The day is Monday, March 1st, 2004: A Mister Steve Menendian (“The Smmenen”) shares to the world the glory that is Type 4 on magicthegathering.com. While the entirety of that document is highly useful*, there are two statements in particular that catch my eye:

“Limited Infinity is a highly customizable game.”
“Remember, this is a casual format, so there's lots of ways to customize based on what you enjoy.”

Since that day just over a year has passed, and Type 4 has skyrocketed in popularity. As with any format, more people playing it means more innovation. This can take many forms — and the two most relevant to Type 4 are that of finding new card choices and developing/discovering new rules to the game. Just as Standard Magic took massive amounts of time to iron out (a process with continues to this day), such is the case of Type 4. The purpose of this article is to collect all the “house rules" that have been devised by various groups in an attempt to expose them to other groups so that each can more highly “customize” their Type 4 experiences.

Before tackling each of the house rules, a major issue has to be addressed that greatly affects some of the following variations. The issue is that of basic lands. Some questions that arise:

• Can Betrayal of Flesh be Entwined? (Not counting any non-basic lands that may already be in the deck.)
• Can I Flashback Lava Dart?
• Can I use Soratami Mirror-Mage to bounce things? (See also: Betrayal of Flesh.)
• Do I have to sacrifice Fallow Wurm as soon as I play it?
• Does Anger in the graveyard make my creatures hasty?
• Can Sol’kanar the Swamp king be blocked?
• Can Island Fish Jasconius attack, or even survive a state-based check?
• What the heck happens when I cast Last Stand?
• How many creatures do I get if I cast Beacon of Creation?
• Does Horobi’s Whisper do anything?
• What can I steal with Vedalken Shackles?
• How big is Nightmare?

There are a near limitless number of questions regarding cards that use/effect basic lands, and many ways to deal with them. The purest would say that there are no basic lands in play, Sol’kanar is blockable, Anger is just a 2/2 hasted critter, Vedalken Shackles’ only use is Bosh, Iron Golem fodder, etc., but that’s no fun. There are numerous cards that normal Type 4 rules render unplayable, including many of those listed above — but they're great if they actually work. For this there are many solutions:

Option 1:
The purest: There are no basics of any kind in play, period. What you see is what you get. If you want to Entwine that Betrayal, you’d better hope to have Maze of Ith, Winding Canyons, and Volrath’s Stronghold in play, or else you’re out of luck.

Option 2:
For all intents and purposes, you have one of each basic land in play. These lands cannot be touched in any way. They are indestructible and untargetable, and they cannot be removed from play (from Decree of Annihilation or something). So, Sol’kanar is unblockable, Nightmare is a 1/1, Anger in the yard is good times, and you get one Insect from Beacon of Creation. You do not get the full effect of Betrayal of Flesh or the Soratami, Fallow Wurm dies on impact, and Lava Dart can be played only once.

Option 3:
This is a variation of Option 2, except there are an infinite number of each basic land. They are still completely untouchable in every way. This makes Nightmare and Beacon of Creations too good in many circles, leaves Anger, Sol’kanar, and Betrayal unaffected, but ramps up cards like Vedalken Shackles.

Option 4:
There are no basic lands in play whatsoever, but if a spell or effect requires lands to pay for a cost, the cost is paid. Therefore, Betrayal of Flesh and the Soratami work to their fullest, Fallow Wurm can be played, and Lava Dart can be flashed back. Anger is back to being a 2/2 hasty bear, and the Island Fish are sad.

Option 5:
This is the most flexible option, and the one that allows for the greatest card pool. This is a combination of Options 4 and 5 (or 3 and 5). You have an infinite number of (or one of each) basic land in play. They cannot be targeted, are indestructible, and cannot be removed from play. However, you can use them to pay costs for those such as the Soratami. Basically, everything you want to work does work.

This makes for some interesting deck construction questions: Soratami Mirror-Mage might still be okay, but is Nightmare too powerful? This option also best explains why each player has infinite mana, if you need that sort of justification.

