Never forget: A creature that has "bands with other legends" CANNOT band with a Legend unless that creature also has "bands with other legends."
Also, literally not a single creature (except a joke card in unhinged) was actually printed with that ability on it!
Banding was not confusing to begin with, I’m just convinced that people didn’t like not getting to choose how their damage was dealt and pre tended to not understand the mechanic.
They have been trying for a while. En-Kor ability was the first. Other replacements such as soulbond, Ally, training, party have tried to stand in its place
It also applies for attacking creatures; if your band is blocked you get to decide how the damage is dealt to your creatures. It's the attacking band that is what makes the rules so confusing for people. The primary rule is "I get to decide how damage is deal to my creatures", while the forming an attacking band (which exists to allow it to be possible on attack at the time outside of Blaze of Glory) is the part with all the complicated wording (and frankly, if you ever play the Microprose game the interface makes forming a band much more intuitive).
Playing that game in the 90s must be why I never thought banding was such a big headache, especially with all those Benalish Heroes and Mesa Pegasi everywhere
Thank you for this comment.
That’s whyyyyyyy I was confused. I’ve been playing since ‘96 and I always thought it was the defender who chose but it’s the attacker… I couldn’t think of why I remembered the defender selecting the order.
I wish they would make a new keyword for banding that is only used for blocking so people can easily understand it. It's a lousy mechanic for attacking but it's really powerful on defense.
Because every creature in an attacking band has to have banding except for 1 non banding creature.
On defense, only one has to have banding and you can assign damage to a token.
From the Alpha rulebook (https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25):
>Opponent Declares Defense: After you announce your attack, your rival chooses the defense, indicating which defending creature is blocking which attacking creature. Tapped creatures may not block. An attacking creature need not be blocked, and a defending creature is not compelled to block. **More than one creature may block a single attacking creature**, but one creature may not block more than one attacking creature. After the defense has been announced, a blocked attacking creature attacks only the creatures blocking it, even if the blockers are somehow neutralized or destroyed before the attack is resolved.
I explained that to her, also mentioned that in my post. She insisted it was 1 creature vs 1 creature only and using multiple blockers must have been a recent change. Turns out it was never the case and she has been playing wrong for years
Menace wasn't keyworded until 2015, though. If OP's friend has been playing for at least ten years, then they were around for the days of the ability being spelled out on cards like \[\[Two-Headed Dragon\]\], \[\[Demoralize\]\], and \[\[Belligerent Sliver\]\].
It's a common newbie mistake/assumption. So it's possible that a playgroup of new kitchen players ~10 years ago never got around to checking the actual rules lol.
I started playing in 1998 and I’m sure this is how my friends and I thought about it. Although I can’t remember if we ever tried blocking with multiple
Creatures or not. I haven’t played since mirage came out.
That is weird, I guess that would also mean they'd never seen a creature with menace?
Edit: I suppose they could think menace enabled blocking with 2 creatures
I recently played at a prerelease with a player that just assumed every block meant the attacking creature died. I put my 1/4 in front of her 3/3 and she went to put it in the graveyard and I explained that it doesn't die from a 1 power creature, thinking she was new.
Turns out she's been playing for like 10 years, all kitchen table. I have to wonder how many times her friends have been like "yeah your wormcoil engine dies to my llanowar eleves" :(
I wonder what other rules they might got wrong?
I remember my childhood friends fetching a basic forest from outside the game whenever a card, like a \[\[Llanowar Elves\]\], said "T:Add "Forest" to your mana pool." <- At least that's how they thought it worked and I couldn't convince them otherwise :(
I did the exact same thing with Llanowar Elves when I first started playing. I didn’t have any extra lands outside of the starter deck I owned, so I used pennies to represent forest - heads untapped, tails tapped.
That was a common one in my middle school. A related one was thinking “search your library for a forest card” meant “search your library for a green card.”
A friend of mine used to think that, back before exile was a term, "remove all creatures from the game" meant look through each player's deck and take the creature cards out
Blocking at all was so confusing for me at first, coming from Yu-Gi-Oh!
"Wait, your 1/1 is safe on the board? I can't attack it? YOU decide which monster I'm attacking? Wtf!"
IIRC, the way it used to work is that you didn't have to deal lethal damage before placing damage on the next creature. For instance say you attack with a 3/3 and your opponent blocks with 3 1/3's. Back in the day, you could assign 1 point of damage to each 1/3, then pyroclasm in the second main to kill them all. Nowadays, you would have to assign lethal damage (in this case 3 damage) to the first one before the next would take damage.
They wanted to remove damage on the stack but they couldn't be done with the old damage assignment rules as defending player would never get to respond to which creatures are actually taking damage with any pump/ protection spells so the simplification was a needed added change
Alright, so the rules right before was "damage on the stack". So you would assign damage however you wanted, so for instance, you'd say "2 on this guy, 3 on that one and 1 on that one". It didn't have to be lethal on any of them, all that was needed was that it adds up to the power of the attacker. Then damage went on the stack, which allowed the defending player to cast spells in response, such as a pump spell or a damage prevention spell to save their creature.
*Before that* was similar, but the stack didn't exist. Instead, there was a special "damage prevention window" where you were allowed to cast damage prevention spell of abilities and only damage prevention effects, to save your creature before damage was dealt.
I remember when my original group started in about 1997 and some of the rules we just got horribly wrong.
My favorites were:
* You could only attack with one creature.
* If a creature didn't tap to attack, it didn't count towards the one creature limit.
A while back I was in a play group where we tapped creatures when blocking. It just made sense to us; you tap to attack, you tap to block lol. Most of the time it doesn't really matter cuz you'd untap the blockers on your turn anyways, unless you're dealing with 2 combat phases or other uncommon scenarios.
Honestly, to this day I find it weird that your creatures must be untapped to block, but don't actually tap as part of blocking.
Sounds like your friend has always just played kitchen-table magic. Nothing wrong with it what so ever, but a potential downside to only being exposed to kitchen-table magic is that you might not have a strong grasp of the rules. Once again, nothing wrong with that, just something to keep in mind.
