Hold Up, Did Magic: The Gathering Just Break Reality With a Hobbit Dragon Combo? Smaug & Old Gnawbone Go Wild!
AI Gaming News Author · Polygon ·
Magic: The Gathering's new Smaug the Magnificent card from The Hobbit set creates a ludicrous treasure-generating combo when paired with Old Gnawbone from the D&D set, leading to an explosive escalation of damage and tokens that can quickly break a game, despite Old Gnawbone's hefty price tag.
Alright, listen up, gaming wizards and digital adventurers! Wizards of the Coast, bless their cotton socks, just pulled back the curtain on some shiny new cards for Magic: The Gathering's upcoming The Hobbit set at MagicCon: Las Vegas. And wouldn't you know it, the headliner, Smaug the Magnificent, is shaping up to be quite the treasure-hoarding menace.
Now, Smaug's card itself is pretty beefy – a mythic rare, no less, and it comes in some rather swish variants, including one with a dragon hoard frame that just screams 'look at my shiny things!' His ability is straightforward yet devastating: whenever he attacks, he deals damage equal to the number of treasures you control to *any* target. Plus, he generously coughs up a treasure token at the beginning of your upkeep. You'd naturally build a whole strategy around generating treasures to make this bad boy pop off, right?
But here's where my wizardly senses started tingling, mate. Because Smaug doesn't just play well with other treasure-makers; he apparently found his soulmate from a completely different multiverse: Old Gnawbone from 2021's *Adventures in the Forgotten Realms* set. That's right, a D&D dragon and a Hobbit dragon decided to team up and, well, create an absolute torrent of treasure tokens.
Picture this: Old Gnawbone, that magnificent green beast, has an ability that says whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you create *that many* treasure tokens. See where this is going? You get these two scaled tyrants on the board, toss in a few starting treasures, declare an attack with both. Smaug uses his ability to incinerate your opponent's pesky blocker (fair dinkum!), and then Old Gnawbone and Smaug both ding the opponent for combat damage. Suddenly, you're not just getting Smaug's upkeep treasure, but a literal pile of new treasures from Gnawbone – easily 11 or more from a single attack in the example Corey Plante cooked up over at Polygon. And then, next turn, Smaug hits *even harder* because you're swimming in gold! It’s properly bonkers; a chaotic cascade of coin that quickly spirals out of control like a runaway magic spell.
And because Smaug is red and Old Gnawbone is green, it opens up a whole suite of delightfully destructive options. Think about cards like Doubling Season, Parallel Lives, Primal Vigor – anything that doubles your tokens. It's like finding a glitch in the simulation that just multiplies your wealth exponentially! Want to actually *use* that treasure? Goldspan Dragon doubles the mana they generate. Or, if you're feeling particularly naughty, Dockside Extortionist (banned in Commander for good reason!) can create an absurd number of treasures based on your opponents' artifacts and enchantments. The possibilities for breaking the game are, dare I say, *magical*.
Of course, every grand magical plan has a catch, doesn't it? In this case, Old Gnawbone herself is currently sitting pretty at about fifty quid on the secondary market. So, while you'll be swimming in digital gold on the battlefield, you might be out some actual gold in your wallet. But hey, that's what all that future treasure is for, right? To buy more Old Gnawbones, perhaps? A big thanks to Corey Plante over at Polygon for first spotting this delightful digital tea-leaf reading and breaking down the combo for us.
It just goes to show you, mate, sometimes the most explosive combos aren't the ones designed together, but the ones that accidentally stumble into each other across timelines and universes. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see what other chaos I can accidentally unleash.
Tags: Magic: The Gathering, MTG, Card Combo, Gaming News, Web3 Gaming
Original article: Polygon