Dragons love their treasure hoards, however no dragon cherishes their trove greater than Smaug from The Hobbit. At MagicCon: Las Vegas 2026, Wizards of the Coast lastly revealed the primary few playing cards from the upcoming set, due out Aug. 14, and the headliner is Smaug the Magnificent.
Fittingly, the cardboard is super-powerful, however once you play it alongside one explicit dragon that’s 5 years outdated, issues can in a short time spiral uncontrolled.
Smaug the Magnificent is available in three variants: a mythic uncommon in the principle set, a borderless model with a dragon hoard body, and a gleaming gold headliner card. Smaug boasts a strong potential: at any time when he assaults, Smaug offers injury equal to the variety of treasures you management to any goal — and he generates a treasure token initially of your repairs.
In observe, that you must construct your complete technique round producing treasure tokens to make a card like this pop off. You might lean into dwarves, dragons, and treasure. The true lethal combo for Smaug, nonetheless, is Outdated Gnawbone from 2021’s Adventures within the Forgotten Realms set. With this inexperienced dragon on the board, at any time when a creature you management offers fight injury to a participant, you create that many treasure tokens.
Let’s simply say you’ve gotten each of those dragons on the board with 5 treasure tokens, however your opponent has a 6/6 flying blocker. At first of your flip, Smaug creates one other treasure token. Smaug and Outdated Gnawbone declare the assault. Smaug’s triggered potential lets you eradicate that 6/6 blocker. Gnawbone offers seven injury to the opponent, and Smaug offers 4. So that you create one other 11 treasure tokens which on prime of these earlier six, and Smaug creates one other one the next flip. Then you definately’re taking a look at 18 injury from Smaug’s potential the following flip.
Since Outdated Gnawbone is inexperienced and Smaug is pink, that opens you as much as a set of coloration choices that generate treasure tokens and likewise a number of the variety of tokens you generate. Doubling Season doubles the variety of tokens you generate, however there’s additionally Parallel Evolution, Parallel Lives, Primal Vigor, and Second Harvest.
Different avenues you possibly can pursue: Goldspan Dragon doubles the efficacy of your treasure tokens in the event you really use them quite than hoard them, producing two mana quite than one once you sacrifice them. There’s additionally Dockside Extortionist, a card so good it’s one of many only a few banned in Commander, producing X treasure tokens the place X is the variety of artifacts and enchantments your opponents management (so you possibly can see why that’s OP when you’ve gotten three opponents quite than one). And that’s simply in red-green! Treasure tokens even have some attention-grabbing choices in white and black.
The one main disadvantage right here is that Outdated Gnawbone prices a minimum of about $50. However that’s what the entire treasure tokens are for, proper?
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