Live Play Data

There and Back Again

· Enchantment — Saga · The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth (LTR)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1251

Decks Running

541

Median Cast Turn

7.0

Drawn → Played

59%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=166

10%

13%

61%

T6-9

12%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 15

On curve 27% (22 / 166 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 33%

The "good card" funnel

1252 brought · 475 players

Brought to game

1252

Ever drawn

280

Reached battlefield

166

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 42% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ +2.7pp

Players who cast this card win 34% of the time (n=161) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=862).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 22% (n=111).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +10.0pp; 95% confidence interval +2.7pp to +17.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

319 instances

3.8%

Library

21.6%

Battlefield

40.1%

Graveyard

5.3%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Tom Bombadil 117 decks
2 Smaug the Magnificent 53 decks
3 Thorin, King of Durin's Folk 52 decks
4 Smaug the Impenetrable 38 decks
5 Sauron, the Dark Lord 35 decks
6 Terra, Magical Adept // Esper Terra 20 decks
7 Knuckles the Echidna 15 decks
8 Smaug, Wicked Worm 14 decks
9 Jaws, Relentless Predator 9 decks
10 Magda, Brazen Outlaw 9 decks

Card text

There and Back Again

Enchantment — Saga

(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after III.) I — Up to one target creature can't block for as long as you control this Saga. The Ring tempts you. II — Search your library for a Mountain card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle. III — Create Smaug, a legendary 6/6 red Dragon creature token with flying, haste, and "When Smaug dies, create fourteen Treasure tokens."

The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth (LTR) · Rare · Illustrated by Jarel Threat

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 780,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.