No idea what happened when they priced this thing. I mean, seriously, it's an Ironroot Treefolk that gives up +1/+1 for Banding, which is a losing deal - and the Treefolk themselves were pretty bad for the time. Compare it to Serra Angel and weep a bit.
Psychrates
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
HORRIBLE card. @Kael_Hate: Banding was seriously under-rated! Banding vampire decks were ridiculous...
Scottevil912
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(2 votes)
Banding was an amazing ability. It made blocking much harder for your opponent. A 5/5 banded with a simple 1/1 will deal 6 damage if unblocked. But you can't just choose to block with a 6/6 creature and hope to kill both of them, in fact no block will let you kill the 5/5, you have to remove the banding creature before blocking and before damage is dealt.
When blocking it was great too - My opponent could be attacking with a 20/20 trampling creature, but one banding creature blocking it and I can assign all the damage to a single creature and all the damage is assigned to that one creature (you didn't need to have more than 1 creature blocking to assign combat damage).
DrJack
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(2 votes)
@ Scottevil912
Almost completely correct. Banding was indeed a great ability, and often a poorly grasped one. However, I'm pretty sure that if you're blocking a trampler with a banding group, trample damage will carry come through if there's more than enough to kill every single blocking creature. You can however choose to divide the damage up so that each of your blockers takes just enough damage to survive, and allow the rest to carry over to yourself. That way, youv'e minimized the damage you're taking, and kept all of your creatures alive as well.
jam_marie
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
@DrJack I'm actually pretty sure banding nullifies trample--trample allows attackers to assign damage to their opponent, but the whole thing with banding is that the defender chooses how damage is assigned. So if you blocked a 10/10 trampler with this and a saproling, you'd say "I could kill both of them and assign the last 5 to myself, but it makes more sense to put it all on the saproling instead, which I can do because banding is awesome."
A3Kitsune
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This could go quite well with new Theros card Phalanx Leader.
Ferlord
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
"I F**king LOVE being soldier!" "Calm down, man..."
SeriouslyFacetious
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
It's so weird to see Foglio (K or P) art depicting soldiers, especially on this card. The flavour text indicates everyone is about to die, 300-style, totally overwhelmed.
Then there's that one dude/chick on the left who's grinning like they just got laid before the battle and everyone's jealous.
Comments (10)
When blocking it was great too - My opponent could be attacking with a 20/20 trampling creature, but one banding creature blocking it and I can assign all the damage to a single creature and all the damage is assigned to that one creature (you didn't need to have more than 1 creature blocking to assign combat damage).
Almost completely correct. Banding was indeed a great ability, and often a poorly grasped one. However, I'm pretty sure that if you're blocking a trampler with a banding group, trample damage will carry come through if there's more than enough to kill every single blocking creature. You can however choose to divide the damage up so that each of your blockers takes just enough damage to survive, and allow the rest to carry over to yourself. That way, youv'e minimized the damage you're taking, and kept all of your creatures alive as well.
I'm actually pretty sure banding nullifies trample--trample allows attackers to assign damage to their opponent, but the whole thing with banding is that the defender chooses how damage is assigned. So if you blocked a 10/10 trampler with this and a saproling, you'd say "I could kill both of them and assign the last 5 to myself, but it makes more sense to put it all on the saproling instead, which I can do because banding is awesome."
"Calm down, man..."
Then there's that one dude/chick on the left who's grinning like they just got laid before the battle and everyone's jealous.