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Moxonomy

Timber Wolves

Creature — WolfGreen mana

A plain green one-drop on the front, and a tutorial on the back. From Alpha through the mid-90s, this was one of the canonical teaching cards for banding, the mechanic that asked players to learn an entirely new combat subsystem: how to attack as a group, how to assign blockers to a group, and most importantly how the banding player (not the opponent) divides incoming combat damage across the blocking or blocked band. The rate is the giveaway. A 1/1 for one green has no business existing as a creature; it exists as a delivery vehicle for a keyword that needed cheap, repeatable bodies to demonstrate the rules text. Banding's design problem was that the keyword reads as a small combat trick and plays as a complete rewrite of damage assignment, which is why most banding creatures were costed as if the ability were nearly free. Wizards eventually conceded the experiment: banding stopped appearing on new cards, the comprehensive rules quarantined it, and the keyword now survives as a relic mechanic studied more than played. What is left here is a museum piece in the most literal sense, a one-mana green creature whose entire reason for being printed is to carry a rules paragraph longer than the card itself.

Timber Wolves (ced)
CED · #220rare
Pricing
Normal: $3.11
Foil:
Oracle Text

Rules text

Banding (Any creatures with banding, and up to one without, can attack in a band. Bands are blocked as a group. If any creatures with banding you control are blocking or being blocked by a creature, you divide that creature's combat damage, not its controller, among any of the creatures it's being blocked by or is blocking.)
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
N/A
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
Legal
Premodern
Legal
PreDH
Legal
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

11 sets
Show all 11 other printings
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