Color

Magic: The Gathering has five distinct colors of mana used to determine the strategy or overall theme of gameplay.

These colors are:

Details
A card's color is determined by the color of mana in its mana cost. Most of the time while cards are on the battlefield, the color of cards isn't that important. At many times, however, color is very important. Many cards have protection from certain colors, and others can't be blocked except by creatures with the same color as them. Many black spells can only destroy non-black creatures.

White
Focuses on healing and restoration, with the ability to utilize many smaller creatures quickly. White spells often use mechanics such as gaining life or preventing damage. White has many creature removal spells, but these usually has restrictions on them; for example only being able to target attacking or blocking creatures. White also has the best access to board wipe spells.

Blue
The power of control. Blue is all about not letting your opponent make his moves, and ensuring your own. It also boasts some of the best draw power in the game. Blue is the only colour that can frequently interact with spells on the stack.

Black
The color of death and decay. Black is about one thing, and one thing only: Winning. Even if it means having to hurt yourself in order to hurt your enemy more, or to hurt yourself to get more. Black has great versatility, but this often comes at the expense of costs beyond mana such as payment of life or sacrificing creatures.

Red
The color of fire. Red has the ability to burn through your opponent's Life quickly, and mercilessly. Red is all about impulse and passion. Act first, think later. Red's 'burn' spells can usually be used as creature removal or to deal damage to the opponent directly. Red creatures are more likely to have high power than toughness than vice versa. Red tries to win quickly.

Green
The power of nature and growth, green focuses on sheer brute force, and power-ups, with the drawback that some of these cards have high converted mana cost, but this is offset by the fact that green has the best ability to ramp of all colours, as several green cards allow you to play more lands than the usual one-per-turn limit, and there are green creatures that can tap for mana.

Colorless
Colorless cards have none of the above 5 colors in their cards cost. Colourless cards are usually artifacts.

Ally and enemy color pairs
The ally color pairs are pairs of adjacent colors on the color wheel:, , , and. The enemy color pairs are pairs of opposing colors on the color wheel:, , , and.

Flavor

 * White, the color of order, healing, justice, and light but also authoritarianism, subjugation and bureaucracy. It's produced by plains.
 * Blue, the color of knowledge, reason, and trickery, the elemental power is water. It's produced by islands.
 * Black, the color of death, darkness, despair, selfishness, and amorality, but also individuality and ambition. It's produced by swamps.
 * Red, the color of chaos, destruction, war, and fury, as well as lightning and fire. It is the color of love and emotion, as well as freedom and warmth. It's produced by mountains.
 * Green, the color of life, nature, growth, instinct, and interdependence. It's produced by forests.