Powerful utility lands

Among the best lands ever printed for banding decks, a powerful archetype in Legends-Revised-Ice Age pauper sealed. It's a pity they're uncommon, and thus illegal in the format.

I'm handling all five of these cards in one go because a) they're literally unplayable, even by the standards of their time; b) banding as a mechanic, let alone banding with others, won't exist in our alternate timeline, so it must be excised from all card concepts; and c) the idea of banding is actually quite good, even if the execution was absolute rubbish. I can't sing that high praise for banding with others, though. It was absolute balderdash when it was made in '93, and I'm not sure how anyone supported it all the way through the design process, let alone in any kind of playtesting. I imagine the conversation went like this: "Banding's too good. People keep forcing me to live an extra turn by attacking into my Timber Wolves with their Mahamoti Djinn banded with a Benalish Hero, and I feel like it's impacting my play experience, when all I really want to do is draw penises on my neighbor's bedsheets." "Well, we can't let such a well-planned and clearly understood ability go by the wayside -- it's one of the highlights of Magic. But, since Legends is going to be the set of big, splashy dudes without evasion, I get your concern and think banding could really break here. Instead of a lot of good, relevant banders -- you know, reasonably costed 3/3s with abilities like vigilance -- I think we should make a more-limited version of banding that doesn't do what it sounds like it does." "That's a very good idea. Can I borrow a Sharpie?"

So, how can we make a card that's faithful to the originals without actually doing what the originals did? It may be helpful to return to what banding actually does. I'll paraphrase here from the comp rules; it's a dumb ability with a lot of facets.

First, on attack, a band can be any number of banding creatures and up to one creature without banding. If a defending player blocks any creature in a band, he or she blocks all of them with that one duder -- the banded creatures are sorta like one big creature. This dilutes flying, fear, intimidate, unblockability, etc. -- if you can block that Benalish Hero with your Mons's Goblin Raiders, you also get to block the Kjeldoran Skycaptain that's banded with it. That's the drawback half.
The upside is that, whenever an opponent's creature is caught up in combat with one of your banders -- either because it blocked your band or at least one your banders blocked it -- you choose how that creature assigns combat damage, and you don't have to assign lethal damage to spread that damage around. If your band is Kami of Old Stone and two 2/2 durdlebots with banding, your opponent will need 9 power to kill anything of yours -- you can assign the first 6 to the kami and 1 each to the durdlebots.

(As a technical nitpick, you can't declare a band on defense; rather, if any of your blockers has banding, every creature blocking with that guy gets the benefit of the second ability. Seriously, eff banding.)

So, what's the solution? It's simple -- extract the kernel of what makes banding kinda cool (bunches of dudes who got each others' back) and separate out the nonsense (everything else).

Simple, straightforward and flavorful. Done and done.

I added the legendary supertype for two reasons. First, it's a place where legendary dudes get together to form legendary adventuring parties -- bands, if you will -- and go off and do legendary things. It deserves the supertype. Second, the card's already bad in multiples, but it's a powerful effect; that encourages multiples in decks, both as redundancies and for consistency's sake. The legendary drawback on a land is especially meaningful, ensuring that only the greediest of decks will run four.

The ability's still over the top on complexity for a common or uncommon, though. I originally had an en-kor-style ability on it: "All legendary creatures you control gain, "0: The next 1 combat damage that would be dealt to this creature this turn is dealt to target legendary creature you control instead."" -- but that's a war crime to print, and a free, targeted activated ability. No dice. This new ability is my own templating; I'm sure there's a problem with it somewhere -- assigning damage is an odd thing to refer to on a card -- but it's a replacement ability, which is why it doesn't target (or even use the stack).