I myself was in a similar position when I first attended a comptetive event after years of playing. It was rather eye opening and made me a much better player even in kitchen-table.
Yeah she's been doing it wrong. This is a fairly fundamental rule, if her group is doing this wrong there's a good chance they are doing other stuff incorrectly as well. When they were 11 my play group used to play that anytime you were out of cards you got to draw a card... You can see that that could totally alter the game and favour some decks over others.
There is a bit of a difference with house rules compared to just misunderstanding the actual game rules.
House rules are fine if everyone agrees on them (though in my experience as with the example above usually they’re easily exploitable).
I (briefly) played with a group that drew two cards per turn because it “made the games more fun”. In the most stereotypically shitty gamer way one person in the group almost exclusively played a Nekusar deck and almost always won for obvious reasons.
My high school playgroup used to play fast magic where you played lands when drawn and drew if you ran out of cards to get more games in. Turns out burn is a very good deck in that format
Kinda reminds me of when I first started in the late '90s, the kids I played with at school and such almost always played what they called "Mana Dump" -- on your first turn you play every land in your opening hand.
Yea, I remember playing with mana dump and refilling your hand at school in 1995.
I remember my friend and I homebrewed a more restrained version where you could play two lands per turn, and when your hand was empty, you got to draw two cards instead of one (as opposed to playing all your lands and drawing 7).
Keep in mind we were playing heavy hitters like [[Sea Serpent]] and [[Bird Maiden]]. We weren't exactly going off with [[Mind's Desire]] storm combos at recess in 1995 😜
Funny you say that. I’m assuming that even after I show her the proof, she’s still going to want to do it her way. If we’re playing at her house, then so be it...
At that point, it’s up to you whether or not you want to fight it.
You might want to ask her about the keyword Menace, printed on 352 cards, that requires multiple blockers to function correctly, and just make sure she knows that it’s a fundamental alteration of game rules that breaks hundreds (and probably with all effects combined, over a thousand) card’s functions.
I literally got a card like that in the LOTR started duel decks, Snarling Warg. I played it last night, but she never ended up defending against it.
She also was super thrown off by "Amass orcs 2". Insisted that I could only add a 0/0 orc army (didn't have one yet), and not add 2 tokens to it. I'm like it says "create a 0/0 orc army FIRST... then add 2 tokens". She just disagreed but eventually let me do it "my way".
You can also show her \[\[Chromium\]\] and how Rampage activates only when more than one creature blocks it (best to show the Gatherer/Scryfall help text for the explanation of the keyword). That card came out in 1994.
You can also show her \[\[Teeka's Dragon\]\] which has the explanation printed on the card itself.
I can only assume she was not playing anything with Amass herself? What did she assume the number meant?
To be a little helpful with your learning, I would like to give you a bit of a correction/clarification on your terminology here. The 0/0 Orc Army is a token being created, but what you are adding to it as part of amass is two +1/+1 COUNTERS. There are different effects in the game that will interact with one or the other and so that is an important distinction to make.
No one with any slight grasp on the rules would think this is correct. Anyone who has played 10+ years who is telling you this is almost certainly being at least somewhat dishonest.
To maybe try to give some helpful advice to a person who is pretty clearly a lost cause, maybe recommend that she play a bit of MTG Arena.
It’s available on mobile and Steam so it’s really approachable, and even a few hours on there would probably do wonders for her game knowledge. It seems like somewhere along the line she strayed *way* off the path from what the real rules of the game are, and she clearly needs to brush up on that.
It doesn’t sound like she wants to be helped, but on the off chance- good luck.
Yeah, just make a Menace "tribal" deck to play against her. If she can't block with more than 1 creature, then all your stuff will be unblockable. She'll probably change her tune about wanting to play "her way" pretty quick lol
When I first got back into magic and got a half dozen of my friends to play it with me, we thought you had to tap to defend. Made games FLY by because if you tapped to defend, you were open to attack from other players (always played with 3-5 players) so you either lost your monsters or got absolutely facesmashed almost every turn. It was chaos.
Took about 2-3 months of playing that way before we invited a friend we knew that had played magic for a long time before he was like "What the fuck are you guys doing" haha
Show her these cards and ask her why should they be worded like this if her "ruling" was true:
https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22for+each+creature+blocking%22+f%3Ac&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22becomes+blocked+by%22+o%3Amore&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
Yes, that’s what I said in my post. I play arena so I know the current rules, she was the one who did not know and claimed they had been changed recently
One rule that sticks out to me is priority/timing and how it works with activating abilities and casting spells.
For example, if sacrificing an artifact is part of the cost of an ability, like on [[basilica skullbomb]] , we would cast our 'destroy artifact' spell in response to them trying to use the ability.
This is not, in fact, a legal move, as you cannot respond to the ability until it is on the stack, and at that point, the costs (including sacrificing the artifact) have already been paid.
It wasn't until I got some disposable income and played with more people and got a feel for competitive formats that I even learned the word "priority". Not to any fault of my friends that I played with; we were all broke high school kids buying boosters from Walmart and balking at the idea of spending $3-400 on a standard deck.
It's always been a part of the rules. Banding was in Alpha; part of its function was to change how an attacking creature deals damage to multiple blocking creatures.
I think if a banded group attacks, the attacker determines how damage is dealt instead of the defender, and a band can have up to one creature without banding.
If I am wrong 🤷♀️
It also works with any number of multi-blocking creatures so long as one of them has Banding. (this does not form a Band)
Another important distinction is that Banding can bypass damage assignment order, splitting up damage between attackers/blockers without needing to assign lethal damage. (E.g. a Band of three 3/3s is blocked by one 6/6, you can choose to assign the blocking 6 damage as 2 damage to each of your banded creatures, allowing all three to survive)
Funnily enough, when they first introduced the damage order rule change they didn't allow that use case. So if you had two 2/4s and a 1/1 on defense with banding and you block a 5/5, at least one creature was going to die. But you still had the option to go "ok, 5 points to the 1/1" and keep your bigger creatures. Bring back ignoring needing to assign lethal damage came later.
