Fortified Area

The typical Wall has zero power, which is precisely the problem this enchantment was built to solve. The combat-damage assignment clause is where banding earns its keep: when banded creatures you control are blocking, you (not the attacker) divide that attacker's damage among the blockers. Throw a 4/4 into two banded Walls and the defender chooses how the four damage splits, which usually means none of the Walls die. The +1/+0 is the quiet enabler. Banding without the ability to deal damage back is just a damage-assignment trick on the blocking side; pushing every Wall to at least 1 power means the band can grind an attacker down over successive turns rather than only stalling. It comes from an era when keyword overlap was itself an archetype: Wall tribal, banding tribal, defender-matters, all stacked into a single combat puzzle before Wizards decided those themes needed creatures the rules engine could explain in under a paragraph. Banding was eventually retired from the design palette, which makes cards like this one working examples of a combat system Magic chose not to keep teaching. The parenthetical reminder text here runs longer than the effect it enables, which tells you everything about why the mechanic did not survive.