Uhoh. What was supposed to be an exciting moment for the Magic: The Gathering community has become scandalous in an unfortunate turn of events. At MagicCon 2026, Wizards of the Coast revealed a brand new collection that fans everywhere were truly excited about, Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit. Of course, as a centerpiece of the new The Hobbit collection, the company revealed a special The One Ring Magic card. But things quickly turned sour as fans realized that there truly was only One Ring. The new The Hobbit One Ring card looked suspiciously similar to The One Ring released in Magic: The Gathering‘s earlier The Lord of the Rings collection. But what exactly happened? According to Wizards of the Coast, it was an unfortunate case of inadvertent plagiarism. And most likely, that’s all we’ll ever know, but that hasn’t stopped the internet from speculating.
In full, Wizards of the Coast had this to say about the One Ring Magic: The Gathering plagiarism issue. They noted:
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
Ultimately, it feels like Wizards of the Coast is portraying that this One Ring Magic card mishap was an honest mistake, born of wanting to do right by fans’ expectations. But, in practice, it does seem like somewhere a purposeful act of plagiarism was committed. We feel glad that Marta Nael will be compensated for her work, but disappointed that Dan Frazier, who is a long-time Magic: The Gathering artist, and Wizards of the Coast, who surely must have considered looking at the original One Ring Card, did not catch this error and handle it before it became public. You can take a look at both One Ring Magic cards below.
We won’t deal in the various conspiracies flying around the internet, but will say that it’s hard enough to be an artist already! In fact, other artists from the community have chimed in on their opinions about the One Ring issue and what may have spurred it.
Suffice to say, we support artists and original creators. We hope that everyone else does too. There is a modicum of irony that the One Ring, of all Magic: The Gathering cards, has created this plagiarism disarray. But we cannot let Sauron win!
This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!