WHITE | BLUE | BLACK | RED | GREEN

White strives for utopia. Peace, harmony, community, white wants them all. From powerful, cheap creatures to efficient flyers and the most powerful creature eliminator in the game - Wrath of God - white has it all in small degrees.

White's Strengths
Across the mana curve, white has the best creature colour. Sure green has the best fatties and red's goblins can be strong in the beginning, but white can hang with all that and more. Its weenies storm out early, and then its flyers - better than blue's - sweep in for the kill. No other colour offers protection like white. You can gain life, remove threats, and give protection of colours with its vast arsenal of spells.

White's Weaknesses
White's removal is sparse and more expensive than black's and red's. Green's bigger creatures can beat it down if it does not have access to its defending spells. Blue controls the board a bit better than white.

Blue - the colour of thought and reason - has become quite a challenging colour to play. Usually used as support because of its control spells, blue's flyers are more expensive than white's and its ground hitters are not too impressive. However, if you want to draw lots of cards or bounce a ton of permanents back to your opponent's hand, there's no shame in feeling blue.

Blue's Strengths
Blue has efficient ways to draw cards. If can be a creature or a spell. Black might draw you an extra card a turn with Phyrexian Arena, but blue can draw you four, six, or eight with a single Rush of Knowledge. No other colour can bounce permanents like blue. Unsummon and Boomerang are the typical spells or a single Upheaval does it all in one stroke. With Counterspell as its originator, spells like Mana Leak and Power Sink controls the game, but recently they are not as reliable as before.

Blue's Weaknesses
Blue's creature base is expensive. Compared to fast weenies of red and white and beefy green hordes, you must spend a lot more to get the same with blue. Playing blue is much slower. Unless you plan on a control deck that can hang around a long time, look for your creatures in other colours.

Black explores the deadly corners of the Magic universe. If you want to destroy creatures, force your opponent to discard or perform tricks with your graveyard, black is your colour.

Black's Strengths
Everywhere you look, black has another removal spell. Black can blow up the board faster than any other colour. It can also reanimate like no other colour. Opponents also lose cards to black's powerful discarding techniques. Black's control may not be as strong as blue's, but its arsenal of instants and sorceries is something you do not want to overlook.

Black's Weaknesses
Ironically, ways to stop black's reanimation are other black cards. With staple abilities such as Fear, the only thing in black's path is its own and artifacts, which coincidently is not something black can remove easily (as with enchantments). If one hits the table, you had better pray it is not a power-card like Karma.

Red is all about chaos and fireworks. You never know exactly what you are going to get with spells like Browbeat and its coin-flip cards. One thing is for sure: if you want direct-damage instants, look no further.

Red's Strengths
More explosive potential than any other colour, red can burn anything in sight. Red has no trouble dealing damage to any target or even multiple targets. Combined with haste-fueled creatures, red's damage spells can pave the way to a quick victory. Red's goblins race with white's soldiers out of the gates, and its more expensive monsters like Blistering Firecat finishes it off.

Red's Weaknesses
Like black, red has no way of dealing with enchantments. If a detrimental enchantment hits play, red has only one choice and that is to race even faster. Other than goblins and a few select dragons, red's creatures are medicore.

Green loves nature and nature is big. When it comes to two-digit creatures, green's the colour to look at. Green's favourite race - elves - provides a lot of creature support and can also speed up your mana production.

Green's Strengths
Fast mana can spit out giant creatures on turn three. The infamous Birds of Paradise sets the tone of green. Though early game green does not seem like much, those 1/1 elves are just stepping stones to an early beeftank. While you will not have the fastest creatures, green does generate the biggest ones. For pump spells, green can catch enemies off guard with dozens of instants.

Greens Weaknesses
While green can destroy artifacts, lands, and enchantments, it cannot remove creatures from play. This would be a problem for green with its lack of flyers. Green's equivalent of a kill spell is a bigger creature blocking a smaller one. If you cannot outrace your opponent in a green deck, you will lose in an elimination duel.