Status panel
For each of the two players on the left side of the screen, there is a small status panel, which looks like this:
Status panel
(I think that looks ugly, might change that at some stage)
Anyway, the information will still be there.
At the top, you can see a little notice what phase you are currently in, that small message will change rapidly. There won't be just phases, but also "messages like:
"not your turn" (if the computer is thinking)
"On Stack: some creature
...
After that it gets a bit colorfull, you might have allready guessed, the colored textfields indicate the current mana in the pool. Nevertheless, I'll state the obvious:
Black - black mana (Swamp(s) tapped, and not used)
White - white mana (Plain(s) tapped, and not used)
Red - red mana (Mountain(s) tapped, and not used)
Blue - blue mana (Island(s) tapped, and not used)
Green - white mana (Forest(s) tapped, and not used)
Gray - gray mana - oops, I mean colorless man (not in Portal)
colorless - sum of all tapped and unused mana
Next line - starts of with the life of the player, one day a match will be finished, when life reaches zero - or below.
The little "H"-Button, toggles the display of the "Phase info panel" and the "Card info panel".
The last button on the panel is the "phase done" button. Whenever the player has finished his current activities, he can press that button. Again this button changes it's name with the phase / situation the player is in.
In the above example, the player s expected to click a creature. So possibly the button won't do anyting. If it is a cancleable action the player is at, he can press the "done" button (whatever it is currently called), to cancle that action.
Some cards may have effects, which effect the player - more or less, depending on the view. Spells which are deemed to have such an effect may be visible in the player status panel. Here an example:
Status panel
The card "Exhaustion" has the effect, that the player can not untap his creatures/lands in the next turn. The card is thus deemed a "player-spell". Such spells are visible as small icons in the player status panel. As all cards which are visible, a right click - even on the small card - provides further information in the card info panel. If there is more than one buf on a player, a tiny little stack will built up :-).