Magic cards can be in five colors: White (Plains), Blue (Islands), Black (Swamps), Red (Mountains), and Green (Forest), and colorless. The latter cards are called artifacts. There are also multicolored cards and colored artifacts (for the latter e.g. some were issued in the Shards of Alara block).
The simplest possible deck to play with would have only basic land cards and creature cards. Here are lands for three of the five colors. I am leaving discussion of gameplay for later yet some of the basics have to be discussed now in order for any of the following information to make any sense.
A Magic game (for the case of 1-on-1, there are other variants) involves each player with a deck, called the library, battling with their cards to reduce a life total of 20 to zero. The first player to go to zero loses the game. The first hand dealt has 7 cards and each player can choose to deal themselves a new hand from the library by reducing the next hand by one: mulligan from 7 to 6, or from 6 to 5, and so on. Each turn involves one player placing at most one land card and using that card and other lands in the mana pool to cast or play a card on the game board or battlefield. To cast a card a player taps the required lands in the casting cost by rotating those land cards clockwise by 90 degrees. After each turn all land cards that were tapped during casting become untapped and ready for use again.
Here is a typical creature card.
The name of the creature is Abbey Griffin.
To cast this card (to play it) it costs three mana (or lands) of any color, and one White mana or Plains land card. This card has the converted mana cost (CMC) of four. This is the total number of lands I need to have already played as part of my mana pool to cast this card to the field of play, referred to as the battlefield.
The creature type is Griffin. One of the popular ways to play Magic is to assemble a group of creatures of the same type into a deck-e.g. Zombies or Vampires; unfortunately Griffin isn't common enough to do that.
The set symbol is for the Innistrad set. There are several types in increasing order of relative rarity: black for common, silver for uncommon, gold for rare, and orange gold for mythic rare. There are 15 cards in a booster pack-how most often the cards are sold, and typically there are 10 commons, 3 uncommons, and one rare. The 15th card varies by set. It can be a foil of any type, for example.
These are the two abilities of Abbey Griffin. I leave these for a later tutorial. A creature with flying cannot fight a creature without flying. Many white and blue creatures have Flying and most red, black and green creatures do not.
Some cards include commentary or flavor text. It is usually amusing or interesting.
Bottom left of the card is the name of the creator of the artwork, a copyright notice, and the number of the card in the set (1 of 264-Innistrad is a big set).
Here is the P/T (Power/Toughness). Power is for attacking, or an offensive attribute, and toughness is for defending, or a defensive attribute.
Each time Abbey Griffin attacks it can decrease the opponent's life total by 2 and each time it defends it can reduce the attacking creature's power by 2 during the turn. After the end of a turn if an attacking creature was not killed, its power is replenished or healed completely.
Here is an example. If the attacking creature Abbey Griffin is blocking is a 3/1 creature, for example, Abbey Griffin would be sent to the graveyard when defending against because Abbey Griffin defends with 2 toughness and the attacking creature attacks with 3 toughness.
If the tables are flipped and Abbey Griffin is attacking and the opponent decides to defend with a 3/1 creature the opposite would happen: 2 attacking would match 1 defending and it would be the opponent's creature that would be sent to the graveyard.
There are some creatures that have the ability Defender (cannot attack) and have a low casting cost for a relatively high toughness. These creatures are often referred to as Walls. Here is an example.
There are also colorless creatures, or artifact creatures. Notice the casting cost for this specific card is zero: no need to use up any lands to cast this card. Memnite is a Scars of Mirrodin uncommon.
Instants, Sorceries, and all Enchantments do not have P/T (Power/Toughness). Dissipate not only stops a card on its tracks, but it also can exile it. When a card is exiled it is gone from the game with very rare exceptions of cards that can be cast from exile.
By now we have come across the major areas of play: the mana pool, the battefield, the graveyard, and the exile zone. Because many cards can be played from the graveyard or moved from the graveyard to the battlefield or to a player's hand, cards in graveyards can be considered in some way "in play."
Examples of commonly found creature types by color are: white-Human, blue-Spirit, black-Zombie, red-vampire, green-Beast. Gravecrawler is a Dark Ascension rare.
Crater Behemoth is an Avacyn Restored mythic rare with a CMC (Converted Mana Cost) of 8. This is a so-called Fatty card because of how "heavy" it is to cast to the battlefield.