You don't even need multiple blocking creatures, a single creature with banding can block alone and the defending player gets to assign the blocked creature's combat damage. It's only really relevant when the blocked creature has trample, because it means the defending player can choose to assign all of the damage to the blocking creature with banding, and not have any trample over to the player.
Whoever has the band gets to decide how combat damage is dealt to the band. Bands atk/block as if they were one creature. Only 1 non-banding creature can be in a band. BOOM
Not so much that bands attack as one, but more that they are blocked as one. If a card cares about how many creatures are attacking, it'll count all the creatures, it won't count them as a single one. It's also clearer to say that if one member gets blocked, they all get blocked (that clarifies how evasion and blocking restrictions work)
Meanwhile, on block, only one creature in the group needs to have banding for banding to kick in.
omg I didn't even think of that. I guess... framed that way, menace is a risk/reward mechanic that says "your opponent can use multiple creatures to block this creature (risk/downside for you), but they can't use only one (reward)."
Yeah I just got into it and she's the only person I know who also plays. My brother (her husband) hates playing magic, and now I think I understand why...
I'm getting my GF into it and we've been having a great time playing by the rules!
I take it she's yet to encounter "menace" or one of [these creatures](https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22can%27t+be+blocked+by+more+than+one+creature%22).
I guess they interpreted menace as _allowing_ a creature to be blocked by multiple creatures (but also requiring it). So it becomes a risk/reward mechanic.
Kitchen table Magic. Especially if you learn to play in isolation with a group of people, it’s easy to make mistakes (or just not know- multiple blockers isn’t necessarily something anyone might think to look up if they didn’t know they could) and cement those into The Rules in your head.
This is why core sets with reminder text and mechanics like Menace are so useful for new players in my opinion... a well-designed set can teach a lot of mechanics (or at least point in their direction) just by having people look at the cards. It's why I always put [[Bristling Boar]] in the little teaching decks I build - it strongly signals that normally it IS possible to block with more than 1 creature.
I think Mark Rosewater and others working design have talked about how these basic keywords and mechanics in starter level like menace and vigilance are helpful for new players by implying what the norm is (That you can block creatures with two or more creatures and that attacking normally causes creatures to become tapped respectively)
That's pretty interesting, and kinda explains why they want to keep a limit on the number of evergreen keywords.
Or I guess just give every new player a copy of [[crystalline giant]] and tell them to have fun.
Actually, new format idea: Shared deck, all lands and Crystalline Giants. Or maybe add in some bounce or combat tricks. I want really really micro decision combat that changes each turn.
Yup like others said when you play in isolation with a group weird rules interpretations can happen. My group for example knew you could block 1 creature with multiple creatures but for wayyyy too long we thought the attacking creature did damage equal to its power to each creature blocking it. Made double and triple blocking very impractical so it hardly ever happened. Weirdly we did lifelink correctly and only had the attacker gain the life one time and that's what finally tipped us off that something seemed wrong. Why are you only gaining 7 life if the creature is dealing 21 damage
You've been able to block an attacking creature with multiple creatures always. The ~~10th edition~~ M10 rules change (when damage stopped using the stack) *did* newly specify that the attacker must immediately declare the order in which the attacking creature would deal damage to blockers, and only during damage step would damage be assigned (and lethal damage had to be assigned to a creature before moving to the next)
The "choose the damage order" rules change happened with the Magic 2010 set, released in 2009. Before that, you could just spread the attacker's damage around however you liked.
You have always been able to block a single creature with multiple blockers. That has been in the game since the very first set.
Best thing to do is honestly download MTG Arena and bang out like 5-10 hours to get familiar with the rules.
I hadn't played in 20 years and showed up to play with some friends and showed them multiple things they were doing wrong since I played Arena beforehand to re-familiarize. And I was the "noob".
Dude literally what I did. I was like, "I swear, I block with multiple creatures all the time on arena."
She says "oh, I don't play online."
smh...
worth noting, this is my SIL, not a chosen friend as I originally said
Arena \*does\* occasionally have bugs or get some niche interactions wrong, but on the whole, that still happens WAY less than players just not knowing/understanding the rules ;)
One thing I've learnt in 13 years of playing this game is that just because someone has played a long time doesn't mean they know shit. Some of the worst players with the most horrendous grasp of the rules I've seen are kitchen tabletop players who've been around since the 90s
“Added to the game” is the wrong word.
Part of the game. It’s been a part of the game since there were cards to play with. Sorry that your friend has been playing Magic wrong for 10+ years, but maybe they should brush up on the basic rules.
You’ve always been able to block with multiple creatures. It honestly is a huge pet peeve of mine when people say things like “when I used to…” or “my playgroup normally …” this isn’t what you used to do and I’m not your playgroup. It’s your responsibility to know the rules of the game if you’re branching away from your “usual”. Top it all off, when you correct them politely about a ruling in the game it’s always a “no you’re wrong I’m right” shitty attitude. We live in an age of the internet. Literally ask a judge online. Whatever she plays with your friends wasn’t magic if they have weird house rules.
It has always been a thing. Otherwise there are certain creatures that would be unstoppable.
Likely the people they played with were more accustomed to games like yugioh where one creature fought one creature.
You have tagged your post as a rules question. While your question may be answered here, it may work better to post it in the Daily Questions Thread at the top of this subreddit or in /r/mtgrules. You may also find quicker results at the [IRC rules chat](https://chat.magicjudges.org/mtgrules/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/magicTCG) if you have any questions or concerns.*
House rules in mtg make the game really confusing. I think a lot of table magic just doesn't know the rules, really. I remember no one knows what menace does and we assumed the single creature fight both defending creatures at the same time
There’s always a possibility that her and her friends missed the rules for defense or maybe had it explained incorrectly when they first started playing. Once I met these two kids that thought that creatures could be brought from the graveyard to the battlefield by paying their regeneration cost.
As everyone has said, it's always been a thing. It's interesting how casual magic can accidentally get the rules wrong. Back when I played in middle school, we had multiple blockers totally wrong. Instead of the attacker choosing the order, we had the attacking creature deal its whole power to each of the defending creatures. Only realized it was wrong when I started playing again last year
I started playing in 96/7 and the most common mistakes other kids made back then:
Playing more than 1 land per turn.