Okay, now that that is out of the way, we can get into the House Rules. Of the ones I’ve found, they can be categorized into two basic categories: Power Limiting/Enhancing and Rules Interpretations.

House Rules Section 1: Power Limiting/Enhancing

These are the rules that attempt to either make Type 4 more broken, or attempt to control said brokenness. In one way or another, they bend the basic rules of the game, with the knowledge that Type 4 is far too different than standard Magic to play by all the same rules.

I’m free!
This is perhaps the most important house rule for those who follow it, and the interesting as far a play goes. If you follow this rule, then any spell that has an alternate play cost doesn’t count as your spell for the turn, as long as you pay the alternate cost. For example, if you want to cast Force of Will but don't want it to count as your spell for the turn, you have to actually remove a blue card in your hand from the game and lose one life. They can still be played normally, but then they count as your spell.

This rule is very dependent upon the land rules mentioned above. Does Thwart count as your spell for the turn? How about Submerge? Foil? Crash? Also, some feel that the cost must include some sort of resource other than just mana; the Fifth Dawn Bringers are just too easy, in their opinion.

There are three scenarios that I know of that skew this rule: The first involves morphs. Some believe that playing a Morph creature face-down constitutes an Alternate Play Cost (which, technically, it is), and as such, does not count towards the spell limit. The other is effects that reduce costs to zero — cards such as Mind’s Desire and Reversal of Fortune, which are technically unplayable because they both count as your spell for the turn. The final is a variation of the former, claiming that if a card can reduce its own cost, it’s free if that condition is met, even if it doesn’t bring it to zero. This is most relevant to Affinity guys and the Prophecy Avatars.

The reasoning behind this is actually very sound, even though the rule seems a bit random. In standard Magic, the only thing that limits what you can play is the amount of mana available to you, and APCs get around that. In Type 4 mana isn’t an issue, but the spell limit instead controls what you can play. Likewise, APCs should get around that.

Get a Life
Since everything in Type 4 is super-sized, it would be reasonable that the starting life totals should follow suit. Since 11/11s on turn 1 are perfectly normal, perhaps a bit more time to deal with it should be given. Thirty is probably a suitable number, but use whatever you want.

A Helping Hand:
Since your hand is never bogged down with mana producers, you don’t need as many cards to start out with. Furthermore, since everything is so much bigger, you can do a lot more with a lot less. Therefore, it has generally been considered that five cards is a good starting hand size. Maximum hand sizes vary widely from group to group: you could use five, to coincide with the starting size, seven to coincide with standard Magic, or abolish the maximum hand size altogether, as it is more difficult to cast a lot of spells when you are limited to one per turn.

Making the cards work for you:
No matter how many house rules you have, some cards are just too broken. Yet, the point of Type 4 is solely to have as much fun as possible, and everybody likes broken stuff, right? What is a group to do?

The answer? Card errata.

Obviously, Wizards doesn’t make cards specifically for Type 4, nor does it factor into their decision of whether a card is too powerful or not. I doubt there were any internal discussions as to whether or not Planeswalker’s Mischief was too strong… But in Type 4, it could be. The most prominent errata is that of the one-flip Mischievous Quanar (mischief is good in Type 4, huh?), but others exist, too. This is most easily conveyed by modifying the card with a Sharpie, by either blacking out or adding any relevant rules text. If there’s an awesome card that’s just too good, or doesn’t quite work within Type 4 rules, feel free to take a marker to it.

Again, Wizards doesn’t make cards for Type 4, and yet there is some ground that could certainly be covered there. You’ll never open a pack and see an enchantment that reads “You may play an additional spell each turn.” In standard Magic, it makes no sense, but in Type 4 it’s a house. As long as all players accept it, making your own cards can be a great boon to your stack, though I wouldn’t suggest going too overboard with it.

