Type 4 with lands

[Mr. Type 4]

There's a fun new way to play with your Type 4 cards that I saw Ray Robilard playing in New York.  I dont know if it was his idea, but it works pretty well.

You do NOT have infinite mana.  By the same token, you are no longer restricted to one spell per turn.

You may play any card in your hand as a land.  it becomes a land that taps for its exact mana cost.  So something like Nicol Bolas would tap for 2RRUUBB, and Gleemax would tap for a million.  Split cards tap for their total mana between both halves. Hybrid mana symbols can be either color, kind of like a dual land.  These "Lands" count as all basic land types associated with what colors they can produce.

Some cards are much worse by these rules (like cards that have effects when you cycle them) but most of them are pretty good.  Its much easier to explain to new people, too.

Give it a try if you want to try something new. 

[Twaun007]

This new way to play Type 4 is bonkers by the way.

I suggest people seriously give it a try.

[iamfishman]

I also find it is a superior format to type 4.  Type 5, my group has taken to calling it.

Credit must be given to Jeff Carpenter for coming up with the idea.  He suggested it to me one time at a Vintage event some time ago, and my life has never been the same.

[Mr. Type 4]

Well thanks to Jeff Carpenter for the good idea. 

I didnt explain why this version of Type 4 is worth a try:

1) REALLY easy to explain to new players.  There's really only one special rule you need to explain, and the gameplay flows in a familiar way.

2) Fast pick up and play quality: we've been playing this by dealing out completely random 40 card decks from my Type 4 stack.  Having to play a completely random deck is pretty fun under these rules.  When the game ends, you can quickly deal everyone new decks and the next game is totally new.  great for tournament downtime.

3) The original Type 4 distils magic into a different type of game where politics make a bigger difference than game technical skills.  Type 4 with lands brings in back in the other direction.

4) 2 player compatibility.  A "heads up" game of orginal type 4 is kind of stupid.  This version works just fine with only two people. 

[GrandpaBelcher]

I played a few games of this tonight with the above poster. It was refreshing to be able to play the insane cards without the insane effects that go with infinite mana. Smokespew Invoker? Sure. You're not wiping the board with that guy. Masticore? He's pretty good, but you'll have to tap out to kill anything big.

I also really liked that you could just grab 40 cards and go. There's a time to draft a deck that you want to play, but that can take forever. I want to be casting giant spells right now!

[Wagner]

I played a few games of this tonight with the above poster. It was refreshing to be able to play the insane cards without the insane effects that go with infinite mana. Smokespew Invoker? Sure. You're not wiping the board with that guy. Masticore? He's pretty good, but you'll have to tap out to kill anything big.

I also really liked that you could just grab 40 cards and go. There's a time to draft a deck that you want to play, but that can take forever. I want to be casting giant spells right now!

Well, half the time I just take a random pile of 40 cards for regular T4 too, it does the job just fine.

But I'm very curious to try that.

How do you make evident what your lands are or not? Is it hard to keep track of how many mana your opponent has open?

[Mr. Type 4]

How do you make evident what your lands are or not? Is it hard to keep track of how many mana your opponent has open?

So far it hasn't been hard to track.  Without being told to do so players seem to naturally play their "lands" in a seperate part of their battlefield.  

For the most part it's not too hard to remember what people actually cast as a spell because those cards typically have an effect on the game that's going on, so you're pretty well aware when someone casts Nicol Bolas as opposed to playing it as land because you know it's something you have to deal with.  

One other cool feature of Type 5 is that I've noticed: in a lot of games where I lost, the card i needed to win was sitting right there on the table as land.  Deciding what cards to play as land makes for some interesting decisions.  

It's also interesting that you can have lands that make you a TON of mana, but I might have to tap a couple of my lands to get the colored mana I need and then I'm tapped out and can't counter-spell anything.  Nat (lochnivar) and I had a pretty cool game where he had Legacy Weapon in play but had to tap all of his lands to get the 5 colors of mana he needed to use it, which would prevent him from being able to do other things.  

Now that I've played about 15-20 games of "Type 5" I've been thinking a lot about how to design the card pool. The Type 4 card pool works fine, but what if we were designing the pool with Type 5 in mind?
* Having a ton of Instants isn't as important in Type 5 and Sorceries don't have to be as good to make the cut.  
* Artifacts are really good because they are very easy to cast (Planar Portal, Tower of Fortunes, and Kozilek seemed to be some of the most powerful cards).  
* Split cards are very good because they make a lot of mana as lands but dont require a lot of mana to cast.  
* Cards that cost all five colors of mana are some of the best land cards.  I got a deck that had Menomic Nexus and Conflux, which was sweet because the Nexus let me actually cast Conflux.  
* Firebreathing abilities can be pretty safe when they require colored mana.  Fireballs are probably still a bit unfair, tho.  
*Land destruction is pretty good. 

[bun]

I played a few games of this tonight with the above poster. It was refreshing to be able to play the insane cards without the insane effects that go with infinite mana. Smokespew Invoker? Sure. You're not wiping the board with that guy. Masticore? He's pretty good, but you'll have to tap out to kill anything big.

I also really liked that you could just grab 40 cards and go. There's a time to draft a deck that you want to play, but that can take forever. I want to be casting giant spells right now!

Well, half the time I just take a random pile of 40 cards for regular T4 too, it does the job just fine.

But I'm very curious to try that.

How do you make evident what your lands are or not? Is it hard to keep track of how many mana your opponent has open?

This would be really interesting as a constructed format, although it might need to be singleton.

[iamfishman]

How do you make evident what your lands are or not? Is it hard to keep track of how many mana your opponent has open?

We find that it is easy if you just put your land upside and closest to you.