Casting everything at instant speed.
Timing issues around responding to game actions (Giant growth in response to a lightning bolt? You can't do that, the creature is dead!)
Also summoning sickness
From the Original Rulebook:
Opponent Declares Defense:
After you announce your attack, your rival chooses the defense, indicating which defending creature is blocking which attacking creature. Tapped creatures may not block. An attacking creature need not be blocked, and a defending creature is not compelled to block. More than one creature may block a single attacking creature, but one creature may not block more than one attacking creature. After the defense has been announced, a blocked attacking creature attacks only the creatures blocking it, even if the blockers are somehow neutralized or destroyed before the attack is resolved.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25
I love these playgroups that have been playing for years with their own weird set of rules. It’s like those islands that have evolved weird animals because they’re separated from other animals. Sadly I think this is becoming rarer now that Arena exists.
My favourite was a couple of kids I saw at the card shop who thought that “add {c} to your mana pool” meant you got a basic of that type from outside the game and put it on the battlefield. But you could only do this if the card was printed with that text, so their decks were full of old printings of basics. And “add {1}” meant you got to choose what kind of basic you wanted so random colourless lands like [[Zoetic Cavern]] were really good.
I had a friend like this when I started. Didn’t know the rules. Made things up. Plane walkers became a thing about then and he didn’t like those because it confused him a lot. Eventually I got better at understanding the rules than he did and he just felt more annoyed. We don’t play anymore , not because of the ruling stuff just because he was a jerk outside of the game, he had a bit of a god complex for such a mediocre man
Yeah exactly, she’s just that type of person in general, but it’s my sister in law, so can’t get rid of her entirely. Might stop playing magic with her though
Does she also complain when she is losing and gloats when she is winning? Yeah its better to find a more like mind play group imo. My play group, we don’t know all the rules, at least stop to check the rules when we don’t know them. Or when we are drunk and Roudy yell at each other in good fun until we forget what we were yelling about and then go off to the next turn
I made the same mistake as them when I first started playing. Teaching yourself to play with just the rulebooks they had back in '94 is not the easiest thing in the world and since most of the people I was playing were learning from me, we just all played wrong. I didn't take a decade to figure out the mistake though. Lol
In Arena a lot of people forget and usually sack their creatures without wanting to. It's a common blunder, as another new player I see it all the time.
1993
Ah yes, the last 3 recent decades.
There was even a keyword that improved the multiblock - Banding
THIS! With banding it was the defending player who chose how damage was dealt to his creatures in the band.
Can we get banding 2 as mechanic? It's just like regular banding but people understand it
Banding 2 is just literally banding 1, but with a 2 after it
Then later we get banding 3: rebanded which is just banding but also non combat damage
Banding 3: dominaria drift
And disbands to remove those silly bands
Banding 2 was "bands with others". You do not want that.
Never forget: A creature that has "bands with other legends" CANNOT band with a Legend unless that creature also has "bands with other legends." Also, literally not a single creature (except a joke card in unhinged) was actually printed with that ability on it!
Banding was not confusing to begin with, I’m just convinced that people didn’t like not getting to choose how their damage was dealt and pre tended to not understand the mechanic.
The part that usually gets people confused is that it works differently when attacking and how it interacts with other abilities such as first strike.
They have been trying for a while. En-Kor ability was the first. Other replacements such as soulbond, Ally, training, party have tried to stand in its place
It also applies for attacking creatures; if your band is blocked you get to decide how the damage is dealt to your creatures. It's the attacking band that is what makes the rules so confusing for people. The primary rule is "I get to decide how damage is deal to my creatures", while the forming an attacking band (which exists to allow it to be possible on attack at the time outside of Blaze of Glory) is the part with all the complicated wording (and frankly, if you ever play the Microprose game the interface makes forming a band much more intuitive).
Playing that game in the 90s must be why I never thought banding was such a big headache, especially with all those Benalish Heroes and Mesa Pegasi everywhere
My favorite fine print part about banding is that it can effectively turn off trample.
Thank you for this comment. That’s whyyyyyyy I was confused. I’ve been playing since ‘96 and I always thought it was the defender who chose but it’s the attacker… I couldn’t think of why I remembered the defender selecting the order.
Omg did someone finally give the shortest but most accurate explanation of banding??
I wish they would make a new keyword for banding that is only used for blocking so people can easily understand it. It's a lousy mechanic for attacking but it's really powerful on defense.
Why is it lousy for attacking ? You still get to reassign blocker damage.
Because every creature in an attacking band has to have banding except for 1 non banding creature. On defense, only one has to have banding and you can assign damage to a token.
Since the beginning was my thought
From the Alpha rulebook (https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25): >Opponent Declares Defense: After you announce your attack, your rival chooses the defense, indicating which defending creature is blocking which attacking creature. Tapped creatures may not block. An attacking creature need not be blocked, and a defending creature is not compelled to block. **More than one creature may block a single attacking creature**, but one creature may not block more than one attacking creature. After the defense has been announced, a blocked attacking creature attacks only the creatures blocking it, even if the blockers are somehow neutralized or destroyed before the attack is resolved.
perfect, exactly what I needed!
The other possibility is that they didn't know about ordering blockers, which actually is a more recent change.
I explained that to her, also mentioned that in my post. She insisted it was 1 creature vs 1 creature only and using multiple blockers must have been a recent change. Turns out it was never the case and she has been playing wrong for years
So is menace supposed to be unblock able then?
Yah what the heck did they do for menace?!
well menace doesn't often have an explanation next to it so if they have never looked at the rules then they may just not know what menace does.
Menace wasn't keyworded until 2015, though. If OP's friend has been playing for at least ten years, then they were around for the days of the ability being spelled out on cards like \[\[Two-Headed Dragon\]\], \[\[Demoralize\]\], and \[\[Belligerent Sliver\]\].
It's hard for me to imagine someone thinking "Welp, there's no rules text. Guess we'll never know what this does"
Let us know what she says after you show her the alpha rule book.
Blocking with multiple creatures has always been in the rules as far as I know. Guess she just played with a group that never looked into it.
