Once you understand banding, it's a very easy mechanic. It's just learning how to understand banding which is the main issue lmao Still my favorite mechanic in the game
Yeah, I always say it's damage assignment and trample that's the overcomplicated mechanic, because that's the only rules interaction that's ever made an issue.
I love running banding in my commander decks because it's SO BROKEN when damage isn't on the stack. Of course, I have to explain it to the table, so I rewatch this video from time to time to refine my 30sec explanation and refresh my understanding of interactions so it's fun to include for everyone. Thank you for the video!
How does it work if they block with a 3/3 death touch, I know the damage comes in one at a time so the first point of death touch kills a creature, does the other damage have to be applied to other creature in the band?
@@moedark4390 Remember, the basic, main point of banding is that if you attack with a band or block with a creature with banding, you get to assign the combat damage to those creatures rather than your opponent. So if you hypothetically attack with three Kjeldoran Escorts (a 2/3 with banding) in a band and I block that band with a 3/3 Deathtouch creature, you get to assign the three damage from my Deathtoucher however you like among your three Escorts. Presumably you'll choose to assign all three damage to one of them, killing it and leaving the others untouched (and leaving by Deathtoucher dead from the 6 damage they deal it). Basically the same goes if I attack with a 3/3 Deathtoucher and you have at least one creature with banding around to block it. So for example if I do that and you have one Kjeldoran Escort and two Grizzly Bears, you can assign all three of them to block my 3/3 and because one creature with banding is present among your blockers you get to choose how my creature's damage is distributed. Presumably you'll put all three damage on one of the Bears and leave your Escort and the other bear untouched. This is notably different from what would happen if you blocked with just three Grizzly Bears, for example. In that case I'd presumably decide that my Deathtoucher should deal one point of damage to each of the three Bears, killing all three of them. Banding is really good.
@@Ivan-Kh thanks for the help. I made a banding with other legends naya deck, just wanna get all my ducks in a row cause i know ill be explaining things
@@moedark4390 Cool! Put a Maze of Ith in your deck! You can attack with a band, and if they block it you can assign all the damage to the smallest creature and then Maze it.
@@Ivan-Kh That won't work because rule 510.2 says "...No player has the chance to cast spells or activate abilities between the time combat damage is assigned and the time it’s dealt." This is because no player has received priority.
So what happens if a band is blocked by a creature(s) with banding - ie. two Kjeldoran Escorts in a band become blocked by a Kjeldoran Escort and a Gizzly Bears. Who gets to decide how combat damage is assigned?
@@TribeWars1 Awesome 😎 very interesting. Are there rules for which player announces their choices first? I could see a potential situation where say, the active player's decision could be affected by what the defending player chooses to do and vise versa.
@@BargerAlex 702.22j is the exception to 510.1c and 702.22k is the exception to 510.1d. Fandom is a great resource for explaining the basics of Magic. I hope that helps you assign banding combat damage.
When explaining how blocking with a pseudo-band works, I would explain it by saying that the group of blockers must include what would be a legal band for the purposes of combat damage assignment on the attack (ignoring edge cases like the "defender" keyword) but can optionally include other blockers as well. 15:20 Technically, a single creature with banding can be a band when attacking, but it doesn't do anything useful in any situation I can think of (although I'm sure there's some edge case out there). CR 702.22c, 702.22j, and 702.22k state the band composition and damage assignment test as "one or more attacking creatures with banding and up to one attacking creature without banding"; one creature with banding is "one or more," and zero without is "up to one." In the case of "bands with other," CR 702.22j and 702.22k state the damage assignment test as "both a [quality] creature with 'bands with other [quality]' and another [quality] creature". The inclusion of the word "both" is unique to the "bands with other" check, making more than one creature required for that but not ordinary "banding." Note that CR 702.22c does _not_ use the word "both" when defining legal bands; a solo "bands with other" creature is a legal band when attacking even though it would fail the damage assignment test in 702.22k.
In Modern, Nick is playing Mono Blue Tron, with the companion Jegantha. His mainboard is configured to comply with Jegantha's requirements, but there are a couple of copies of dismember in the sideboard. Nick uses Jegantha as his companion during game one, and wins. During a game 2, Nick passes with only an Academy Ruins untapped. Ana then decides to go for an infinite combo disrupted by dismember (lets say Kiki-jiki /restoration angel). Nick attempts to disrupt the combo using dismember. Ana is now upset as she thought she was safe from such a card given Jegantha's restriction. What would the ruling for this be, and how would they be effected by various ways this could have been communicated during side boarding. (Jegantha left off to the side of the play area but not discussed, Jegantha being explicitly stated as the companion for the game, Jegantha being placed back in Nick's deck box but not discussed as being specifically not his companion for this game)
The controller of Benalish Hero assigns the combat damage of the Blightsteel Colossus and the other creatures in a band with it, and the controller of Blightsteel Colossus and the other creatures in the band assigns the damage of Benalish Hero.
