first strike; 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.)
"As the cavalry bore down, we faced them with swords drawn and pikes hidden in the grass at our feet. ‘Don't lift your pikes 'til I give the word,' I said."—Maeveen O'Donagh,Memoirs of a Soldier