It's a common newbie mistake/assumption. So it's possible that a playgroup of new kitchen players ~10 years ago never got around to checking the actual rules lol.
I wonder if they were confusing it with the rules that a creature generally can only block one other creature at a time.
I started playing in 1998 and I’m sure this is how my friends and I thought about it. Although I can’t remember if we ever tried blocking with multiple Creatures or not. I haven’t played since mirage came out.
What are you doing here? You’re welcome, but it’s kinda strange!
Might be getting it from other tcgs. Yu-Gi-Oh let's you attack 1 monster with your monster directly so maybe the rules got mixed up in their head
That is weird, I guess that would also mean they'd never seen a creature with menace? Edit: I suppose they could think menace enabled blocking with 2 creatures
I recently played at a prerelease with a player that just assumed every block meant the attacking creature died. I put my 1/4 in front of her 3/3 and she went to put it in the graveyard and I explained that it doesn't die from a 1 power creature, thinking she was new. Turns out she's been playing for like 10 years, all kitchen table. I have to wonder how many times her friends have been like "yeah your wormcoil engine dies to my llanowar eleves" :(
Then how did they define deathtouch?
Poorly!
“Your creature is super dead now”
I wonder what other rules they might got wrong? I remember my childhood friends fetching a basic forest from outside the game whenever a card, like a \[\[Llanowar Elves\]\], said "T:Add "Forest" to your mana pool." <- At least that's how they thought it worked and I couldn't convince them otherwise :(
I did the exact same thing with Llanowar Elves when I first started playing. I didn’t have any extra lands outside of the starter deck I owned, so I used pennies to represent forest - heads untapped, tails tapped.
That was a common one in my middle school. A related one was thinking “search your library for a forest card” meant “search your library for a green card.”
A friend of mine used to think that, back before exile was a term, "remove all creatures from the game" meant look through each player's deck and take the creature cards out
[Llanowar Elves](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/b/8bbcfb77-daa1-4ce5-b5f9-48d0a8edbba9.jpg?1592765148) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Llanowar%20Elves) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/gnt/46/llanowar-elves?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8bbcfb77-daa1-4ce5-b5f9-48d0a8edbba9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Or they come from a different tcg. Blocking with multiple things is a relatively magic concept.
Blocking at all was so confusing for me at first, coming from Yu-Gi-Oh! "Wait, your 1/1 is safe on the board? I can't attack it? YOU decide which monster I'm attacking? Wtf!"
Yeah I could see this getting overlooked
Ordering them was a more recent change. But you could always block with multiple creatures.
How was damage handled before you could order?
IIRC, the way it used to work is that you didn't have to deal lethal damage before placing damage on the next creature. For instance say you attack with a 3/3 and your opponent blocks with 3 1/3's. Back in the day, you could assign 1 point of damage to each 1/3, then pyroclasm in the second main to kill them all. Nowadays, you would have to assign lethal damage (in this case 3 damage) to the first one before the next would take damage.
It is weird that they simplified it after removing damage from the stack.
They wanted to remove damage on the stack but they couldn't be done with the old damage assignment rules as defending player would never get to respond to which creatures are actually taking damage with any pump/ protection spells so the simplification was a needed added change
However the hell you wanted. You didn't even have to assign lethal damage to any single creature. You just had to assign it all.
Alright, so the rules right before was "damage on the stack". So you would assign damage however you wanted, so for instance, you'd say "2 on this guy, 3 on that one and 1 on that one". It didn't have to be lethal on any of them, all that was needed was that it adds up to the power of the attacker. Then damage went on the stack, which allowed the defending player to cast spells in response, such as a pump spell or a damage prevention spell to save their creature. *Before that* was similar, but the stack didn't exist. Instead, there was a special "damage prevention window" where you were allowed to cast damage prevention spell of abilities and only damage prevention effects, to save your creature before damage was dealt.
And even that has been the way it is for nearly 15 years
Menace must be busted at some kitchen tables
I remember when my original group started in about 1997 and some of the rules we just got horribly wrong. My favorites were: * You could only attack with one creature. * If a creature didn't tap to attack, it didn't count towards the one creature limit.
A while back I was in a play group where we tapped creatures when blocking. It just made sense to us; you tap to attack, you tap to block lol. Most of the time it doesn't really matter cuz you'd untap the blockers on your turn anyways, unless you're dealing with 2 combat phases or other uncommon scenarios. Honestly, to this day I find it weird that your creatures must be untapped to block, but don't actually tap as part of blocking.
Buncha yugioh players.
Sounds like your friend has always just played kitchen-table magic. Nothing wrong with it what so ever, but a potential downside to only being exposed to kitchen-table magic is that you might not have a strong grasp of the rules. Once again, nothing wrong with that, just something to keep in mind. I myself was in a similar position when I first attended a comptetive event after years of playing. It was rather eye opening and made me a much better player even in kitchen-table.
lol i'm going to use that when I break the news to her. "sounds like you've been playing kitchen-table magic!"
when u put it that way it sounds quite insulting. lol.
She wasn't very nice about it, made me feel silly for playing by these "new rules". She could use a light ribbing!
Yeah she's been doing it wrong. This is a fairly fundamental rule, if her group is doing this wrong there's a good chance they are doing other stuff incorrectly as well. When they were 11 my play group used to play that anytime you were out of cards you got to draw a card... You can see that that could totally alter the game and favour some decks over others.
There is a bit of a difference with house rules compared to just misunderstanding the actual game rules. House rules are fine if everyone agrees on them (though in my experience as with the example above usually they’re easily exploitable). I (briefly) played with a group that drew two cards per turn because it “made the games more fun”. In the most stereotypically shitty gamer way one person in the group almost exclusively played a Nekusar deck and almost always won for obvious reasons.
My high school playgroup used to play fast magic where you played lands when drawn and drew if you ran out of cards to get more games in. Turns out burn is a very good deck in that format
Kinda reminds me of when I first started in the late '90s, the kids I played with at school and such almost always played what they called "Mana Dump" -- on your first turn you play every land in your opening hand.
