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Preparation for a game takes place far in advance of actual play. Beginners may start out owning only a starter deck of 60 cards — which is also the normal deck size and can serve as a first deck. Usually though, more and more cards are collected and traded so that serious players have a large trove of cards from which they have to select 60 (normally) for their next deck. Due to the many possibilities, two players seldom enter matches with the same decks (except in Constructed tournaments, in which certain deck types tend to predominate).
Building a deck is mainly about balancing various aspects. First, you should be aware of the principal probabilities involved. Constructed tournament decks must contain at least 60 cards. For the sake of simplicity, we will assume a 60-card minimum requirement for this discussion. Larger decks are possible, but usually will not buy you much except unreliability (imagine the one card you need being buried in a library of 80 or 100 cards). One normally cycles through the deck by drawing one card per turn.
Most spells have a color, which means that they require a number of mana points of a specific color to cast (they may require additional mana of unspecified color as well). Some spells (only artifacts) need only colorless mana, or mana not of any particular color; very few spells require more than one color. Normally, land will produce a single color of mana; most lands that produce more than one color, or more than one mana, have drawbacks, such as dealing damage to you when you use them.
The best players agree that one fundamental aspect of deck building is balancing mana sources (lands) and effects (spells). Having a lot of black spells but few or no swamps will do you no good. More generally, there needs to be enough land to support your spells. Most decks contain a ratio of about three spell cards for every two land cards. This is not a static ratio, as some deck strategies focus on playing only low-mana spells (to include fewer lands, and therefore have more room for spells in the deck), and some use more expensive spells with more powerful effects (and thus require more lands).
The five colors of the game (white, blue, black, red, and green) each have different strengths and weaknesses, which are discussed below. For this reason, it is often worthwhile to play two or more colors, so that the strengths of one compensate for the vulnerabilities of the other. Multicolor (or "gold") cards require two or more colors to play. These generally are more powerful then single-color cards because of the increased requirements, but, since they count as both colors, are likewise vulnerable to their weaknesses.
However, adding more colors than is necessary to a deck can result in inconsistent draws. In a deck with four or five colors, it is quite probable that the player, having shuffled his deck and drawn a hand of seven cards to start the game, will end up with lands of two different colors, and spells of the other colors, and thus be unable to cast anything. Therefore, it is normally recommended to restrict one's deck to a smaller number of colors — such as only including Island and Swamps, to support only blue and black spells.
The equilibrium between the five colors is one of the defining aspects of the game. The various strengths and weaknesses of each color are attributed to the fact that each color represents a different "style" of magic. Because the trade-offs between the abilities of each color are integral to keeping the game balanced, it is helpful to discuss the various color philosophies.
The colors can be seen on the back of the cards, in a circle-like design, figuratively called the "color wheel". Starting from the top, going clockwise, they are: white, blue, black, red, and green. The colors adjacent to each other on the wheel are "allied" and can have similiar/complementary abilities or strategic approaches. For example, blue has few efficient, playable creatures in general, but does have a relatively large number of flying creatures. White and black, being next to it, also have many flying creatures. Red and green are opposite blue and have very few flyers. The two non-adjacent colors to a particular color are "enemy" colors, and are often thematically opposed. For instance, red is the color of chaos, while white is the color of order.
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