Damage for the attacking creatures is assigned first, then damage for the blocking creatures [CR 510.1]. Banding changes which player chooses the damage assignment, but not the order those assignments are ordered in.
13:20 Weren't there a few vanilla legendaries from Legends (e.g. Jedit Ojanen, Barktooth Warbeard)? And of course the meme, the myth, the Legendary Frog Spirit Yargle, Glutton of Urborg from Dominaria! Although I'm guessing you wanted creatures that were smaller for this particular example.
Smaller creatures was part of it, but I also wanted to try to keep consistent with the "White creatures have banding, green creatures don't" theme I was developing to help make the examples easier to parse.
This video is very enlightening! Do you know how banding works with menace? I want to make a legendary banding deck with Shanid, Sleepers' Scourge as the commander.
A little late, but it's the same as any other evasion ability. If a creature blocks any individual creature in the band, it automatically blocks everything else regardless of if it normally could. So if a creature in the band does not have menace, they can block that one with only one creature and that creature will block the entire band, but if all the creatures in the band have menace, then in order to block it they need to block at least one of your creatures with 2 or more creatures.
How would the banding work if there is a "Raging River" on the table on your side and you want to attack with a band of creatures or even multiple bands. I presume that creatures of the same band need to be assigned on the same side of the river since they are a "group"? Good video with examples to explain the details of operation.
Question. Your example with the Bligntsteel vs Hero. Would the same work if the hero was instead a creature with “bands with other [quality] but was blocking the Bligntsteel alone? Or, do bands with other [quality] creatures require there to be two or more of them for the effect to be “on”?
No it wouldn’t, because as the slide for blockers at 12:25 shows that if it’s a creature with “bands with other [quality]” then it must also be with any other [quality] creature for it to work.
A few notes and questions... Firstly, Yargle, glutton of urborg is another vanilla legendary creature it's black... But on bands with legendary, if you had, say, 2 different daxos(white), a yargle and the white bands with legendary land, you can't band all 3 of your creatures, no?
You could band those three together. 702.22c They may also declare that one or more attacking [quality] creatures with “bands with other [quality]” and any number of other attacking [quality] creatures are all in a band. You could corm a legal band if you had Cathedral of Serra and only ONE white legendary creature, and multiple non-white legendary creatures. For "bands with [quality]", only ONE creature needs to have "bands with [quality]" and you can form a legal band with that creature and any number of [quality] creatures. Under this rule, you could form the band you listed.
The part about the band being checked right before damage is wrong: 702.22e Once an attacking band has been announced, it lasts for the rest of combat, even if something later removes banding or “bands with other” from one or more of the creatures in the band. This is contradicts what is said at the end of the video
The "band" as an attacking group of creatures is only really relevant when blockers are being declared. The other function of the banding ability related to damage is only concerned with whether a creature has banding or a creature has bands with other and there is another creature of the appropriate type blocking or being blocked. If neither of those are true the fact that there still exists "a band" does not grant the controller of the band the ability to assign the damage at that time. When you use the ability of banding that allows you to assign the combat damage while you are the defending player there never existed "a band" because bands are only created upon attacking yet you are still granted the ability to assign the damage so long as you meet the criteria to do so.
One question, If you somehow make a band with two creatures with flanking does that mean that any creature blocking the band gets -2/-2? I've seen forums where they say it happens and others where not... so I'm not sure if Banding + Flanking can be a good combination. Can you Jundging FtW solve me the question please? Thx
Obligatory run defensive formation because it basically gives banding on defense and is kind of an auto invlude in any white tokens deck because of that.
A band of 3 is still 3 attacking creatures. If your commander is in a Band, then the damage it deals is commander damage, the damage of its band-mates is not.
When the band is declared and then becomes invalid after the band has been blocked, are the creatures in the still blocked, even when no creature is blocking them or will they deal normal unblocked damage to the player or planeswalker?
Yes, a creature "becomes blocked" if it is part of a band when the band is blocked as part of the turn-based action during the declare blockers step. If the band is no longer a band for some reason after declaring blockers but before combat damage, those creatures still "became blocked". It's kind of similar to when a creature without flying is blocked by another creature without flying. If the attacking non-flying creature gains flying after being blocked by a defending non-flying creature, the attacking creature was still "blocked". Ordinarily that would not mean the attacker "becomes unblocked" so it won't deal damage. It's also kind of similar to sacrificing a creature after declaring a block, before damage. If you attack me with a 3/3 and I block with a 1/1, then I sacrifice the 1/1 before combat damage, the 3/3 still "became blocked" during the turn-based action of declaring blockers. So the 3/3 is still "blocked" and will not deal damage to anything at all (unless it had trample).