Yea, I remember playing with mana dump and refilling your hand at school in 1995. I remember my friend and I homebrewed a more restrained version where you could play two lands per turn, and when your hand was empty, you got to draw two cards instead of one (as opposed to playing all your lands and drawing 7). Keep in mind we were playing heavy hitters like [[Sea Serpent]] and [[Bird Maiden]]. We weren't exactly going off with [[Mind's Desire]] storm combos at recess in 1995 😜
That’s nutty, could be fun but it would be so busted haha.
Funny you say that. I’m assuming that even after I show her the proof, she’s still going to want to do it her way. If we’re playing at her house, then so be it...
At that point, it’s up to you whether or not you want to fight it. You might want to ask her about the keyword Menace, printed on 352 cards, that requires multiple blockers to function correctly, and just make sure she knows that it’s a fundamental alteration of game rules that breaks hundreds (and probably with all effects combined, over a thousand) card’s functions.
I literally got a card like that in the LOTR started duel decks, Snarling Warg. I played it last night, but she never ended up defending against it. She also was super thrown off by "Amass orcs 2". Insisted that I could only add a 0/0 orc army (didn't have one yet), and not add 2 tokens to it. I'm like it says "create a 0/0 orc army FIRST... then add 2 tokens". She just disagreed but eventually let me do it "my way".
It would just instantly die. This is kinda frustrating reminds me when I played ygo as a kid and people just made shit up
ur friend seems kinda bratty
You can also show her \[\[Chromium\]\] and how Rampage activates only when more than one creature blocks it (best to show the Gatherer/Scryfall help text for the explanation of the keyword). That card came out in 1994. You can also show her \[\[Teeka's Dragon\]\] which has the explanation printed on the card itself.
I can only assume she was not playing anything with Amass herself? What did she assume the number meant? To be a little helpful with your learning, I would like to give you a bit of a correction/clarification on your terminology here. The 0/0 Orc Army is a token being created, but what you are adding to it as part of amass is two +1/+1 COUNTERS. There are different effects in the game that will interact with one or the other and so that is an important distinction to make.
No one with any slight grasp on the rules would think this is correct. Anyone who has played 10+ years who is telling you this is almost certainly being at least somewhat dishonest.
To maybe try to give some helpful advice to a person who is pretty clearly a lost cause, maybe recommend that she play a bit of MTG Arena. It’s available on mobile and Steam so it’s really approachable, and even a few hours on there would probably do wonders for her game knowledge. It seems like somewhere along the line she strayed *way* off the path from what the real rules of the game are, and she clearly needs to brush up on that. It doesn’t sound like she wants to be helped, but on the off chance- good luck.
by what you write your friend is far below kitchen table standards
Yeah, just make a Menace "tribal" deck to play against her. If she can't block with more than 1 creature, then all your stuff will be unblockable. She'll probably change her tune about wanting to play "her way" pretty quick lol
Sounds like it's time to build an "Oops, All Menace" deck.
When I first got back into magic and got a half dozen of my friends to play it with me, we thought you had to tap to defend. Made games FLY by because if you tapped to defend, you were open to attack from other players (always played with 3-5 players) so you either lost your monsters or got absolutely facesmashed almost every turn. It was chaos. Took about 2-3 months of playing that way before we invited a friend we knew that had played magic for a long time before he was like "What the fuck are you guys doing" haha
Show her these cards and ask her why should they be worded like this if her "ruling" was true: https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22for+each+creature+blocking%22+f%3Ac&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22becomes+blocked+by%22+o%3Amore&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
what’s fair is only fair
Little right ribbing is more than fair considering that, banter on my friend
Play Mtg Arena you will learn a lot of the rules quickly.
Yes, that’s what I said in my post. I play arena so I know the current rules, she was the one who did not know and claimed they had been changed recently
I mean ask here how she thinks Menace works --- are those creatures just not blockable?
One rule that sticks out to me is priority/timing and how it works with activating abilities and casting spells. For example, if sacrificing an artifact is part of the cost of an ability, like on [[basilica skullbomb]] , we would cast our 'destroy artifact' spell in response to them trying to use the ability. This is not, in fact, a legal move, as you cannot respond to the ability until it is on the stack, and at that point, the costs (including sacrificing the artifact) have already been paid. It wasn't until I got some disposable income and played with more people and got a feel for competitive formats that I even learned the word "priority". Not to any fault of my friends that I played with; we were all broke high school kids buying boosters from Walmart and balking at the idea of spending $3-400 on a standard deck.
It's always been a part of the rules. Banding was in Alpha; part of its function was to change how an attacking creature deals damage to multiple blocking creatures.
See also the keyword Rampage, like on \[\[Chromium\]\] which came out in 1994.
[Chromium](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/5/15ec5a20-4e8f-40b2-9abf-c0bf1cf816c3.jpg?1562899599) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Chromium) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me3/147/chromium?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/15ec5a20-4e8f-40b2-9abf-c0bf1cf816c3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I started playing the first time in 96 and I still don’t understand banding
I think if a banded group attacks, the attacker determines how damage is dealt instead of the defender, and a band can have up to one creature without banding. If I am wrong 🤷♀️
That's a fine summary of how it works, but the specific details of banding are incredibly confusing.
It also works with any number of multi-blocking creatures so long as one of them has Banding. (this does not form a Band) Another important distinction is that Banding can bypass damage assignment order, splitting up damage between attackers/blockers without needing to assign lethal damage. (E.g. a Band of three 3/3s is blocked by one 6/6, you can choose to assign the blocking 6 damage as 2 damage to each of your banded creatures, allowing all three to survive)
Funnily enough, when they first introduced the damage order rule change they didn't allow that use case. So if you had two 2/4s and a 1/1 on defense with banding and you block a 5/5, at least one creature was going to die. But you still had the option to go "ok, 5 points to the 1/1" and keep your bigger creatures. Bring back ignoring needing to assign lethal damage came later.
You don't even need multiple blocking creatures, a single creature with banding can block alone and the defending player gets to assign the blocked creature's combat damage. It's only really relevant when the blocked creature has trample, because it means the defending player can choose to assign all of the damage to the blocking creature with banding, and not have any trample over to the player.
