When will WotC fix banding?

>>54784985
Never. Banding is a dead mechanic. Deal with it.

>>54785176
Calm down anon. Go get some sunshine.

>>54784985
They already did, it's called Soulbond

>>54785176

But I love banding.

>>54784985
The best way to do it would be to smash Battalion and Soulbond together. But why? What does it bring to the table? It just complicated the game state and didn't lend much else. I mean it's a great idea for a weenie mechanic, but there are much simpler ways to do that like Battle Cry or Battalion.

>>54788272
>But why? What does it bring to the table? It just complicated the game state and didn't lend much else

Because the flavor of little creatures teaming up to crush bigger creatures is super cool?

>>54788357
You can already do that when blocking. You'd just need a mechanic that changes how your attacking creatures behave when blocked. Would still be wordy as fuck. I did something long ago with it myself but I doubt I have a copy of the card laying around.

>>54788357

And no, neither Battalion nor Battlecry offers that. Both of those are just "horde" mechanics, the flavor is "I attack with a huge mass of dudes and you can't handle my dudes because of how many there are". Banding's flavor is "we are a combat team, we fight as one". Banding isn't for pushing more damage through, it's the opposite of that, banding creatures stop attacking the opponent in order to help each other. That's unique and flavorful.

>>54788400
>Would still be wordy as fuck

There's plenty of ways to make a version of banding that's not word-heavy. There's one in OP. Only reason it hasn't been fixed already is because WotC hasn't really tried.

There's hope though because they did bother to fix Bands with Other, a mechanic that was on like three cards ever.

>>54784985

You can't. It's extremely powerful being able to dictate received combat damage assignment on both attack and block. The closest you can do is print a creature that lets you redirect damage received in combat maybe.

>>54784985

When first played MTG the vererans talked about banding like some horrible, overcomplex rule that would take half-an hour of rule checking to get right. I took this at face value.
Now I read this card and that's all it is?

In a nutshell, didn't Banding just make it so you as the attacking player decide what combat damage is assigned to your attackers by having them attack in a group? Under normal circumstances, the defending player gets to kill whatever attackers he prioritizes with his blockers.

Actually seems pretty strong as you could split your opponents combat damage among all your creatures and make blocking a lose-lose scenario for them. It's outclassed by abilities like Indestructible though, and probably evasion in general. Don't see a need to bring it back.

>>54795287
Thats not quite old banding, all it really let you do is mash little guys together to count as a big guy and then decide how you wanted to split the damage amoungst them instead of your oppponent

File: Banding.jpg (237KB, 1125x523px) Image search: [Google]

237KB, 1125x523px

>>54784985
I actually think of Exalted as a functional replacement for banding, at least when on the attack. The point of Banding was essentially to make a big ol' supercreature, which is exactly what Exalted does.

On the defensive side, Exalted doesn't require you to tap all your creatures and expose yourself.

That being said, I did make a few legendary banding cards for fun once.

>>54784985
There may be hope yet, considering they just printed a new card that involves phasing.

>>54795287

Spoilers: That's not the real reminder text for Banding. The real text is

>Banding (Any creatures with banding, and up to one without, can attack in a band. Bands are blocked as a group. If any creatures with banding you control are blocking or being blocked by a creature, you divide that creature's combat damage, not its controller, among any of the creatures it's being blocked by or is blocking.)

>>54800635
You can also block in a band and it works the same way. You get to divide the blocked creature's power instead of your opponent.

>During the combat damage step, if an attacking creature is being blocked by a creature with banding, or by both a [quality] creature with “bands with other [quality]” and another [quality] creature, the defending player (rather than the active player) chooses how the attacking creature’s damage is assigned. That player can divide that creature’s combat damage as he or she chooses among any number of creatures blocking it. This is an exception to the procedure described in rule 510.1c.

Banding is actually pretty dope.

>>54799349
Banding has its advantages over Exalted, just like Souls Bound and Battalion, but yeah those keywords kind of act as replacements/successors.

>On the defensive side, Exalted doesn't require you to tap all your creatures and expose yourself.
I'd say Banding was a more offensive version of Exalted, with its own trade offs.

I'm personally hoping for more Flanking.

>>54799349

I really dislike Exalted from a flavor perspective, because it's a keyword ability whose effect is not directly tied to the creature with the keyword. Fuck, they have a _land_ with Exalted.

>>54795287

Banding has a reputation for being weirder than it is, and I think a huge part of it is that the original rulebooks from way back when Banding was still widely used explained it in a really confusing way. Me and my friends who started with Revised were confused by it too, but when WotC later published a neat little book called Pocket Player's Guide that was like an expanded rulebook for the game, it instantly cleared it up for us. Because while the hard rules text is kind of muddy, the concept is actually really simple: the creatures in a band "agree to travel together", and if something blocks one of them, the rest "gang up on the blocker". When you think of it like that, it's really intuitive.

when they run out of ftv reprint ideas and/or start loosing significant support from ancient fan base to anything other than old age.