----------1. What are your tips or advice for a new Magic player?
-Be prepared to lose, and don't get discouraged by it. Magic is a very tricky game with a lot of skill involved, and the best way to learn is to play, lose, and then figure out why you lost and how you could have won.
-Keep a fairly low mana curve (ie. how many cards of each mana cost are in your deck). Depending on the style and colour of your deck it'll be slightly different, but you don't want to stuff your deck full of high cost cards. Green decks generally have a higher curve because they have access to lots of "ramp" (cards that give you access to more mana earlier in the game).
-Try and play a lot of drafts. This is where you get a table of ~8 players each with 3 boosters. Everyone opens a pack, picks a card from it, and passes the rest. You keep going, 1 card at a time, until everyone has a pile of cards, then you build a deck outta what you drafted and you play. This is great for 2 reasons: it forces you to learn how to deckbuild properly, and it keeps you from getting roflstomped by $500 decks. Plus, you'll generally be able to end up with more rares than you would just buying 3 packs cuz people often won't take the rare from their pack and will pass it to you if something else is better for their deck.
-Get some friends into it as well, or make friends with people at your game store. Magic is WAY more fun when played with friends.
-Let people at the store know you're a newbie. Stores generally have 30 card "beginner decks" they'll give you for free; they're crap but simple to play and great for learning. Other players will quite often be happy to give you their bulk stuff for free if they know you're new, especially after drafts. When I went to my first draft I ended up coming home with well over 200 cards cuz a lot of players don't want to take any cards home that they don't need.
-Ask your opponents for tips. When you play a game, especially against a more experienced player, ask them for advice either during (casual play) or after (competitive play). Most experienced players are more than happy to give you help, either with better lines of play or tweaks to make your deck better.
-Run 3 or 4 of your best cards. Consistency wins games.
----------2. What is the most popular color, in general?
Depends on the format. In older formats it's blue cuz there are some broken blue cards in old sets, but trust me when I say you won't be playing these formats for a long time, if at all, since I'm imagining you don't wanna spend roughly $1000 on a deck. Honestly though, don't worry about popularity when picking a colour.
----------3. How do Blue and Black compare in terms of playstyle?
They're kinda similar, in the sense that they're both fairly technical and interactive most of the time. In general though, blue is more reactive, relying heavily on counterspells (cards that destroy a card in response to an opponent playing it) and card draw, while black is more proactive, destroying cards in the opponent's hand and murdering creatures on the board. If you're gonna play black though, a word of advice: don't be afraid to pay life for stuff. One of the biggest things a black mage needs to wrap his/her head around is that life is a resource. The best piece of advice I got when I started playing black was "It doesn't matter if you're at one life once you're opponent's at zero".
----------4. What are the strengths and drawbacks of a mono-deck?
---Strengths---
-They're very consistent. My main deck is mono-white, and I very rarely have trouble playing my stuff.
-You can play cards with a heavier "colour commitment" (the amount of mana of a specific colour needed to play a card). For example, look at [mtg_card=Cryptic Command] versus [mtg_card=Fact or Fiction]. Both 4 mana, but Cryptic is much harder to play because it needs 3 blue instead of 1.
-Your mana base is a helluva lot cheaper. My friend's 3 colour deck has a $300 mana base and my 2 colour deck's is $200, while my mono-white one is $20 and that's only because I bought fancy basic lands for it. Keep in mind these are optimized decks for a more expensive format, you can definitely play 3 colours with all basic lands. It just hurts your consistency.
---Weaknesses---
-You have access to less stuff.
-They can be shut down easier. For an extreme example, see [mtg_card=Iona, Shield of Emeria]. You won't see that card very often, if at all, but it illustrates my point.
----------5. Which is stronger for a mono-deck, Blue or Black?
This is really tough to answer. It depends on so many factors, but for a beginner I'd play black simply because it's easier. Blue decks are a lot more about timing than black decks and also tend to make more people sad.
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As for my experience, I've been playing for a couple years now. I've never been into standard (the most common format; you can only play cards from the last two years' worth of sets), but I play a lot of modern (sets don't rotate out, but you can't play anything from before Eighth Edition) and Commander/EDH (pick a creature with the Legendary subtype, build a deck using only cards in its colours) My decks are:
Modern:
Death and Taxes: mono-white; uses a bunch of little creatures with effects that make it harder for the opponent to play their game.
Golgari Dredgevine: green and black; plays a bunch of creatures that just don't stay dead.
Commander:
[mtg_card=Sharuum the Hegemon]: blue, white and black; my competitive, mean deck. Stops the opponent from doing anything then suddenly "combos out" and wins.
[mtg_card=Maelstrom Wanderer]: red, blue and green; my fun deck. Plays ramp spells, then casts Maelstrom Wanderer and uses his effect to pop a couple random duders from the top of my deck into play. Then pick him back up and do it again!
I also have a casual black-red Vampires deck. I very rarely play it, but it's good to teach newbies with because it's simple and straightforward.
