Learning Magic the Gathering

As a war gamer, and one time member of a gaming club, I have come into contact with Magic the Gathering on a number of occasions.  I have mostly watched it from afar and have only once or twice played it in the very dim and distant past of the late 90s.

This changed towards the end of July this year.  One of my friends convinced my gaming group to give this a try. We played Magic 2015 on the xbox first to get the general feel of the game.  It was enough to get me interested.

After this taster, I did what I always seem to do, which is jump in with feet and wallet first into buying up a bunch of cards, sleeves, a gaming mat and some deck boxes.  No real thought at this stage but to develop a collection.

I played my first few games and I had already a preconceived idea that I wanted to play mono red.  It was the colour that I had dabbled with in the past and for some reason I don't really remember it was the one I had the most interest in.

I am sure anyone reading this with a basic grasp of magic will already know this, but each colour does different things.  I am fairly new still, only having being playing for two months, but my understanding of the colours is roughly this.

White: Good small creatures, big flying angels, lots of removal spells.
Red: Good small creatures, powerful direct damage spells, dragons.
Green: Good creatures across the board, lots of means of boosting your own creatures (ramp)
Blue: Counter magic so you play more in the opponents turn, lots of flyer's, weaker ground creatures than red, green and white on average IMO.
Black: Can resurrect dead creatures, creatures usually poor quality but have strong synergy.

Initially I considered Green fairly basic and boring, and was interested in Blue.  Having played a lot of games in the last couple of months, I really struggle with blue.  You have to remember to keep mana back, remember to counter at the right time and generally you are playing to spoil the other persons fun.  On the computer, playing as blue is relatively easy as you get prompts to cast counters. In real life however, I tend to forget!