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Ok, the basics of Magic.
First, you need to know what sort of game this is. If you haven't played a Trading Card game -- TCG (or Collectable Card Game -- CCG) before, then you won't be familiar with how the game works. Basically, you pick the cards you want to use in your deck and try to defeat your opponent. If you absolutely hate a card, you don't have to use it. Your deck is what you make it; it can be fun, it can be weird, or you can just use someone else's deck and leave putting it together to someone else (that's not much fun though). People say Magic is hard to learn, and I think it's because you have to take in so much information at once, but I'll do my best to explain it with words.
The most basic of rules to understand are that you start the game by shuffling your deck and drawing 7 cards off the top. During your turn, you will draw 1 card, and may play 1 land from your hand. You will also be able to attack your opponent during this time.
There's only 5 places that cards can be: In your deck (the "library"), in your hand, in play, in your discard pile (the "graveyard") or "removed from the game" which doesn't happen often but is a little more final than the graveyard. Your library is what you draw cards from at the start of your turn. Your hand is where the spells you can play are. Any spell that has a permanent effect goes into play. And the graveyard is where things go when they die (hence why it's the graveyard); it's also where your spells go.
In Magic, there are 6 kinds of cards, although there's 2 main kinds. Artifacts, Enchantments, Lands, and Creatures stay in play, and are collectively called "permanents" because they stay in play permanently (or until a spells destroys them). Artifacts and Enchantments are alot alike, because after you cast them they sit in play and do whatever they say they do. Land cards let you get mana by "tapping" them (tapping a card turns it sideways). Creatures will attack your opponent, or block your opponent's creatures when they attack (or you can have them sit and watch your opponent's creatures beat on you, but then why did you summon them?). The spells that have 1-time effects are instants and sorceries. They do about what you'd expect them to; a Fireball, for example, does damage to a creature or player, and then goes to your graveyard.
