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If this has actually been answered in my hiatus, I do apologize and ask for a link to what I could not find through the search.

Situation:

Abilities on banding cards are being negated.
Play Enhancement/Add Card to Battle/Look at Bottom abilities are not being negated.
Evil Spawn enters battle.

What happens?

Categories of Possibilities:

A. Evil Spawn is always negated by cards that negate Banding cards because he is a banding card under certain circumstances. Obviously this is not the correct answer, as it would then mean that Torn Mantle, Four Horns et. al. would target Evil Spawn always even if he's not in battle.

B. Evil Spawn is sometimes negated depending on whether the reveal turns out to be a bandable character and whether the player chooses to add him to battle.
1. This would mean Evil Spawn could only be Interrupted, never Prevented on basis of Banding as there is never a time for another SA to insert itself in between the reveal and the add to battle.
2. This would also mean that whether a card is preventable or not is determined at some point later than when the card is initially played, which undermines the otherwise intuitive (after many years of work) Prevent mechanic.
3. Finally, this would mean that a card can actually change what type of abilities it *has* after being played depending on what optional abilities are chosen.

C. Evil Spawn is never negated based on banding because
a. Add to battle is not a band ability (explicitly not the case, even though it is the only option without wonk or contradictions)
b. Cards whose type of ability is unclear are treated as not having those abilities.

Is there another option I'm not seeing? And which of them (including one I didn't list) is it?

I would rule that Evil Spawn never gets the CBN from Banding abilities cannot be negated, because cards are either CBN when they are played or not, and when Evil Spawn is played his ability is not a Band.

I don't know if this helps or just muddies the water but I know that, before the changes to Ignore, Jacob was ignored by HHI outright even if you were planning to play an enhancement rather than band. At least that's how I had it ruled against me at various tournaments.

That is something of a different situation because Jacob has a what is definitely a banding ability.

Based on how recent rulings have gone with "Add to battle" abilities, if Evil Spawn reveals an EC and evil banding is being negated, he can't add the EC to battle, but he can add it to hand.  Likewise, if Play abilities are prevented and Evil Spawn reveals an EE, he can't add it to battle either.

Basically, what you do with the card defines what ability you use, and if one of the things you can do is Prevented, you can't use that ability.

Well that's fine but doesn't answer all of the question. In this situation, abilities on banding cards are being negated, so you need to know whether Evil Spawn is banding before you can know whether his reveal is prevented.

Since Banding is a subset of Add To Battle, if an ability says "Banding cards are negated", then Evil Spawn is fully negated, because he is a banding card.  And if there was an ability that said "Cards with Play abilities are negated", Evil Spawn would be fully negated as well. 

Since these abilities negate the card, they negate the card's entire ability, as long as the card meets the definition specified.  Even if the ability gives an option to not do that thing (such as HHI ignoring Jacob when you want to play preblock).  If a card said "Negate good banding cards", Jacob would be fully negated.

I'm going with add to battle is entirely it's own ability and not a band ability

I would like that as well, but that is not how the current ruling works.  I would like Band, Play, and Add To Battle to each be a distinct ability, and cards that negate Band/Play abilities not be able to negate Add To Battle.