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Thermal Glider
Creature — Human Rebel
Flying, protection from red
Caerwyn on
Lt. Unicorn, Commander
5 years ago
Inserting myself into the conversation because I'm a big fan of Banding. To answer your question Bokamoso, yes, you could assign all damage to the Thermal Glider, even though it has protection.
Let's take two examples using Ball Lightning.
Example 1: You block Ball Lightning with Thermal Glider and nothing else. Ball Lightning's controller assigns two damage to the Thermal Glider, and one damage to the defending player due to trample. Thermal Glider does not actually take damage.
Example 2: You block Ball Lightning with Thermal Glider and Benalish Hero. As the defending player controlling a creature with banding, you get to determine how damage is assigned. You can assign all three damage to Thermal Glider, not only protecting your creatures from harm, but completely negating trample.
That's a pretty important point that has not been mentioned yet--Banding provides a complete defence to enemy creatures with Trample.
Bokamoso on
Lt. Unicorn, Commander
5 years ago
The description of banding according to the WOTC article does reveal it to be more powerful than I understood. My only reservation to reading the mechanic how I want to read it would be that the example given by the WOTC article includes a creature with protection. The reminder text for a creature with protection would read “cannot be… dealt damage…” Are you able to assign all damage to Thermal Glider in that example because protection is preventing it from actually receiving the damage? Martyr of Dusk does not have protection; can it still be assigned an amount of damage that is greater than it’s toughness?
HomelandsRares on
Lt. Unicorn, Commander
5 years ago
Bokamoso here's a good article on the operation of banding: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/judge-points-banding-2001-08-30
As outlined in that article: "Banding is a bit more effective when used defensively. Creatures don't Band to block because multiple creatures are already allowed to block a single creature, but with Banding they can use the damage sharing ability. The difference is that with blocking, only a single creature with Banding need be blocking to share damage. Again, the general idea is to get multiple creatures to gang up and kill a single creature while minimizing the losses on the defending side.
Example: This time, Jules attacks Peter with a Crimson Hellkite (6/6, Flying). Peter blocks with Mesa Pegasus (1/1, Banding, Flying), Thermal Glider (2/1, Flying, Protection from Red), and Roc of Kher Ridges (3/3, Flying). Under normal circumstances, Jules would decide how the Hellkite's damage is divided. Since the Pegasus has Banding, Peter will decide. Obviously, his smartest play is to assign all the Hellkite's damage (it's a red creature) to the Thermal Glider, whose Protection from Red will allow it to survive, while the combined damage from the three creatures will kill the Hellkite."
If you replace the Thermal Glider in that example with Martyr of Dusk, I think it works as I've set out in the explanation. I think our shared confusion is why they phased out banding, haha.
In the end, the real power of banding is that, yeah, you can absolutely gang up with little 1/1s to take on an Angler with minimal downside!
