@Sironos:
This is an urza's legacy card, so the story for this card is on the Urza book (Forgot the name of the book but i read it a few years ago).
Urza was an inventor, he and his brother discovered at youth ancient ruins with 2 gems inside. Each one of the took one, his brother though envyed him and wanted to possess his gemstone, which led to a battle that took years and drawn kingdoms into ruins. In the end, urza kills his brother Misha but belives he was corrupted by some force - Phyrexia.
After becoming a planeswalker Urza is obcessed with destroying Phyrexia, after hundreds of years he finds it and attempts to exterminate every single phyrexian. Still, he fails and phyrexia had just discovered his existance.
That is where the card "No Mercy" enters, the one who atacked phyrexia would pay with his blood and the blood of all that would stand by him. The background is the Tolarian Academy (you can see the card), it was a castre that Urza built to train mages into ... (see all)
Posted By:
SpyCrab
(1/24/2011 12:55:24 PM)
"Then Karn smote the Kerrick, and all was laid to burnination."
Posted By:
MisterAction
(8/5/2012 12:28:21 AM)
The actual specific moment in the story this refers to is when Kerrick, a Phyrexian sleeper agent (Phyrexian in human flesh sent to spy on and undermine humanity), had become trapped in a bubble of "fast time" on Tolaria. Urza and his Academy had conducted experiments attempting to discover how to travel through time to stop the Phyrexians from ever coming about. However, the experiments went out of control (partially caused by Kerrick himself) and caused a disaster on Tolaria, destroying a large part of it and creating areas of erratic time distortions. Some were areas of slow time where seconds passed for those trapped inside while years passed outside. People in areas of fast time, such as the one Kerrick was trapped in, would experience years, while seconds passed in the normal time areas. Thus Kerrick had a huge amount of time to prepare his attack on the Academy, while the Academy, still reeling from the disaster, had minutes to prepare for his counter attack.
Posted By:
Nagoragama
(10/12/2011 8:29:35 PM)
Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts will soon be putting this card on legs and doing it one better. Awesome.
Posted By:
steev
(4/10/2013 6:37:30 PM)
This is a really good card! Dread might be better, but being able to use it's ability on turn 4 is great!
Posted By:
Arachibutyrophobia
(9/13/2009 1:25:23 PM)
Mr.Sironos, could it be that the Phyrexians are attacking due to the fact that they don't have to worry about being attacked themselves? The Phyrexians prepared for war for thousands of years. It makes sense that they would have counter measures to an invasion on their "plane".
Posted By:
Drewsel
(6/2/2011 5:43:21 PM)
Yes, the creature with protection from black is destroyed. This is a triggered ability which is not targeted. Good card by the way.
Posted By:
holgir
(8/12/2009 6:45:30 AM)
I concur. Protection from Black doesn't prevent destroy effects from black sources but it does prevent targeting by black sources. No Mercy doesn't target any card so it gets around that latter rule.
Posted By:
iondragonx
(8/17/2009 7:15:25 AM)
@SirMalkin: They are both triggered effects so if you controll both you decide in which order you put them on the stack. If you put No Mercy's first, Dissipation Field's resolves first sending the creature to owners hand and No Mercy's effect is countered with no target and vice verse.
If No Mercy and Dissipation Field are controlled by different players then the active player puts their triggered effects on the stack first and then the non-active player puts theirs.
Posted By:
tavaritz
(8/29/2011 8:46:59 AM)
I don't quite get the connection between the art and the ability and the flavour text... they're invading a castle, but they'll die when they strike the plainswalker, because he shows no mercy, and had years to prepare????... Isn't the art offensive based, where the card effect is more of a defensive kind?
Great ability though, dissipation field go home.
Posted By:
Sironos
(12/16/2010 2:30:45 PM)