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Thanks for posting this Lady Visara.

I'm looking for a thread like this for a long time now. You see, I am one of those people who loved the ability of Banding, but I stopped playing right before they removed it. And I still don't understand, what is so confusing with Banding.

Well here's what I understand from Banding.

Banding doesn't necessarily means that they turn cards into one.
They turn creature cards into one attacking or blocking entity.

Banding creatures means they are friendly enough to group with other creatures to form a group, which while attacking and blocking will be considered one. From here on end, the group will be refered to as BAND.

Forming The Band.
Now, to form a BAND. You must declare the BAND members first, prior to attacking or blocking. A BAND must contain only creatures with BANDING or creature with BANDING plus one without BANDING.

i.e.
(Band of Two): You can form a BAND using 1 Banding creature and a Non Banding creature.
(Band of Three): You can form a BAND using 2 Banding creature and a Non Banding creature.

In short a BAND must contain ONLY one NON-BANDING creature, IF there will be any NON-BANDING creatures. If all the creatures in a BAND has BANDING, it's ok.

Banding Around
Now Banded attacking creatures are considered as one attacking entity. If a creature with Flying bands with a non-flying creature. The Flying ability is disregarded and the BAND can be blocked by a non-flying creature. Same goes for Protection, Shadow and other evasive abilities. However when an attacking BAND is blocked, the controller of the band chooses how the damage is dealt. In a way, since the BAND is a group... they choose who gets the pointy end of the enemy's sword.

Now same goes for Banded blocking creatures.

Some points to consider:

If a BAND has a creature with Protection from Black, the BAND DOES NOT have Protection from Black, only the creature has that ability. Same goes for First Strike, Double Strike and Trample.

BANDING's main advantage is it allows you to attack or block with a group of small banding creatures to eliminate a large one.

BANDING's main disadvantage is when a number creatures are banded they could be simple chomp-blocked and none of them will deal damage to a player.

I.e.
4 Pikemen and 4 Mesa Pegasus attacks one was blocked by a one 0/1 Pest Token. The band deals no damage to the player.

4 Pikemen and 4 Mesa Pegasus blocks a Krosan Enormous Baloth, Enormous Baloth dies. Only 1 Mesa Pegasus is killed (By having all of Baloth deal damage to only 1 Mesa Pegasus.)

As I understand it, the main thing to remember about banding is that its strategic focus is to change who gets to assign damage to blockers.

Pretty much like that.

It simply like ganging up on someone, all the guys in the gang hit the enemy creature, but the enemy creature can only hit those creatures who he can reach and you decide the creatures who the enemy creature can reach.

It's allowed, that's one of the advantage of Banding. You as the owner of the Band choose who on your creatures (within the band) receives damage.

Provoke also works on a band... When a creature with Provoke is in an attacking band, that creature's controller can force a defending player's creature to block the band.


Additional info about Banding: as long as you can block a creature within a band, that band is blockable. And as long as any member of the band is able to block an attacking creature, it can be blocked.

i.e.
Player A has White Knight banded with Pikemen and attacks.
Player B has Black Knight.

Player B's Black Knight could still block Player's A band. However during damage resolution, Player A assigns all damage to be dealth to White Knight, causing Black Knight to deal 0 damage. If Player A decided to have the damage dealt to Pikemen, Pikemen will get the full 2 damage from the Black Knight.

Also, in Banding you an assign the damage as in every point of damage dealt.

i.e.
Player A has Craw Wurm.
Player B has 7 1/1 Mesa Pegasus and a Crusade.

Player A attacks and is blocked by a band of 7 2/2 Pegasus (bec of Crusades). Player B could assign 1 point of damage to each pegasus, ensuring all of them will survive combat.

And the fact that is extremely complicated and confusing. The fact that it took multiple posts to explain it proves this point.

It's both reasons, Lady Visara. Banding was axed because one: It was broke right the hell in half, and two: The players who didn't take the time to or couldn't manage to figure it out could easily be trashed by the ones who did and used it to full effect.

One thing that many people talking about banding miss, if they weren't playing with the ability back when it was in print (man, I feel old), is that when you are blocking only one blocking creature needs to have banding for you to assign the damage as you like. So, your example could have been a Mesa Pegasus and 5 Citizen tokens and still have all your creatures surive (you also wouldn't need 7 Mesa Pegasus cards since the Craw Wurm should only have a power of 6, plus playing the 5th Mesa Pegasus would have somebody looking at you funny).

To clear up Banding (we'll leave out "Bands with other" for now):