Card type: Creature

Creature type: Faerie

Power/Toughness:1/1

Casting cost: 1G

Card text: TAP: Remove the bands with other ability from target creature until end of turn.

Oracle text: T Target creature loses all "bands with other" abilities until end of turn.

Artist: Douglas Shuler

Rarity: Common  

The Shelkin Brownie has possibly the most useless creature ability of all time. "Remove banding" would be a pointless creature ability, but "remove bands with other creature" is even more pointless. There is not a single creature that was ever printed with this ability. So how did they get it? There was a cycle of five uncommon lands in Legends, each of which had a static ability that gave all Legends of a certain colour “bands with other Legends.” Of course, to prevent any of these lands from being the least bit playable, they didn’t produce mana. What about Wolves of the Hunt? Master of the Hunt, a rare 2/2 creature, could produce 1/1 Wolves of the Hunt tokens with -- that’s right -- “bands with other Wolves of the Hunt” for another four mana apiece. After 12 mana, you’d actually have two 1/1 Wolves that could band with each other! And no, they cannot band with the Master himself!

Since the six whole cards that could bestow “bands with other” on creatures were clearly too powerful, Wizards of the Coast decided to try and balance it by printing the Shelkin Brownie. A common 1/1, Shelkin Brownie's sole ability was to remove “bands with other” from a creature for a turn. Good thing too, because those Master of the Hunt decks were starting to dominate the tournament scene.