Magic: The Gathering

[Shannacore]

So a friend and I started playing this over the weekend. Neither of us had previously played, and it was certainly a lot of fun. What's the strategy in creating your deck though? He was playing black/white while I was playing red, which seemed alright. We both pretty much had no idea what we were doing, but we were learning as the games went on. Our matches were definitely close (although he proceeded to win every single match except one), which makes me think his deck was just better..?

I D K, give me some nerdy tips on how you assemble your decks / play your cards. Is one color set obviously better than the other..? I bought a couple of packs of cards this weekend, going to try to put together an ub3r l33t deck this week. I need to be prepared for Thursdays games, giev tips ~ ~