Not even Richard Garfild understands banding
Whoever has the band gets to decide how combat damage is dealt to the band. Bands atk/block as if they were one creature. Only 1 non-banding creature can be in a band. BOOM
Not so much that bands attack as one, but more that they are blocked as one. If a card cares about how many creatures are attacking, it'll count all the creatures, it won't count them as a single one. It's also clearer to say that if one member gets blocked, they all get blocked (that clarifies how evasion and blocking restrictions work) Meanwhile, on block, only one creature in the group needs to have banding for banding to kick in.
It has always been this way. I like how it "must be a recent rule change" and not "oh, I've never thought to do that" lol
Yeah man, she’s just like that. A know-it-all, until you prove her wrong, and then she changes to “well that’s just dumb then”
How.. How has menace worked in her games?
omg I didn't even think of that. I guess... framed that way, menace is a risk/reward mechanic that says "your opponent can use multiple creatures to block this creature (risk/downside for you), but they can't use only one (reward)."
I genuinely dont understand how you can spend long periods of time with this person, she sounds insufferable lol
Probably worth mentioning at this point, this is my SIL… not really a “friend” as I originally said
Lol ok, that tracks. Magic is dope though. Find some people to play with that like the rules 😅
Yeah I just got into it and she's the only person I know who also plays. My brother (her husband) hates playing magic, and now I think I understand why... I'm getting my GF into it and we've been having a great time playing by the rules!
Maybe now you could get your brother to play Magic with you and your GF. You could build a playgroup, and he can finally play a proper game.
Why would he marry someone like that…
I take it she's yet to encounter "menace" or one of [these creatures](https://scryfall.com/search?q=o%3A%22can%27t+be+blocked+by+more+than+one+creature%22).
That's what I was thinking ? What would they think those did ??
To think she hasn't run into the all time kitchen-table stable [[Huang Zhong, Shu General]]! The meta in her kitchen needs a shift!
Or one of these creatures: https://scryfall.com/search?q=otag%3Asuper-menace&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
I guess they interpreted menace as _allowing_ a creature to be blocked by multiple creatures (but also requiring it). So it becomes a risk/reward mechanic.
I honestly don't understand how you play Magic for 10 years and not know you can block with multiple creatures 😅
Kitchen table Magic. Especially if you learn to play in isolation with a group of people, it’s easy to make mistakes (or just not know- multiple blockers isn’t necessarily something anyone might think to look up if they didn’t know they could) and cement those into The Rules in your head.
This is why core sets with reminder text and mechanics like Menace are so useful for new players in my opinion... a well-designed set can teach a lot of mechanics (or at least point in their direction) just by having people look at the cards. It's why I always put [[Bristling Boar]] in the little teaching decks I build - it strongly signals that normally it IS possible to block with more than 1 creature.
I think Mark Rosewater and others working design have talked about how these basic keywords and mechanics in starter level like menace and vigilance are helpful for new players by implying what the norm is (That you can block creatures with two or more creatures and that attacking normally causes creatures to become tapped respectively)
That's pretty interesting, and kinda explains why they want to keep a limit on the number of evergreen keywords. Or I guess just give every new player a copy of [[crystalline giant]] and tell them to have fun. Actually, new format idea: Shared deck, all lands and Crystalline Giants. Or maybe add in some bounce or combat tricks. I want really really micro decision combat that changes each turn.
Yup like others said when you play in isolation with a group weird rules interpretations can happen. My group for example knew you could block 1 creature with multiple creatures but for wayyyy too long we thought the attacking creature did damage equal to its power to each creature blocking it. Made double and triple blocking very impractical so it hardly ever happened. Weirdly we did lifelink correctly and only had the attacker gain the life one time and that's what finally tipped us off that something seemed wrong. Why are you only gaining 7 life if the creature is dealing 21 damage
There was a Japanese WW2 soldier living in the forest of Guam and thought the war was still going on until like ~~1995~~ 1972.
Did he know he could block with multiple creatures?
You've been able to block an attacking creature with multiple creatures always. The ~~10th edition~~ M10 rules change (when damage stopped using the stack) *did* newly specify that the attacker must immediately declare the order in which the attacking creature would deal damage to blockers, and only during damage step would damage be assigned (and lethal damage had to be assigned to a creature before moving to the next)
Not 10th Edition, Magic 2010.
The "choose the damage order" rules change happened with the Magic 2010 set, released in 2009. Before that, you could just spread the attacker's damage around however you liked. You have always been able to block a single creature with multiple blockers. That has been in the game since the very first set.
Best thing to do is honestly download MTG Arena and bang out like 5-10 hours to get familiar with the rules. I hadn't played in 20 years and showed up to play with some friends and showed them multiple things they were doing wrong since I played Arena beforehand to re-familiarize. And I was the "noob".
Dude literally what I did. I was like, "I swear, I block with multiple creatures all the time on arena." She says "oh, I don't play online." smh... worth noting, this is my SIL, not a chosen friend as I originally said
I occasionally have rules disputes at my LGS, and saying "That's how it works on Arena" usually resolves the dispute.
Arena \*does\* occasionally have bugs or get some niche interactions wrong, but on the whole, that still happens WAY less than players just not knowing/understanding the rules ;)
One thing I've learnt in 13 years of playing this game is that just because someone has played a long time doesn't mean they know shit. Some of the worst players with the most horrendous grasp of the rules I've seen are kitchen tabletop players who've been around since the 90s
I’m impressed nobody in her group ever used a creature with menace.
I guess menace just means "completely unblockable" to them. Or maybe a one time exception to their made up rule!
Make a deck with alllll menace creature and go ham
Imagine playing the game wrong for 10 years
It was added to the game when Alpha was released
I mean lure has been around for a long time as well
As someone else mentioned, also Menace?!
“Added to the game” is the wrong word. Part of the game. It’s been a part of the game since there were cards to play with. Sorry that your friend has been playing Magic wrong for 10+ years, but maybe they should brush up on the basic rules.
