BANDING question and An observation
Frumpy Jones
and I didn't feel like fumbling through 1625 posts to find this question.
So if it's been asked 1000 times before, I apoligize
With banding, I asked the M:TG vets I was playing with (I was usingone of
their decks) the following question they coulding answer.
John attacked me using a pegasus and two spiders. I countered with a
flying (Thanks to flight) golem. I crushed his pegasus (As expected),
but then he said "Ah, but I'm banded. The two cave spiders go midevil on
your ass." I told him (As a newbie with rules taped to his brain) "How
so? Those are land creatures, I'm a flying creature. You can't hit me."
He basically said he could coz banding was way magical.
So the question: Can land creatures, banded to a flying creature, attack
the defending flying creature?
And now my observation:
Due to in credibke luck ( got good cards, they got bad cards) I ended up
havin (No lie) a 23 headed rock hydra. Now. What pissed me off about
the game is the following foolishly acted out scene I preformed:
23 headed Hydra: Hmm.. I think I'll go wipe out everything today.
1/1 soldier: hey yooou! Mr. 23 heads! Come and fight me.
{QUICK fight ensues with basically the hydra flicking the soldier off the
face of the earth}
23 Headed Hydra: Well, I guess I'l trudge back to the fort now {Leaves}
Why, in the good Lord's name, would a 23, count 'em, 23 headed Hydra STOP
after crushing one tiny little cannon fodder like a soldier? I mean,
Godzilla didn't go into a city, knock down ONE power line, and call it a
day, did he? Has anyone else been pissed off by this obvious flaw?
Wouldn't it be smarter to have to throw shit at the Hydra (or other large
creature) until the hydra is out of attacking points? Are these VETS
playing the game wrong? Should I have won that game (Yes, I lost it due
to NO FLYING defense).
Whew! This is a long post for a newbie. I'll stop now :)
(And I don't care about the "It goes both ways" theory; THEY didn't have
a 23 headed Hydra and they were happy happy happy with that reasoning)
--
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Frumpy Jones
Fru...@FrumpyLand.Microserve.Com
Home of some kind of catchy catch-phrase
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Jeff Walkup
: John attacked me using a pegasus and two spiders. I countered with a
: flying (Thanks to flight) golem. I crushed his pegasus (As expected),
: but then he said "Ah, but I'm banded. The two cave spiders go midevil on
: your ass."
Did John declare they were banding when he attacked? You must declare,
when you attack, that a creature is banding, and what it is banding with.
Also, I'm not familiar with 'cave spiders', but if they don't have banding
ability, John could only band ONE of them with the Pesasus. Only one
non-banding creature is allowed to be banded with other banding creatures.
Ie, you can band 6 Pegasi and 1 Unicorn, but NOT 6 Pegasi and 2 Unicorns.
: So the question: Can land creatures, banded to a flying creature, attack
: the defending flying creature?
Yes. Also, if you can block any one creature of the attacking band, you
block them all. So you could have blocked the whole band with a
non-flying creature, because you could block one of the non-flyers.
Banding a non-flyer with a flyer does _not_ make the whole band flying. I
believe the official wording is 'banding creatures do not gain the special
abilities and/or evasion abilities of other creatures in the band'... So,
banding a creature with another one that has moutainwalk does not give the
non-mountainwalk creature mountainwalk ability.
: 23 headed Hydra: Hmm.. I think I'll go wipe out everything today.
: 1/1 soldier: hey yooou! Mr. 23 heads! Come and fight me.
: {QUICK fight ensues with basically the hydra flicking the soldier off the
: face of the earth}
: 23 Headed Hydra: Well, I guess I'l trudge back to the fort now {Leaves}
: Why, in the good Lord's name, would a 23, count 'em, 23 headed Hydra STOP
: after crushing one tiny little cannon fodder like a soldier?
"Because." That's how it works. Yes, I can block your 35/35 creature
with my 1/1 creature. The 1/1 will be _quite_ dead, but the attack will
be blocked. And get this, if I had used my 1/1 Drudge Skeletons, I could
block your 35/35, then tap one swamp to regenerate the Skeletons, keeping
them alive! To paraphrase from the Pocket Player's Guide, 'Does this give
the defender the advantage? You bet!' That's the way it's designed. Also
note that attacking with a creature leaves it tapped, thus it's unable to
defend in the next turn. AND, check out the Royal Assassin; tap to
destroy a tapped creature! So you could attack with your big badass
monster, I could block with my little Skeletons and regenerate them, THEN
I could use my Royal Assasin to DESTROY your big bad guy. That's Magic!
Note there is a thing called "trample" where the excess attack points
carry-over to the player. Example: your 35/35 creature has "trample", so
if I block it with my 1/1, the excess 34 attack points 'trample' over my
blocker and hit me. Creatures that have trample ability state so right on
the card.
: Are these VETS playing the game wrong?
No, unless he didn't explicitly declare the banding when he attacked you
or if he tried to put more than one non-banding creature in the band.
--
Jeff Walkup . jwa...@crl.com . San Francisco . 415.668.7312