Banding and the bastard child that is âBands with other.â
Sixth Edition (April 1999) came with new rule changes that effected all of Magic: The Gathering, not just for the core set.
Such changes included a 60-card minimum for constructed decks and the four-of rule for everything but basic lands; the old rules only stated that you must have at least 40-cards⌠And thatâs it, no other restrictions.
Another such rule change was that artifacts generally no longer âturn offâ when tapped. Of course there are a few artifacts whose effects still  âturn offâ when they are tapped, but they now explicitly say so in their rules text.
Another thing introduced in Sixth Edition was the Stack (before it was batches and series)Â and Damage on the Stack.
Banding, introduced in Alpha, was one of the abilities made obsolete in Sixth Edition as it can be confusing to may players, new and old alike.Â
The following is my basic understanding of how Banding works. Of course I could be wrong, if I am feel free to contact me and give me corrections to any of this.
The key to the basic understanding of Banding is that it is has two parts. The first, it allowed your creatures to attack or block as a group, and second, it lets you decide how to distribute combat damage.
You can declare any number of creatures that all have banding and up to one creature without banding as attacking in a band.
You declare a Benalish Hero (1/1, banding), a War Elephant (2/2, banding, trample), a Mesa Pegasus (1/1, banding, flying), and Grizzly Bears (2/2) as attacking in a band.
These creatures are now attacking together as a group! If one of your banding creatures gets blocked, they all get blocked.
Your opponent responds by blocking your War Elephant with their own Grizzly Bears. One member of your band has been blocked so every member of the band is also blocked. It doesnât matter that the Mesa Pegasus has flying it is still blocked as part of the band.
Your creatures keeps any special abilities they have, but these abilities are not shared with the band. Mesa Pegasus still has flying but doesnât give the other creatures in your band flying, nor does War Elephant give your band members trample.
Now comes the second part to banding. As you control a band, you can now choose how damage is assigned.
You assign 1 damage from the defending Grizzly Bears to your own Grizzly Bears and 1 damage to your War Elephant, thus all your creatures will survive combat. You also assign to the defending Grizzly Bears 1 damage from your Benalish Hero, and 1 damage from your Mesa Pegasus. The defending Grizzly Bears now has lethal damage thus your War Elephant can do 2 trample damage directly to the defending player. The remaining attacking Grizzly Bears in your band would just do its damage to the defending Grizzly Bears since it does not have trample.
In regards to planeswalkers, when your band of creatures attacks, they must attack as a group; they cannot split up and attack different things. Thus they are either all attacking the same player, or all attacking a planeswalker that player controls.
Remember: a band attacks together!
If any of the creatures in the band dies before the end of combat, the other surviving creatures in that same band still must attack together! Once declared as attacking in a band, that band cannot be dissolved and those creatures cannot be part of another band of creatures during the same combat.
You cannot declare banding when blocking, but you can still effectively block with banding. When blocking with banding, only one of your creatures needs the banding ability. Then all of your other creatures can block with it as a band. This can be very beneficial as, if you remember, the second part of banding allows the player that controls a band to decide how combat damage is assigned.
Your opponent attacks with a Craw Wurm (6/4).
You control Durkwood Boars (4/4), Panther Warriors (6/3), Grizzly Bears (2/2), and a Benalish Hero (1/1, banding).
You can either take 6 damage or block. If you choose to block you can do so with the Panther Warriors or with the Durkwood Boars alone and have either of them and the attacking Craw Wurm die in combat, but you want both Panther Warriors and Durkwood Boars to survive combat. So you declare all four of your creatures quadruple-blocking Craw Wurm and as Benalish Hero has banding, you are effectively blocking as a band.
In the damage step of combat you can now assign 3 damage from Craw Wurm to your Durkwood Boars, 2 damage to your Panther Warriors, and the remaining 1 damage from Craw Wurm goes to Grizzly Bears. All your creatures survive combat! The opponentâs Craw Wurm takes 13 damage from your group and dies.
