friarsol wrote:I'm not really sure how we should handle the UI for declaring creatures as part of a band. Does anyone have any ideas?
Yikes.
In the absence of drag-and-drop, I think my preferred method is the following:
Once a creature with banding (lets say a
Benalish Hero) is 'scheduled' to be declared an attacker during the declare attackers step (ie, during the period when it has the sword icon but its attack can still be cancelled with a right-click,) the user may left-click on it to form/join a band. A prompt appears telling the user to click on another creature that can attack the same player/planeswalker that is not already part of a band, or on another creature in a band attacking a target that the Hero can also attack; if a non-banded creature is chosen, the two form a band (if the other creature has already been directed to attack a different player/planeswalker, its original target will be over-written with the Hero's.) If a creature already in a band is chosen, the Hero joins the existing band as if the operation were done the other way around.
Once a band is formed, if the most recent addition to the band also has banding, clicking on any creature in the band should bring up the prompt to select another creature that can attack the band's target. Cancelling the attack of any given band-member drops it from the band, but doesn't break up the band if two or more creatures would remain. Of course, targeting arrows identifying the connected creatures and some indication in the combat panel will help keep this all sorted out.
If I understand 702.20j right, blocking with banders is handled automatically and doesn't require any input on the part of the player. The defender receives the damage allocation UI element that the attacker would normally receive for that particular block and that's that.
I think this is the most straightforward way. The downsides are relatively minor: you can't merge bands (there are potential headaches here, I think it's just easier on everyone not to enable it,) if you decide to change the band's target you'll have to cancel all the attacks and rebuild the band from scratch, and there's a potential intuitiveness issue if users don't get that you have to click on the
Benalish Hero a second time to get it to do anything (I'd prefer avoiding a "This creature has banding. Would you like to attack in a band?" prompt every time I attack with a bander, but I'll understand if it's necessary.)
Anyway, I don't know if this helps you get an idea what people would like or if I'm suggesting a horrible user experience. I do feel that it would be quite awkward to add some kind of intermediary step between selecting your attackers and declaring them (moving on to the instants/effects portion of the DA step) where you group up your bands, so mostly I'm trying to think around that.
Good luck!