Pointed Discussion

5 votes and everyone agrees on .5? its unanimous. banding sucks.

This should be legendary and be able to produce white mana.

Banding doesn't necessarily suck. It's worthless lands that grant banding which suck. If they were mana sources as well, they'd be useful. Well, if they didn't get rid of the banding ability, that is.

@Rainyday2012: It doesn't need to be legendary, but it definitely needs to produce mana.

Every land should have a mana ability, Wizards realized this after many bad lands...even with a mana ability these lands would still suck...

This land doesn't give banding, it gives 'bands with other legends,' which is not the same, and REALLY stinks.

Reminder: 'Bands with other legends' creatures can only band with other creatures with 'bands with other legends.' That means that this card would only be useful if your deck was full of white legends. They do NOT actually gain banding, which would allow them to band with any other creature.

It's so sad that this cycle of cards is the worst ever printed(respectibly)Good names, good retro art, but fail...just fail.

@ nammertime: are you sure? It appears they word it a bit different now: White legendary creatures you control have "bands with other legendary creatures." (Any legendary creatures can attack in a band as long as at least one has "bands with other legendary creatures."...

It reads as if only one would need this ability. It's as if it is a different kind of "banding". Correct me if I'm reading it wrong though.

@Kimbote, you are reading it right. WotC changed how 'Bands With Other' works with M10's rules changes. How nammertime stated BWO works is how it worked under the old rules. So now 'Bands With Other' is less sucky, but is still very sucky.

I think the manna argument is right. Although, its not nearly as offensive to me as it seems to everyone else. If it only produced one colorless manna, than it might be nice.

Though, for some reason, this card reminds me of the kamigawa block, they talked a lot about legends.

Perhaps... If you treated this like a zero cost enchantment it looks better, and don't think of it as a land when structuring the deck, then it could be good.

That, and have your deck full of white legendary creatures... It's playable... Later in a game, I might rather have this in my hand than another, typical, land, especially in a deck made for it.

Although, I will admit, having two on the field doesn't really do you all that much good...

So, base rating: ***

No manna production: -** */2
Center deck structure: +*
Zero manna cost: +*

Final: ** */2

Well, it can be fixed with joiner adept or prismatic omen, but really and opening hand with this is weak.

It gets a point for the picture, I suppose....

Lovely artwork... too bad it's such a lame card. : /

@kimbote: There are three ways this could go: the original way, the way a lot of us seem to have been lead to believe they changed it, and the way it actually works now. (For the sake of readability, and in deference to the card, let's say we were looking at "bands with legends".)
1) The original way this functioned was creatures with "bands with other legends" could form a band with legends who also had the "bands with other legends" ability. Very restrictive.
2) I was lead to believe that they recently changed it so that it could band with other legendss whether they have the ability or not. That is, a creature with "bands with legends" can only join a band if another legend has already been declared part of the band (either because he has banding and was added to the band first, because he was the 1 non-banding creature that was added to the band, or because the band is entirely made of legends with "bands with other legends").
3) However, the current reminder text DOES accurately reflect the rule as written (702.19c). It looks like any number of legends can join a band so long as one has "bands with other legends" (which actually makes the ability fairly powerful). It also seems that "banding" creatures and "bands with other legends" creatures don't get to form cross-bands. When declaring a band you either declare a band of N+1 creatures, N of whom have regular "banding" OR you declare a band of N legends, at least one of which has "bands with other legends".

From what I can tell, this cycle was SUPPOSED to be the justification for such otherwise (and potentially still, despite the initial scheme) low-wattage legends as The Lady of the Mountain and Tobias Andrion. Andrion's advantage over Serra Angel and Air Elemental was that once you got the Cathedral of Serra and/or Seafarers' Quay out, he'd have banding, every turn (not every other turn like with Helm of Chatzuk, not to mention the banding would be for more than just one creature). Very selective banding, yes, but it WAS within the adventurers' party (q.v. D&D personal campaign inspirations); the Cathedral & Co. were where the adventurers met and formed that party. In fact, extrapolating from the whole situation with Andrion, I think the original intent was that you were EXPECTED to use these lands to create the adventuring party, and thus bring the legends to their intended potential. Very strictly top-down design, but I think the problem was just overestimating how powerful banding was.

5/5 for filling that niche role.

Plenty of white creatures have the tools they need to abuse banding, and enough of them are legendary. This is the best of the cycle. Could be a fun card to use in non-competitive formats such as Commander.

Look at all those crescent moons!

I think in an Isamaru "robo" EDH deck this could be helpful if you had quite a few other legendary creatures in the deck, you could assign all their blockers to your other dude and assure general damage while you hit them hard with general damage + swords/jitte/etc. Helpful when Whispersilk isn't on the field I guess.

This card is not nearly as bad as people think... I used to play it in casual before EDH/Commander became a thing. Now I play it in EDH sometimes.

Since my playgroup doesn't use a lot of board wipes (we kind of got tired of them), I play a Cathedral of Serra in my "Ivory Tower" decks. This way, I can band Cho-Manno, Revolutionary with Selenia, Dark Angel or something to block just about any creature without losing anything. I once casted Blaze of Glory off of Isochron Scepter on Selenia, and then blocked everything in a band with Cho-Manno.

Because going to Serra's place of worship won't grant you her usual blessings: Flying, Lifelink, First Strike, Pro Black/Red. You get something much better...Banding.