Not Quite Infinite:
If you haven’t noticed, most house rules attempt to bring the awesomeness of the Type 4 power level down a notch. This rule is no exception. In order to allow cards like Staff of Domination, Aggravated Assault, or Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, some groups have placed a limit on how much mana you can spend in a turn, as opposed to the normal infinity. The number I have heard most often is twenty — which, let’s face it, is more than enough to play any bomb you want. The most expensive card in Magic doesn’t even cost that much (well, I guess you can’t play Gleemax anymore). In this scenario, you could add cards like Mox Lotus to your stack which, while normally useless, becomes amazing.

A variation on this is that you have infinite mana to cast spells, but only a limited amount to use on abilities.

Limited Ability
This option is very stringent, but encompasses a lot of different rules issues in one. It puts a limit on the number of times you can activate each ability of each permanent each turn. This makes some cards, like our Mischievous friend Quanar, balanced, but others significantly weaker. I can only deal two damage a turn with Masticore? Uh-huh.

While this solves some problems, it creates a lot of them as well, and it should only be used if the deck has a very unbalanced power level (i.e. lots of terrible cards, lots of broken cards, and no middle road.)

House Rules Section 2: Rules Interpretations

When in Rome…
Okay, so most of use aren’t actually in Rome, but that doesn’t mean we can do as the Romans do. One of the most explosive of Magical mechanics is that of the “X spell,” especially when you have infinite mana! But who says X is a variable? Maybe all this time, X has actually been the Roman numeral for ten. That’s the theory behind this rule. Fireball would be so hot (Get it!? Hot!? Eh…) if it only dealt ten damage, and you won’t have to Sharpie out "Who" on Who What Where Why When if you only gained ten. Other less obvious cards become available as well, such as Hurricane/Earthquake (or Borrowing the East Wind/Rolling Earthquake), Krakilin, Goblin Offensive, and Stroke of Genius.

There is a problem with this, though; it is my personal opinion (and you don’t have to agree) that X should equal ten on every card, or none at all. It’s too confusing to pick and choose which ones to apply it to. This severely hoses perfectly fair X spells such as Ertai’s Meddling, Starstorm, and Captain’s Maneuver.

Swinging Both Ways
This rule only applies to multiplayer games, which Type 4 should be about 95% of the time. This also applies to every multiplayer game ever. That is the issue of whether or not you can attack multiple players with different creatures within the same combat phase. Wizards relatively recently released a First Draft of the Multiplayer Comprehensive Rules, in which it states that you can only attack one player each combat step. At the end of the document are house rules, one of which stating that you can split attacks if your group so chooses. This is a less-than-obvious issue you need to decide upon before you start. This one is especially important to tell new people, because it’s something that doesn’t come up as often as some of the others, but drastically affects decisions.

Taking Offense
As was explained in Steve’s article, situations arise where conflicting abilities can go on forever (Masticore trying to kill Crowd Favorites). The widely excepted handling of that situation is that the “defensive ability” wins; in the example above, that would be the Crowd Favorites. This is not how every group does it, though. Also, there are some sticky situations that arise when the defensive ability isn’t distinguishable (a classic example: I have Nighteyes the Desecrator, you have Withered Wretch. I go to reanimate something, you try to remove it. Who wins?) Here are some solutions I’ve seen people use:

Option 1:
In the actual rules, there is a little something called Active Player, Non-Active Player, or APNAP. What that basically says is that if there are two things that can go on forever and are controlled by two different people, the active player (the person whose turn it is) chooses a number of times to do their thing, then the Non-Active Player chooses a number of times to do theirs. In this situation, if it’s my turn and I control Crowd Favorites, I have to choose how many times I’ll pump it, and then my opponent how many times s/he’ll activate Masticore (presumably 5x + 4 times, where x is the number of times I activated). So if it’s my turn, Crowd Favorites dies, but every other turn it lives. In the case of a multiplayer situation where neither effect is controlled by the active player, the closest player clockwise from the active player is considered "active."

