MagicTheGathering.fyi

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."

CMC
5
Mana cost
{3}{R}{R}
Color identity
R
Rarity
rare
Set
The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
Price
$20.61
EDHREC rank
#2144
Buy on TCGplayer
There and Back Again card art
There and Back Again is a saga that tutors four Halfling tokens onto the battlefield across its first two chapters, then returns itself to your hand on the third — meaning a single cast eventually becomes a repeatable engine with enough proliferate or counter manipulation. The cost is time: three full turns of vulnerability before the payoff lands, which means Clockspinning and similar effects aren't optional in a Tom Bombadil deck, they're load-bearing.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Tom Bombadil

Tom Bombadil

73.8% of decks · synergy 0.70

Tom Bombadil triggers off every chapter of There and Back Again, drawing cards and scrying the turn it enters and on each subsequent chapter — the saga's built-in self-bounce then lets you reset the whole sequence. That loop, accelerated by proliferate, is the primary reason There and Back Again shows up in nearly 74% of Tom Bombadil lists.

02
Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe

Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe

65.5% of decks · synergy 0.64

Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe cares about sagas entering and progressing, and There and Back Again's three-chapter structure plus self-return gives him repeated triggers from a single card. The token generation on chapters one and two also feeds any go-wide subtheme Sigurd lists tend to run.

03
The Balrog, Durin's Bane

The Balrog, Durin's Bane

38.2% of decks · synergy 0.37

The Balrog, Durin's Bane exiles cards from opponents' graveyards and uses saga mechanics thematically, and There and Back Again fits the Middle-earth flavor package while providing token bodies that can be sacrificed to fuel The Balrog's ability. It's less about a tight engine here and more about synergistic density within the Tolkien card pool.

04
Knuckles the Echidna

Knuckles the Echidna

31.2% of decks · synergy 0.27

Knuckles the Echidna rewards running a wide token count, and the Halflings produced by There and Back Again are cheap, repeatable fodder that keep Knuckles's payoffs firing. The saga's self-bounce means a single copy can keep refreshing that token supply across a long game.

05
Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer

Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer

26.7% of decks · synergy 0.26

Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer turns a board of mismatched tokens into a uniform army, and the Halfling tokens from There and Back Again are a clean, renewable source of copy targets. The saga's recursion means Brudiclad players can reliably rebuild the token base after a board wipe without drawing a second copy.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

There and Back Again is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but its home is almost entirely Commander. In Modern and Legacy the three-turn timeline is a liability — dedicated combo and tempo decks don't give sagas the runway they need, and the Halfling tokens don't pressure life totals fast enough to justify a five-mana investment. Vintage has the raw power density to make There and Back Again irrelevant by comparison. In Commander, the multiplayer pace and proliferate support make the saga's self-bounce genuinely threatening, and the 100-card singleton format means the card's unique effect is worth the deck slot in ways it simply isn't elsewhere.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

6,926 decks
There and Back AgainClockspinning

There and Back AgainClockspinning

Infinite ETB; Infinite colored mana; Infinite death triggers; Infinite storm count; Infinite magecraft triggers; Infinite Treasure tokens; Put all Mountains from your library onto the battlefield; Infinite LTB

View on Commander Spellbook ↗
291 decks
There and Back AgainVitu-Ghazi Guildmage

There and Back AgainVitu-Ghazi Guildmage

Infinite colored mana; Infinite copies of all tokens you control; Infinite creature tokens; Infinite death triggers; Infinite ETB; Infinite LTB; Infinite Treasure tokens

View on Commander Spellbook ↗
93 decks
There and Back AgainTwinflameEternal Witness

There and Back AgainTwinflameEternal Witness

Infinite LTB; Infinite ETB; Infinite colored mana; Infinite death triggers; Infinite storm count; Infinite magecraft triggers; Infinite Treasure tokens; Infinite copies of creatures you control with haste

View combo details →

Budget Alternatives

Cheaper options that do most of the same work

There and Back Again doesn't have a direct budget substitute — no other card combines a tutor, token generation, and built-in recursion on a saga frame at any price. For players who want the saga synergy without the $20 buy-in, Restore ($0.25) recovers any saga from the graveyard and keeps the engine alive, while Enlightened Tutor ($10–15 depending on printing) fetches There and Back Again itself when the deck can afford only one of the two.

Price Context

Current price

$20.61 premium tier

At $20.61, There and Back Again sits firmly in the premium tier — justified by its unique design and the outsized role it plays in Tom Bombadil decks, where demand is concentrated and sustained. It's a reasonable buy for dedicated saga builds, but players who don't have a Bombadil or Sigurd commander should think hard before paying the premium for a card whose power drops sharply outside that context.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

← All cards

Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.