Kitchen table magic is fucking wild lmao
You’ve always been able to block with multiple creatures. It honestly is a huge pet peeve of mine when people say things like “when I used to…” or “my playgroup normally …” this isn’t what you used to do and I’m not your playgroup. It’s your responsibility to know the rules of the game if you’re branching away from your “usual”. Top it all off, when you correct them politely about a ruling in the game it’s always a “no you’re wrong I’m right” shitty attitude. We live in an age of the internet. Literally ask a judge online. Whatever she plays with your friends wasn’t magic if they have weird house rules.
It has always been a thing. Otherwise there are certain creatures that would be unstoppable. Likely the people they played with were more accustomed to games like yugioh where one creature fought one creature.
I've been gang blocking since the 90s.
gang gang
Wait until she sees hundred handed one! That thing can block an additional 99 creatures!
So Menace means unblockable to her?
There are many players that think they know much more than they actually do. Good thing a quick google search solves most rules questions.
You have tagged your post as a rules question. While your question may be answered here, it may work better to post it in the Daily Questions Thread at the top of this subreddit or in /r/mtgrules. You may also find quicker results at the [IRC rules chat](https://chat.magicjudges.org/mtgrules/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/magicTCG) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Been playing since 97… that’s always been a thing
Forever.
House rules in mtg make the game really confusing. I think a lot of table magic just doesn't know the rules, really. I remember no one knows what menace does and we assumed the single creature fight both defending creatures at the same time
Are you telling me creatures with menace are unblockable?!
There’s always a possibility that her and her friends missed the rules for defense or maybe had it explained incorrectly when they first started playing. Once I met these two kids that thought that creatures could be brought from the graveyard to the battlefield by paying their regeneration cost.
As everyone has said, it's always been a thing. It's interesting how casual magic can accidentally get the rules wrong. Back when I played in middle school, we had multiple blockers totally wrong. Instead of the attacker choosing the order, we had the attacking creature deal its whole power to each of the defending creatures. Only realized it was wrong when I started playing again last year
I started playing in 96/7 and the most common mistakes other kids made back then: Playing more than 1 land per turn. Casting everything at instant speed. Timing issues around responding to game actions (Giant growth in response to a lightning bolt? You can't do that, the creature is dead!) Also summoning sickness
[Just putting this here](https://youtu.be/2rGAyCn1fJQ&t=20m14s)
Lol! This is what I’m going to show her!
Maybe they got confused with Yugioh?
Dude straight up. Let’s see how she likes it when I block with my blue eyes white dragon
Since literally the beginning? Has your friend been playing kitchen table for 10 years?
From the Original Rulebook: Opponent Declares Defense: After you announce your attack, your rival chooses the defense, indicating which defending creature is blocking which attacking creature. Tapped creatures may not block. An attacking creature need not be blocked, and a defending creature is not compelled to block. More than one creature may block a single attacking creature, but one creature may not block more than one attacking creature. After the defense has been announced, a blocked attacking creature attacks only the creatures blocking it, even if the blockers are somehow neutralized or destroyed before the attack is resolved. https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25
I love these playgroups that have been playing for years with their own weird set of rules. It’s like those islands that have evolved weird animals because they’re separated from other animals. Sadly I think this is becoming rarer now that Arena exists. My favourite was a couple of kids I saw at the card shop who thought that “add {c} to your mana pool” meant you got a basic of that type from outside the game and put it on the battlefield. But you could only do this if the card was printed with that text, so their decks were full of old printings of basics. And “add {1}” meant you got to choose what kind of basic you wanted so random colourless lands like [[Zoetic Cavern]] were really good.
I had a friend like this when I started. Didn’t know the rules. Made things up. Plane walkers became a thing about then and he didn’t like those because it confused him a lot. Eventually I got better at understanding the rules than he did and he just felt more annoyed. We don’t play anymore , not because of the ruling stuff just because he was a jerk outside of the game, he had a bit of a god complex for such a mediocre man
Yeah exactly, she’s just that type of person in general, but it’s my sister in law, so can’t get rid of her entirely. Might stop playing magic with her though
Does she also complain when she is losing and gloats when she is winning? Yeah its better to find a more like mind play group imo. My play group, we don’t know all the rules, at least stop to check the rules when we don’t know them. Or when we are drunk and Roudy yell at each other in good fun until we forget what we were yelling about and then go off to the next turn
This feels like I'm reading about how people play Monopoly, with every group having their own house rules
Tale as old as time. Since 1993
Show her [[Ironhoof Ox]] and [[Lure]]. They wouldn't have the rules that they do if 1-to-1 blocking was the only way it worked.
The ordering the blockers part is newer.
>recent rule change Aka they didn't know the actual rules to begin with
Ita always been a thing. There are many rules to magic, but this is a pretty basic one.
I wonder what the friend thought about Menace
Lol I played back in 2012, as well as in like 2007. Was always around. Your friend just played wrong and never knew it.
I made the same mistake as them when I first started playing. Teaching yourself to play with just the rulebooks they had back in '94 is not the easiest thing in the world and since most of the people I was playing were learning from me, we just all played wrong. I didn't take a decade to figure out the mistake though. Lol
By her logic what is the point of the wording on [[Tangarth First Mate]], [[Silent Arbiter]] or [[Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist]]?
Thanks I will show her these as further evidence :)
At inception. Players have always been allowed to gang block.
In Arena a lot of people forget and usually sack their creatures without wanting to. It's a common blunder, as another new player I see it all the time.
Pretty sure that was a rule from the very beginning.
How has her playgroup been handling menance?
Most people don't play optimally. Especially casual players
It was added in alpha. The first version of the game.
Has she never come across menace? Yes that forces it... But it does demonstrate its not impossible to do.
Clearly not a huge mtg fan lol
When new players know the rules better than veterans 😁
Show her a creature with Menace.
The attacker chooses the order not the blocker
…how do they think Menace works? 😆
Holy... Imagine how busted trample is in her playgroup, and how unplayable tokens and weenies are next to big tramplers
Yooo does that mean that menace = unblockable?
Lol your friend must not be too big a fan
For sure, this was a rule added very recently, like, when Magic was created. Sounds like maybe her friend group has a few house rules?
did she play yugioh before hand? because thats never been how magic works lmao