Remember the key to banding: you attack as one, you block as one. Every member of that band is attacking or blocking together! And as the one controlling a band that is blocking your opponent's attacking creature, you now control how that blocked creature assigns combat damage.
On attacking with a band and being blocked with banding:
You attack with a band and your opponent responds by blocking with banding. The second part of banding lets you decide how to distribute combat damage, but only to the band you control. Likewise your opponent can assign combat damage to their band as they see fit.
Best case scenario, or worse depending on how you look at it, is that both players assign damage to their bands in such a way that all the creatures in both bands will survive combat and that combat phase effectively ends in stalemate.
New scenario: A three-creature band with one creature having trample, is attacking and is blocked by another three-creature band with one creature having first strike. What happens now? Short answer: I donât know.
This is normally where most of the confusion starts to set in, attacking or blocking with creatures that only have banding with no other special abilities or if only one special ability is in play that effects combat damage such as trample in the example on attacking stated above is mostly straight forward. When other special abilities that can also effect how and when combat damage is normally assigned comes into play with banding is where most people start to have confusion on how to resolve combat.
Okay, now for the really confusing part: âBands with other.â
âBands with otherâ is a⌠specialized version of banding.
Everything before this was straight forward, attack or block as a single group together, and ignore the normal rules on assigning combat damage with the player controlling the band deciding how to distribute combat damage.
The current rules for âbands with othersâ only came into effect with the Magic 2010 core set rules changes (M10 was released in July 2009!), before this it was big messy pile of absurdities only designed to give you massive headaches.
Magic 2010 brought with it such changes as:
Mulligans now happening simultaneously
The âin-play zoneâ is now the Battlefield.
The âRemoved from the gameâ zone is now the exile zone
Combat damage no longer goes on the stack
Deathtouch and Lifelink become static abilities
âBands with otherâ was introduced in Legends (June 1994), however only eight cards where ever printed with âbands with othersâ in their rules text.
The following cards have the rules as originally printed:
Cathedral of Serra. Land. âAll your white legends gain bands with other legends.â
Seafarerâs Quay. Land. âAll your blue legends gain bands with other legends.â
Unholy Citadel. Land. âAll your black legends gain bands with other legends.â
Mountain Stronghold. Land. âAll your red legends gain bands with other legends.â
Adventurers' Guildhouse. Land. âAll your green legends gain bands with other legends.â
Tolaria. Legendary Land. âTap: Add {U} to your mana pool. | Tap: During upkeep remove the banding or bands with other ability from target creature until end of turn.â
Master of the Hunt. 2GG. 2/2 Master (now errata'd as a Human). â2GG: Put a Wolves of the Hunt token into play. Treat this token as a 1/1 green creature with the ability bands with other Wolves of the Hunt.â
Shelkin Brownie. 1G. 1/1 Faerie (now errataâd as an Ouphe). âTap: Remove the bands with other ability from target creature until end of turn.â
If you also count Old Fogey (7/7) from Unhinged (Nov 2004) then there are a total of nine cards with this ability. NINE! Only Nine cards ever printed with this ability yet eight of them they caused no end of headaches for 15 years (1994-2009) before the rules of this ability were finally changed.
âBands with otherâ always follows a creature type.
Under the current rules all you need is one creature that has âbands with other [creature type]â and any number of creatures of that same type.
You control Seafarerâs Quay which grants your Hisoka, Minamo Sensei (1/3) additional rules text that reads âbands with other legends.â You also control Azusa, Lost but Seeking (1/ 2) and Karn, Silver Golem (4/4). Hisoka, Minamo Sensei can now form a band with these two other legendary creatures. The Seafarerâs Quay will let any number of legends dock their ship so long as the âCaptainâ of the ship so-to-speak is also a blue legend. All the other normal rules for attacking and blocking still apply, the only change here is which creatures can be in the band. In this example only legends can be in the band and at least one legend must be blue.
