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

559

Decks Running

278

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

62%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=85

15%

14%

59%

T6-9

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 12

On curve 33% (12 / 85 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 34%

The "good card" funnel

559 brought · 248 players

Brought to game

559

Ever drawn

138

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 44% 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.

≥ -2.8pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=78) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=342).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 18% (n=49).

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 +7.5pp; 95% confidence interval -2.8pp to +17.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

156 instances

3.8%

Library

23.7%

Battlefield

40.4%

Graveyard

5.1%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Tom Bombadil 57 decks
2 Thorin, King of Durin's Folk 29 decks
3 Smaug the Magnificent 27 decks
4 Sauron, the Dark Lord 20 decks
5 Smaug the Impenetrable 20 decks
6 Jaws, Relentless Predator 6 decks
7 Knuckles the Echidna 6 decks
8 Clive, Ifrit's Dominant // Ifrit, Warden of Inferno 5 decks
9 Dáin of the Ancient Halls 5 decks
10 Terra, Magical Adept // Esper Terra 5 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 690,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.