The One RingThe One Ring | Art by Marta Nael

On Friday, May 1st, Wizards of the Coast previewed a large number of cards from various upcoming Magic: The Gathering sets. Among them was The Hobbit, which includes multiple box toppers. One such topper is The One RingThe One Ring, the most sought-after card in Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth.

However, many keen-eyed players noticed that something appeared off about The One RingThe One Ring's art. As it turns out, credited artist Dan Frazier used Marta Nael's Bundle promo rendition of the card as a reference for his iteration. Late on the evening of Saturday, May 2nd, Wizards of the Coast and Dan Frazier released joint statements on their social media platforms.

Wizards of the Coast's Joint Statement Regarding The One RingThe One Ring

At the late hour of 7:00 PM Eastern Time, in the midst of MagicCon Las Vegas 2026's 4:00 PM, Wizards of the Coast released the following statement alongside Dan Frazier. In it, both parties apologized for missing the mark on properly vetting Frazier's art references:

A message from Dan Frazier and Wizards of the Coast:

— Magic: The Gathering (@magic.wizards.com) 2026-05-02T23:00:09.850Z

While the above post on BlueSky didn't use alt text to offer the text for the visually-impaired, we do have alt text courtesy of one user on the platform:

A message from Dan Frazier and Wizards of the Coast:

Recently, fans noted the similarities between The One Ring by Marta Nael, and the newly released image of The One Ring by Dan Frazier. Those similarities are not coincidental, unfortunately.

From Dan,

I made a mistake, and I feel awful. I especially feel for Marta, whose work I adore. In trying to create an iconic version of The One Ring, while looking at references online, I ended up using Marta's Ring as a reference and painted over it to try to depict the item fans hold dear to their hearts. In doing so, I didn't make it my own. I'm reaching out to Marta privately to apologize artist to artist. I love creating art for Magic, I've loved being a part of this artist community for more than 30 years, and I'm sorry I've let my fans down.

Sincerely,

Dan Frazier

From Wizards of the Coast,

Dan Frazier is a titan of the art industry and of Magic: The Gathering. He has created so many iconic pieces of art for the game that he will forever be a part of our game, and we value his contributions tremendously. With that in mind, we're disappointed our review process didn't catch the issue. Like Dan, we have already reached out to apologize to Marta Nael for not catching the use of her art in this piece.

None of this was intentional, but we're going to make it right as much as we can.

On digital versions of the card, we will credit both Dan Frazier and Marta Nael.

We will also make sure Marta is compensated for her work here.

This is a good moment to recognize that we are all humans who make mistakes.

Dan made a mistake. We made mistakes in our process to not catch the error.

We don't condone or accept either, but we still value Dan and his contributions and are grateful for his place in the game.

Thank you to the eagle-eyed fans who noticed this, and for all of you for being strong advocates for amazing art and artists.

Sincerely,

All of us at Wizards of the Coast

At this time, a statement by Marta Nael is yet to be released.

Conclusion

At the risk of editorializing this news piece, I will say that this series of statements is, at the very least, a good way to segue into closer examinations of, and further discussions about, the issues that led up to this mistake.

And now, let me open the floor to you, dear readers. How does this issue with The Hobbit's iteration of The One Ring affect your morale regarding the set? Will you be buying more or less of the product as a result of it? Alternatively, will you be buying Dan Frazier's version of the card, which will be circulating with the other Box Toppers? Or will you buy another copy, namely Marta Nael's Bundle promo? Let us know in the comments below.