Pointed Discussion

If No mercy is in play and a creature protection from black attacks you, does No mercy apply as a general effect and destroys the creature or not?

Yes, the creature with protection from black is destroyed. This is a triggered ability which is not targeted. Good card by the way.

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.

This is a really good card! Dread might be better, but being able to use it's ability on turn 4 is great!

I need a copy of this card, lol. Amazing enchantment for multi-player.

5/5

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.

I wish this were around today; this turns Goblin Guide into something worse than a Shock. One Tendrils of Corruption becomes something like a 4-for-1 with this on the field.

Cobra Kai will never die!

@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 helping him in his cause for the destruction of phyrexia, still, those sweet phyrexians that were watching carefully and infiltrating their ranks as years passed (As you can see the flavor text is a quote from a sleeper agent) had already prepared an offencive. Phyxerian troops end up charging aganish the academy and destroying it. Thats the point of No Mercy.

"We had years to prepare, While they had mere minutes"

Flavour, art, power; just plain awesomeness 5/5

Gabriel422: What are you talking about?? Tendrils of Corruption, Goblin Guide... what do either of those have to do with this card? How does Goblin Guide become anything like a Shock, worse or better?

@long_con
For goblin guide he means that it hits for 2 really quickly but is a one-off because it's destroyed (except it comes on turn one.. so who knows where the heck he gets that from.) For tendrils of corruption I think he's implying that since you gain life they probably lost a few cards trying to do damage that.. you just gained back?

That's the best I can make of it.

this shit rules. it's like... the black 'moat'

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".

What would happen if, for some reason, you controlled both No Mercy and Dissipation Field at the same time? Would the most recently cast one resolve first?

A great card to have in your deck.

@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.

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.

Awesome art. I should have known that it was Mark Tedin.

SirMalkin: The controller of the triggers (by virtue of controlling the enchantments) would place them on the stack. The one on top would resolve first. So, "you" gets to decide.

Tihs card is just... ehhh.... 5/5

Can be renamed to GTFO.

"Then Karn smote the Kerrick, and all was laid to burnination."

This is a powerful card. When it hits the table, it leaves you at a standstill until you can amass a big enough army to one shot the player.

Unless your main way to win does not involve attacking/pinging with creatures, you maindeck enchantment removal, or you have an indestructible / regenerate creature.

@Arachitbutyrophobia
No way, dread is much worse. Simply because a lot more decks pack ways to deal with creatures then enchantments. And when this hits the board, if they don't have an answer its devastating. The black Moat.

Really nice card for a mono-black control shell.

"I see what you're trying to do there. Let's make sure you never do it again."

Avenging Arrow on steroids.

Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts will soon be putting this card on legs and doing it one better. Awesome.

Maybe this is where Akroma, Angel of Wrath got her ideas from.

And @thewrathofshane: Dread is not always worse, it still has a lot of attacking power although the fact that it comes out later is a big hit. I wouldn't say either is worse than the other, it depends how much ramp you run and how much your deck needs creatures. I'd rather get Dread out than this if I can especially if I'm running UB and have counters. Also Dread can be tutored and reanimated and this can't as easily.

The ultimate Rattlesnake EDH card.
I play with it all the time and it stops attacks on you cold.

It's so hard to find this card. I really want one for my zombie horde deck because it would make attacking the horde extremely painful and most likely not even an option. If the players are stuck just blocking, they are doomed to get hit by one of the bombs in the deck (like plaguewind or living death).

This card is pretty awesome for control decks too.

If this was printed today, only two decks will survive against it: RDW style deck with super fast creatures and heavy burn, and control decks with almost no creatures. All midrange decks will simply die. The metagame would have been seriously warped.

Does this imply that I've been merciful to creatures beforehand?

"Okay, I'll let you go this time, Emrakul!

Cheap casting cost considering what it does. Great defensive permanent but it’s a also a bit of a ‘jerk’ card. It’s the enchantment version of another great card Dread. In my vintage assassin deck I use it along with other great cards like Shriekmaw, Phyrexian Obliterator, Royal Assassin, and Bloodhusk Ritutalist to the fill the graveyards with ten or more creatures to cast Avatar of Woe Woe Woe Woe for only 2 B mana.