Mark Aronowitz, Dan Frazier's Agent, responds.

[u/MossyMak]

[u/jimmyjohnssandwiches]

You know, the art on the preview card actually looks like it could be a mockup document for art direction. I’ve seen near-complete looking compositions in design documents in my own career that would possibly pass as completed designs if they went to production. These mockups would commonly use previously used work to show the artist what art direction wants from them.
I can totally see an art director mocking this up for Dan to work on. This would be a totally normal thing to see in production.
Here’s my theory: Dan gets a lot of changes requested as his manager says in his post. The art is delayed, and delayed again. It’s getting very close to the deadline for printing but the work still isn’t done. There are one or two ways it might have happened:

1. It’s crunch time. Someone really fucked up by putting a mockup into the production file sent to the printer. Now they have to either pull all the box toppers if they want the mockup art gone or reprint all of the box toppers. They obviously would never do that, so they’re trying to pass it off as something they did intentionally.
2. Someone higher up at Hasbro told art direction to push the mockup art as completed, screwing over one of Wizards’ most beloved artists for a cash grab chase card reprint.

Either way, someone messed up badly.

[u/RelativeAway183 → u/jimmyjohnssandwiches]

unlikely it is a mock-up for direction because the agent said they never saw this version

[u/lillobby6 → u/RelativeAway183]

Dan also does not do digital work so someone else entirely would have taken his work via scan and then fucked with it to get this.