Magic the Gathering

Ok, here's an attempt from a guy who hasn't played in years but still keeps up on news in the game.

Phases of a turn (cards can effect all of these):
-Untap - All of your tapped cards untap (see tapping below)
-Upkeep - Many once per turn actions happen here
-Draw - The active player draws one card
-Pre-combat Main - The active player can play 1 land per turn, and as many other cards as resources allow
-Combat - Creatures attack an opponent, who can use his or her own creatures to block.
-Post-combat Main - The same as pre-combat main
-End of Turn - "Until end of turn" effects wear off, various other abilities trigger
-Clean up - active player discards down to maximum hand size, damage on creatures wears off.

And the types of cards:
-Land - Resources, most lands can produce one mana per turn
-Artifacts - Colorless card (any deck can use), provides various effects and abilities, can also be creatures
-Creatures - Creatures you summon into battle and use to defend yourself
-Enchantments - Similar to artifacts, but are colored (only usable in certain decks), generally not creatures
-Planeswalkers - Represent another "player" who allies with you, most have three abilities, building to an ultimate spell which often comes close to winning the game. Can be attacked directly by creatures.
-Instants - Single use cards, can be played any time
-Sorceries - Single use cards, may only be played in active player's main phase

Two key concepts you need to know to understand Magic: tapping and and the color pie. Any permanent (non-instant or socery) can tap (turn sideways) to indicate that it has used an ability. Lands tap to generate mana, artifacts and creatures tap to use special abilities, creatures also tap to attack. As a general rule, enchantments do not tap. An object may not be tapped twice, but must wait to be untapped by an effect, or during the untap phase at the start of a players turn, where all of that player's permanents untap. Creatures who are tapped cannot block incoming attackers.

Most cards in Magic have a color (artifacts and lands being the general exception). There are five colors in Magic: black, red, green, white and blue, with each representing a set of mechanics, general elements of flavor and a philosophy. The most common lands are swamps, mountains, forests, plains and islands, which produce the five colors of mana respectively. A card is considered to be a certain color if it requires one or more mana of that color to play. Thus, most decks will choose to focus on one, two or at most three colors, and use only cards from those colors. Cards can also be "gold" which means they require more than one color of mana to play.

If you're interested in learning more about MtG, there are several helpful tutorials here: http://wizards.com/magic/TCG/NewtoMagic.aspx

Also, I would highly recommend a column called Making Magic, which posts on Mondays on Wizards' site. It is written by Head Designer Mark Rosewater, and includes a huge archive of very helpful articles on design, most of which are specific to Magic, but many of which are focused on general design principles. Its safe to say that if not for Mark's column, I would never have picked up an interest in designing games. His archive can be found here: http://wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?tag=makingmagic&descripti...

Yes, if possible.

"At the beginning of your upkeep, if Firemane Angel is in your graveyard or on the battlefield, you may gain 1 life." - http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=89074

There are timings for many things in the game. Many of these timings occur at the beginning or the end of the turn. Above is one example.

A creature boost card that is an instant or sorcery will usually stop giving the effects at the end of the turn. (Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains flying until end of turn. - http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=241989)

If a creature with a defense of 4 takes 3 damage during a turn (so, not enough to kill it), at the end of the turn, that damage disappears (next turn, there is 0 damage against it). So, to kill a creature via damage, you must do it all in one turn, since the damage doesn't stay around.

Lands create the resources to pay for cards according to what color the land is. So a Plains creates White Mana. A card which is paid for by 2 Generic [any color] Mana and 1 White Mana would mean that you have to have a Plains (or special) land on the table. Enchantments are spells that stay around, like artifacts, but require colored mana, unlike most artifacts (most of which use any color). So, a card which requires 1 White Mana to play can only reasonably be put into a deck which has lands that generate White Mana. It is difficult to run more than a 2 color deck unless you have a lot of special lands.

Instants can be used on both players' turns, while sorceries can only be used on your turn. Instants can also 'respond' to other actions, whereas sorceries cannot. Sorceries are usually too powerful to be instants. If certain cards were instants, they would be too powerful, so they make them sorceries. One such card is Sleep (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=205120). If you could play it as an instant, you could play it right after your opponent untapped all her creatures, which would then stay tapped during your turn and their next turn. As a sorcery, they are tapped during your turn and their next turn. So, if it were an instant, it would protect you from 2 turns of the opponent attacking, instead of 1, which is pretty strong. There are many more powerful cards, but this is one example.

White cares about small creatures and life gain, blue cares about instants and sorceries, black cares about discarding from opponent's hand and getting cards back from the graveyard, green cares about giant creatures and creature boosts, and red cares about direct damage and speed. These are just general outlines. WotC does a pretty good job of keeping card abilities within the color category they have designated for that ability. If you really want to know more, it is called the Color Pie, and there has been a lot written about it online.

Actually, there are some problems with MtG, mainly involving mana screw (getting too many or too few lands), and so some top players play The Spoils, which is basically a copy of MtG, with more luck removed.

If you have more questions about the game, I definitely reccomend you check out the website. They have a pdf of the rules as well as a free demo to download. You can also download the demo to the latest PC game to see more of how the game plays, and some more cards.