First things first, a starter deck is what you need. This will give you what you need to start. It gives you most importantly lands, usually two different colors, a foil rare, and great cards that you could take out and make a deck around all on its own. Next, buy boosters. As your familiarity with the game increases, your level of play will increase, and generally, so will the opponents you face. Playing advanced players with starter decks is basicly suicide. Boosters can solve that problem. They give you 15 random cards, generally 2-3 of each color plus artifacts. It consists of 10 commons, 4 uncommons, and one rare or mythic rare. You can also go to wherever magic cards are sold and if you have a specific catd in mind, you can buy singles. Using these cards, you can edit you deck in order to make the best combination of cards possible. After this, figure out how you want to play, what your style is. There are three main types. Burn, aggro, and control. Burn is always red, and it uses cards called burn spells that try to eat away at your opponents life. With a good fast burn deck you can take your opponent down within 4-5 turns. Aggro is playing a deck with the majority of cards being creatures and just trying to bombard your opponent. This can be split into two categories. There is weenie, which is the use of 1-2 drop creatures to overload your board, and fatty, which is the use of giant creatures that if you pull out, you basicly win the game. Then lastly there is control, which can be split into two categories. There is permission, typically blue, which uses spells that deny your opponent from playing any spells at all, and there is removal, which, as it sounds like, you use spells that clear your opponents board, leaving them with no options. Lastly, you need to know the typical build of a decent efficient deck. The average deck will contain no more than 60 cards, 24 being lands, 22 being creatures, and 14 being other spells. Also there is the optional use of what is called a sideboard. This contains 15 cards that you can use between matches to tweek you deck to fill in the gaps that your opponent may exploit, or to even exploit his gaps. This is of course not neccessary for casual play, but all pros use one. One final note, there is a thing called Friday Night Magic. This is a night dedicated to the game of Magic. Tons of people come to these events, and it's a great way to gain expieriance, draft cards, and improve. Check your local card and hobby shops and look for FMN. Hope this was a helpful article. Good luck and welcome to the Multiverse.