I'm a bit confused on one thing. With the blightsteel example. If I have a band of 3 1/1s per se, does all the damage go to the creature I designate or does the trample damage still go through to me?
You get to assign Blightsteel Colossus' combat damage. And you can assign it in any legal way you want. Either of the damage assignments you mentioned would be legal (although there generally isn't going to be any reason to do the latter one).
@@JudgingFtW I thougt trample had excess damage go to the player automatically by game rules, like I choose to assign all damage to a one one using the banding and then the game sees it has excess damage on it which was caused by a creature with trample, so therefore said damage gets set to me
@@algotkristoffersson15 the way that trample works is, first you assign lethal damage to all blockers. this part *is* pretty much automatic, but the step after that isn't. now you have all your excess damage, and you get to decide how to split that between the player or planeswalker being attacked AND the blocking creatures, who at this point are already being dealt lethal damage. you would pretty much always assign all excess damage to the defending player/planeswalker, but it is in fact optional
So I have a question. If you have ayesha Tanaka (a wu legend with banding) in play and one of the legends bands with legends lands in play could you, theoretically make a band with her, 2 other legends and another, regular creature utilizing both the bands with and banding ability in the same band? I couldn't find any judge threads online about this and the rules are ambiguous at best on the subject.
the rules are very clearly not ambiguous. 702.22c [...] A player may declare as many attacking bands as they want, but each creature may be a member of only one of them. [...] It's not relevant from with ability it can be a band for this rule to apply. Once declared, all bands (either from banding or from bands with other) are the same from a rules standpoint. So you have the following possibilities (A=Ayesha, L1=legend 1, L2=legend 2, O=other creature: 1. A + O (from banding) 2. A + L1 (from banding) 3. A + L2 (from banding) 4. A + L1 (from bands with other) 5. A + L2 (from bands with other) 6. A + L1 + L2 (from bands with other) Those are all bands for 702.22c, so a creature may only be part of a single one of them, so Ayesha can only be in one of the combinations. if the other creature had banding or "bands with other" on the other hand, you could have Ayesha and the other creature each take one of the legends in a seperate band (i.e. A+L1 and O+L2)
I would assume it doesn’t interact. Since blockers aren’t actually ever in a band, they just get to use banding, both creatures would need to have flying to legally block.
Question from tonight's commander gave: If I cast an adventure spell (Swift End) and it is given Rebound by an effect like Narset, how does it resolve? What happens on my next upkeep?
When Swift End resolves, you choose whether you want to let it go to exile because of rebound, or because of the way Adventures normally resolve. If you choose to exile it because of rebound, you can cast the card without paying its mana cost on your upkeep. You choose whether to play it as Swift End or Murderous Rider. If you cast it as Murderous Rider, it enters the battlefield as normal. If you cast it as Swift End, when it resolves this time, it will be exiled the way Adventures normally work. Then you could cast it later as Murderous Rider.
Hey Dave, love the video. I was wondering if you or anyone had what rule number it is for the trample being an option thing. I had always heard a creature can only absorb as much damage as it’s toughness.
CR 702.19b The controller of an attacking creature with trample first assigns damage to the creature(s) blocking it. Once all those blocking creatures are assigned lethal damage, any excess damage is assigned as its controller chooses among those blocking creatures and the player or planeswalker the creature is attacking...
Wait so if I had a hundred handed one and blocked a creature with banding and a creature without banding, the opponent would get to decide how to assign damage, even if those creatures were not in a band? What if I blocked a creature with banding and two creatures without? What if I blocked A legendary creature with banding, a creature with "bands with other legends" and a legendary creature without either?? I assume the answer in all those cases is that they get to assign the combat damage. I never realized how much banding sucked under the hood lol. It's kinda sad because it feels like the... intentions of the ability would be totally fine, it's just the execution that's awful. Like, couldn't you "fix" banding by keeping bands around for the whole combat phase, having the opponent assign combat damage to all blocking/blocked bands as if they were creatures, then having the controller of the bands distribute that damage among the members of the band? That feels simple and more inline with the intentions of the ability. It'd definitely take some rules rewrites don't get me wrong, but idk, it'd be neat.
In all those cases, banding player chooses how damage is assigned. I assume the reason banding is such a cobbled mess is because that's how it originally worked, and no one wants to spend a bunch of time modernizing a mechanic that's so unlikely to see serious play and with such low reprint potential.
banding is a pretty unfortunate mechanic... because even if you totally understand banding, if you put banding cards in a deck, you're gonna be faced with the situation where you know how your cards work but your opponent doesn't. and that just doesn't seem all that nice to do
