Banding Mechanic
Asked by Reidzee757 3 years ago
If I were to block a large force, say 15 creatures/tokens (all able to be blocked, IE no flying), with Wall of Caltrops, Fog Bank and Wall of Glare, I would be able to to assign all the damage Wall of Glare took to Fog Bank due to Wall of Caltrops' ability, right? Furthermore, would it be counted as all three walls blocking as one, or would it be Wall of Caltrops blocks 1, Fog Bank blocks 1 and Wall of Glare blocks 13? Like if I wanted to add Wall of Frost to the original three walls, would its ability affect the attackers blocked by Wall of Glare as well?
The important thing to note is that with a blocker with banding, you only get to assign the combat damage from the creature(s) that particular blocker is blocking.
Wall of Caltrops only gains blocking if at least one other Wall and no non-Walls block the same creature as the Wall of Caltrops. This means your Fog Bank and/or your Wall of Glare will have to block the same specific attacking creature as the Wall of Caltrops, or else the Wall of Caltrops won't gain banding.
If you do meet that condition, you only get to assign the damage from the creature they blocked. This means 14 other creatures (in your example attacking horde of 15) will still be assigned per their controller's preferences.
May 29, 2020 6:56 p.m.
Reidzee757 says... #3
Ok. I understand now. Reading Wall of Caltrops [Here] (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1640) ~not sure why it won't hyperlink correctly but I tried~ made it seem... less restrictive? at least with how I read into it, but this makes sense. Thank you both for the clarification.
Tylord2894 says... Accepted answer #1
Quick note: I won't quote all the rules about Banding (because several will be used). To get a good idea about Banding, I highly recommended reading the section about Banding. That section is 702.21. of the CR (found here).
Here's a quick summary of the three major things Banding lets you do:
In short, what you described doesn't work. Blocking creatures don't form bands. Rather, a blocking creature with Banding lets it's controller decide how damage from the blocked creature(s) will be dealt to the blocking creature(s) is dealt.
In the first/second question, Wall of Caltrops is blocking one creature. Wall of Caltrops gains Banding, but there is nothing special about that damage assignment order as it is 1-on-1. Combat happens like normal for the other two creatures.
In the third question, Wall of Frost can still only block one creature, so its trigger will only affect one creature.
Some of these answers change slightly if they horde that's attacking you also has Banding. But Banding-on-Banding questions are different than the ones that you posed.
I hope this helps!!
May 29, 2020 6:04 p.m.