showing multiple articles on a page

Hi, im new to wordpress but im learning OK so far. I would like to know how i would show a number of different articles on a page. Here is a link to a mockup site i created which i intend to convert to wordpress as a learning task. http://www.interwebsuk.com/live.html

As you can see on the homepage i have a number of featured articles which are separated into sections. also i have a number of different menu bar items. When i click say gaming, i would like the page to show a number of articles in the gaming category. likewise on the homepage, i would like to be able to show x amount of featured articles aswell as a few category based ones. now with joomla i can have one universal template and call functions in the post itself. Can i do the same with wordpress or will i need a separate theme for each page? also, in joomla there is the option to have a read more break so that when the article is displayed it will only show the information above the read more line…im sorry if this doesn’t make much sense, but i would be really grateful for the help.

[No bumping, thank you.]