@Hobusu’s right that Red v. Green is the standard, and there’s a lot of depth to it (i.e., play it many times, learn something new every time).
But I’ll also say that I didn’t learn to pace myself until I started playing with the Purple starter. A real Past or Future build can be tricky to pilot, but Present with Argo/Stewardess at Tech I and Hyperion/Tricycloid+Temporal Distortion at Tech II is fairly straightforward.
I love Anarchy and Blood so much, but I almost always overextend when playing Red, and the more expensive Purple starter ironically helps me stay focused.
Have you checked out the Collected Codex Resources thread yet?
There’s a lot of great stuff in there, but my favorites for new players are:
- @Barrelfish’s Beginner’s Guide to Workers and Beginner’s Guide to Teching, under “Strategy Discussions”
- @Hobusu’s New Player Reference Sheets, under “Strategy Discussions”; these incorporate a lot of the stuff from Barrelfish’s guides. These are notable for giving you a quick overview of your color’s starter and each spec, and a quick-and-dirty effective build order for each spec to get a feel for what really makes them shine. Probably your best first resource.
- @EricF’s card overviews of Heroes, Spells, Starter Decks, Tech I, and Tech III, under “Card Specific Discussions.” Some folks would quibble with Eric’s analysis on a few cards, but overall it gives you a solid idea of how, for example, the various heroes stack up against each other, or how the various specs compare in terms of useful Tech I’s, and why. Everything is given an A through F grade, and his rubric for what each grade means is listed at the beginning.