Under the old rules before the M10 rules change however, a creature with âbands with other [creature type]â could only form an attacking band with any other creatures that also had âbands with other [creature type]â or just had regular banding. So two green legendaries on the battlefield granted âBands with other legendsâ from Adventurers' Guildhouse could join together in a band along with any other creature with the normal banding ability.
Unlike the current rules other legendaries on the battlefield that are not also green couldnât join this band since the Adventurers' Guildhouse granted this ability only to your green legendaries in play. But other creatures that have the normal banding ability could join in with the other green legends in the Adventurers' Guildhouse as they already have banding.
The same on defence, multiple creatures with the same âbands with other [creature type]â ability, and any creatures with the normal banding ability can come together. But again, no creature without normal banding or creatures without âbands with other [creature type]â can join in.
So thus this created a situation where a legendary creature now granted the rules text that just reads âbands with other Legendsâ⌠Couldnât actually band with a legend!
Unless of course that second legendary also had âbands with other Legendsâ granted to by virtue of being the same colour as stated in the rules text of the land that granted the ability.
So if Unholy Citadel is in play, then Veldrane of Sengir (5/5) can band together with Lady Orca (7/4), and both of them will also welcome other normal banding creatures such as Benalish Hero and Mesa Pegasus. But will exclude any and all non-black ledgendaries such as Kasimir the Lone Wolf (5/3), and any other non-banding creatures because the Unholy Citadel will only lets other black legendaries or those already with banding inside its doors.
Aside from legends of the same colour now being in exclusive clubs, granted membership by lands that didnât actually produce any mana no less, there was only one other card with the âbands with otherâ ability printed: âbands with other Wolves of the Hunt,â on Master of the Hunt.
For the cost of 2GG each, Master of the Hunt can make a 1/1 green Wolves of the Hunt creature tokens that have âbands with other Wolves of the Huntâ on them.
Master of the Hunt also cost 2GG to cast so for 12 mana you can to cast Master of the Hunt and use his ability two times to get two 1/1 green Wolves that can only band with each other! So, no, these Wolves cannot band with their own Master!
To add to this absurdity that is âbands with other,â the remaining two cards with this actually printed could remove this ability.
Tolaria, a legendary land, that can at least tap for blue mana, can also be used to remove either banding or âbands from otherâ from a target creature until the end of turn⌠but only during your upkeep so you cannot even use it as a combat trick!
The remaining card, Shelkin Brownie, only had the ability to remove âbands with otherâ from a creature until end of turn.
Well thatâs it on Banding and âBands with othersâ but in regards to that itâs also interesting to note the legend rule in effect at the time: The first legend out on the battlefield was the only one allowed in play. Thatâs it. End of story.
Your opponent successfully casts Veldrane of Sengir and heâs now on the battlefield, you also have a copy of Veldrane of Sengir in your deck, in fact your copy in in your hand. But because there is already a copy of that legend out on the battlefield you cannot play your copy anymore. You can cast it of course, but the only result of this action is that you would have paid 7 mana (5BB) just to put your copy of Veldrane of Sengir into your graveyard!
Starting with Champions of Kamigawa (Oct 2004), âlegendâ stopped being a creature type, legendary became a supertype and it was no longer possible to make a creature into a Legend by changing its type.
The legend rule was also changed: if there are two or more legendary permanents with the same name out on the battlefield, they would all be put into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action..
Legendary creatures no longer became dead cards in your hand if your opponent also has a legendary creature with the same name on the battlefield. You can cast yours to remove both from play.
And then again with the Magic 2014 core set release (July 2013) came the current legend rule in effect. Any time two or more legendary permanents with the same name are on the battlefield and they are controlled by the same player, that player must choose one of them and put the rest of those legendary permanents into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action.
Added to this was the âPlaneswalker Uniqueness Ruleâ that says if a player controls two or more Planeswalkers that share a Planeswalker type, that player chooses one and the rest are put into their owner's graveyards as a state-based action.
