Old Fogey

Help!

That's not a question. This isn't a Frequently Stated Comments.

Can you help me?

That's better. What do you need to know?

How do these abilities interact?

Let's just stick to the four that interact -- phasing, cumulative upkeep , echo, and fading 3.

Turn #1 -- You play Old Fogey.

Turn #2 -- During your untap step before you untap, Old Fogey phases out.

Turn #3 -- During your untap step before you untap, Old Fogey phases in. Cumulative upkeep says, "Hey, pay ." (This assumes your abilities have the ability to speak -- mine do). Echo says, "Pay or sacrifice Old Fogey." And finally fading says "Take off one of my three fading counters."

Turn #4 -- During your untap step before you untap, Old Fogey phases out.

Turn #5 -- During your untap step before you untap, Old Fogey phases in. Cumulative upkeep says, "Hey, pay ." Echo says, "I'm good." And fading says "Take off another fading counter. I'm down to one."

Turn #6 -- During your untap step before you untap, Old Fogey phases out.

Turn #7 -- During your untap step before you untap, Old Fogey phases in. Cumulative upkeep says, "Hey, pay ." Echo says, "I'm still good." And fading says "Take off my last fading counter."

Turn #8 -- During your untap step before you untap, Old Fogey phases out.

Turn #9 -- During your untap step before you untap, Old Fogey phases in. Cumulative upkeep says, "Hey, pay ." Fading then chimes in and says, "You know, I'm going to make you sacrifice Old Fogey. Do you really want to pay ?" Then cumulative upkeep says, "Maybe I will. What are you going to do about it?" And then echo says, "Guys, can't we just all get along? Can't we all just get along? Get along? Along?" A fight then ensues which ends with Old Fogey's death.

When the original version of the Unhinged FAQ included incorrect instructions on how fading, echo, phasing, and cumulative upkeep interacted, I pointed out the error and corrected it to Mark. Except my correction was also wrong, and it actually worked in a third, different way.

At the Unhinged release event I attended, one person was very excited about the “bands with other Dinosaurs” ability because it could band with Mistform Ultimus. No it can't. It can't band with Pygmy Allosaurus either. A creature with “bands with other Dinosaurs” can't band with Dinosaurs—it can band with other creatures that have “bands with other Dinosaurs” (regardless of their creature type). Of course, there's only one creature it can band with: itself. (And, yes, creatures that have banding in their own right, but it's not as if Old Fogey has anything to do with that.)

As a player declares attackers, they may declare that one or more attacking creatures with banding and up to one attacking creature without banding (even if it has "bands with other") are all in a "band." They may also declare that one or more attacking [quality] creatures with "bands with other [quality]" and any number of other attacking [quality] creatures are all in a band. A player may declare as many attacking bands as they want, but each creature may be a member of only one of them. (Defending players can't declare bands but may use banding in a different way; see rule 702.21j.)

Old Fogey got its start as a card you may have heard of: Akroma, Angel of Wrath. I call Old Fogey the anti-Akroma, but it's really her shadowy other half. Back when Legions was being put together, Akroma was conceived as a crazy creature loaded up with as many keywords as possible. It got all the usual suspects, but certain pranksters (and I'm looking in Bill Rose's direction) wouldn't stop there. More and more keywords kept showing up in the file: Flanking. Banding. Echo? It was a joke, and they were removed, but that's where this monstrosity came from. What if a creature got all the other keywords? All the ones that didn't get onto Akroma? The bad ones. The obsolete ones. Load 'em up!