Cooperation

Banding was Magic's most baroque combat mechanic, and this Aura exists to graft it onto creatures that never had it. The keyword's reminder text alone runs longer than most cards' entire text box, and it bundles two unrelated combat tricks under one word: creatures with banding can coordinate an attack as a group, and when they block or are blocked, their controller (not the opponent) divides that creature's combat damage. Both halves operate on a model of combat that predates the modern stack-and-step framework most players learned, which is precisely why banding became infamous for confusing judges and players alike. For three mana you splice that capability onto any single creature, turning some random body into a damage-assignment lever or a band anchor. The practical use is narrow: it makes blocking math swing in your favor, letting you choose which of your blockers eats the damage from a creature your banded body is blocking. Wizards eventually stopped designing banding into new cards entirely, freezing the keyword in the early sets where it lived. What survives is a curiosity from a moment when the company was still comfortable handing a dense, judge-call-heavy combat rule to whatever creature happened to be on the battlefield, and this Aura is the cleanest demonstration of that willingness because it does nothing else.