Pointed Discussion

I always thought this was a bit underrated, particularly as it was the first way I can think of to hand out +1/+1 counters to arbitrary creatures. (Unfortunately, at the time it was first printed, the rules cared where the counters came from, so this couldn't give a Trikellion extra pings, for example. This changed when Stronghold came out, almost two years later.) How often is giving a counter or a permanent keyword ability worth two mana and a card? Not often enough for cards like Lance to be playable, true, but I can think of much, much worse things to do with your extra lands late in a long Limited game.

Besides, more things should have Banding. Banding was like the old rambling uncle. No one ever really liked him or talked about him much, and even HE didn't quite know what he did anymore, but dang-nabbit he was lovable.

Now, at last, I've found a card to grant every creature on the table Banding! Huzzah!

And also first stike and counters are good too, I guess.

Baton of Morale can also give banding temporarily to most any creature

Perma band...then make it bigger, then first strike, then...

Hey, gimme a card and I'll get my faeries to zap your eyes with this lightning shit. It'll feel good.

This was easily my favorite enchantment from Alliances.

Notice the lack of "end of turn".

The bonus stays! Nature's blessing can cast 4 different auras. None of these auras are really spectacular, but the versatility of it is definitely a plus.

So, little, green, alian men with rotting leaves attached to their backs, wearing rocket boots, shooting fire into your eyes somehow powers you up? I guess that explains the card disguarding. It'd probably make me go insane too.

This is phenomenal fun with Karador, Ghost Chieftain.

An old card that is deceptively powerful.
Banding is possibly the most complicated, but potent ability if used strategically.

Most banding cards are small, and fairly expensive white cards that take time to build into a reasonably sized force.
This card allows you to easily give banding and other abilities to modern, cost efficient creatures with less hassle. Banding lets you do insane things in combat that can easily turn fairly inefficient cards into powerhouses.

The best part about banding is that while banded creatures don't share thier abilities they do share the pool of toughness by which to distribute damage, so you can band a Deadly Recluse with a Saproling, block a Shivan Dragon with the spider, and have the dragon deal all its damage to the saproling while your spider deals the killing blow.

@ N03y3D33R: Unless the saporling has flying or reach it cannot be assigned to block the Shivan Dragon, and you don't declare banding when you declare blockers as you do when you declare attackers, and you only need one of the creatures blocking that creature to have banding to gain the benefit of banding as opposed to attacking in which all but one of the creatures in the attacking group need to have banding in order to attack as a single entity/formation.