Honor the Fallen

Honor the Fallen was released in 1999 as part of the Mercadian Masques expansion for the Magic: The Gathering trading card game. The set was inspired by the plane of Mercadia, a world defined by its mercantile culture and goblin-dominated trade networks. Mechanically, the card was designed as a hate piece against graveyard-reliant strategies, allowing players to exile cards from an opponent's graveyard to mitigate the effectiveness of resurrection or reanimation effects that were prevalent in the game's competitive environment at the time.

The artwork was provided by Terese Nielsen, a prominent illustrator in the Magic: The Gathering community known for her distinctive, ethereal style. For this piece, Nielsen utilized a poignant visual language to depict the somber act of memorializing the dead, contrasting the tactical utility of the instant card with a sense of quiet reverence. While the card saw sporadic use in sideboard configurations during its tournament tenure, it remains a notable example of Nielsen's aesthetic contributions to the late 1990s era of the game.