Option 2:
Defensive ability wins. When there is no definitive defensive ability, whoever activates their ability first loses.

Option 3:
Whichever ability requires fewer activations wins. In the above example, Crowd Favorites still wins, but if it were a Smokespew Invoker trying to kill an Aven Flock, the Invoker would win. This has no clear winner for the Wretch/Nighteyes scenario.

Option 4:
Whichever ability requires less mana wins. Crowd Favorites wins again, but this time Aven Flock beats out Smokespew, because mana for mana, the Flock gets +0/+8 for every -3/-3. In the Wretch/Nighteyes scenario, the Wretch wins.

Option 5:
Variation of 3 or 4, except that defensive ability wins, and the less mana/activations clause only applies to when the defensive ability isn’t clear.

Option 6:
Defensive ability wins. When there is no clear defensive ability, whichever is the most flavorfully defensive wins. In this case, since bringing something back to life is more defensive than removing it from existence, the Nighteyes wins.

Dead Ringers
Another issue that needs to be dealt with in every multiplayer game is that of control effects after a player has gone from twenty to zero. Once again, the Multiplayer Comprehensive Rules has an answer: When a player dies, all control effects of that player end, and all objects they own but do not control are removed from the game. That means when a player dies, anything that they stole that was in play is returned to their owner, still in play. Anything that someone stole from them is returned to the dead player. This rule exists so that a player can leave when they are no longer in the game.

That’s not quite as relevant to Type 4, though, so, while it is one option, others exist. Since all the cards belong together and probably belong to one player, a dead player does not necessarily have to take their stuff with them. Many groups play it as so that when a player dies and another player controls one of the dead player’s permanents, they keep it until that permanent is removed, at which point it is returned to its owner.

Getting Opinionated
I compiled these so that you can get a feel of what’s out there — but by no means am I implying that you should use them all. A lot of these were made by beginners, are outdated, or just plain suck and were devised by people unwilling to handle the sheer might of Type 4. Choose careful, and try different ones out so you can get a feel for what works.

Whatever works for you is great, and that’s what Type 4 is all about, but I’m going to share what has worked for my group. (By comparison, we have been playing for a long time. We made our first stack around the summer of 2003.) We use alternate play costs of normal cards, and of Bringers, but not of Morphs or Reversal of Fortune-type stuff. That’s pushing it. We use the land rule that you have an infinite number of indestructible, untargetable, unremovable lands that you can do anything with. Sol’kanar cannot be blocked, betrayal is auto-Entwined, Thwart does not count for your spell for the turn, nor does Crash, you can use an Moonfolk any number of times, Jasconius is fine, Last Stand and Beacon is banned, Nightmare is an infinity/infinity, Anger in the ‘yard equals haste, and you cannot target your lands with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa. Starting hand size is five, maximum is seven. Starting life total is 20, there is no maximum mana or activation limits, X=X, we have no errata on any cards, nor do we use any home-made. We use the flavorful approach to non-defensive/offensive stand-offs. The two multiplayer rules we follow by the book: no split attacks, dead things go with the player.

Finishing Up
This is by no means an extensive list. If anyone has something they disagree with (or if there is something not covered here), please take it to the forums or drop me an e-mail. I’d be more than happy to revise the list when necessary. Also, when I get my lazy self to do it, I’ll introduce three very interesting ways my group has devised to spice up their Type 4 games. They’re a blast, and I can’t wait to share them with you all.

I’d like to thank everyone who has provided information for this, which is pretty much everybody in TMD’s Casual Forum, as well as the guys in the Type 4 newsgroup. And of course, I couldn’t have done it without my play group, namely Andy Probasco (BrassMan), Cole St. Laurent, Keith Carpentier, Daryl Cabral, Jay Griffin, and Heather Carpentier.

Andrew Farias
TheWalkingSponge on TMD
andrewfarias AT gmail.com

* - With the exception of the rules mix-ups involving Tsabo’s Decree and Dwarven Catapult.