opponent can probably outpace them before their defenses are up, and it's hard for blue to get rid of something once it has entered the field of play; since Blue has no REAL removal spells to speak of.
Creatures are a very important part of the game, so I think they deserve their own section in this little guide. They have their own special rules and abilities, so I'll break it down as best as I can. All creatures have a little number with a slash through it like this X/X. The first number is the creature's power. As you may have already guessed it represents how much damage the creature deals in combat with another creature or to a player. The second is the creature's toughness. It represents how much punishment the creature can take before it is killed and goes to the graveyard. Keep in mind that you need to deal enough damage to a creature on the same turn to kill it or it will recover its damage at the end of the current turn, so no slowly whittling away creatures. A creature cannot attack the first turn it is brought into play, nor can it use any ability listed on the card that requires you to tap is as part of the activation cost.
A creature is highly vulnerable most of the time as you can see. Lethal damage kills it, destroy effects get rid of them, sacrificial spells get rid of them and exiling them works. I'll explain how these effects work and which ones apply to all permenants.