MTG Commander Salt Scores — The 158 Saltiest Cards

Salt scores are community opinion, not a rules document. Nothing on this page makes a card illegal. For the cards that actually are restricted, see the Game Changers list; for cards that are illegal outright, see the banned list.

A salt score measures how much a card annoys the people sitting across from it. It comes from the EDHREC community salt survey, where players rate cards from 0 to 4, and it is the closest thing Commander has to a published record of what the format finds unpleasant. It is not a power level, it is not a ban list, and it has no official standing.

That distinction matters more than it sounds, because the two are routinely treated as the same thing. They are not, and the gap between them is measurable.

Salt and bracket are almost independent

We hold both datasets: the 158 cards with a measured salt score, and the official Game Changers list the bracket system is built on. Cross-referencing them gives a result that should change how the two get discussed.

74.7% of the cards players find saltiest carry no bracket consequence whatsoever. The two saltiest cards in the format, Stasis at 3.06 and Winter Orb at 2.96, are legal in Bracket 1. A deck can be built entirely from the top of this list and still be an Exhibition deck by the official rules.

The reason is that the bracket system regulates power and the salt survey measures annoyance, and those two things come apart hardest at the stax end of the format. Cards that lock the game down are miserable to play against without winning quickly, so they score high on salt and low on the things brackets actually count: fast mana, tutors, two-card combos, and the Game Changers list itself.

It runs the other way too. 14 of the 53 Game Changers do not appear among the 158 measured cards at all — the tutor cluster in particular. Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Worldly Tutor, Gamble, Crop Rotation and Natural Order are all restricted, and none of them generate enough complaint to rank. A tutor is powerful and quiet. Stasis is the opposite.

The saltiest cards that cost you nothing

These are the highest-salt cards with no Game Changer designation and no ban. If a table has asked you to tone a deck down, this is the list that is actually being talked about, and none of it will show up in a bracket check.

The pattern in the 118 unrestricted cards is consistent: 28 sorceries and 24 enchantments, heavy on mass land destruction and resource denial. The bracket system has no lever for any of it, because none of it makes a deck win faster.

How to actually use a salt score

Salt is a social instrument, not a deckbuilding constraint. It answers a question the bracket system deliberately does not ask: will the other three players enjoy this game.

Three things it is good for:

• Checking a deck before a new pod. A deck with a high total salt and a low bracket is the combination most likely to cause a problem, because nothing in the rules will have warned anyone.
• Settling an argument with a number. "This card is annoying" is an opinion. A score with thousands of votes behind it is still an opinion, but it is a shared one.
• Choosing between two cards that do the same job. If two cards are equivalent on power, the lower-salt one costs you less goodwill.

What it is not good for is deciding whether a deck is legal, or what bracket it belongs in. Our own engine reports a deck's salt alongside its verdict and deliberately keeps the two separate: salt never moves a bracket. A card being unpopular is not a rules consequence, and building it into the verdict would make the tool worse at the thing it exists to do.

What the numbers mean

The scale tops out near 3 rather than 4 because no card is universally hated; even Stasis has players who enjoy it. Treat the gaps as meaningful and the absolute values as soft.

Where these numbers come from

The scores are the EDHREC community salt survey, on its published 0–4 scale. We did not run the survey and we do not own the data. This page carries a merged set: the survey base plus a refresh of the highest-scoring cards taken on July 16, 2026, which is the same table our bracket engine reads at SALT_SCORES. 158 cards have a score; every other card in Magic is unmeasured rather than zero.

Card types, mana values and legality in the table above come from Scryfall's oracle data, matched by name against all 38,633 oracle cards, and the Game Changer column comes from the official list our engine enforces. Every card in the table links to its Scryfall page so the underlying data can be checked directly.

Two limits worth stating plainly. Survey data lags: a card printed after the refresh cannot have a score yet, however unpleasant it turns out to be. And salt is self-selecting, because the players who fill in a salt survey are not a random sample of Commander players. The scores are a good record of what the engaged part of the community complains about, which is not quite the same as what the format as a whole dislikes.

Common questions

What is a salt score in MTG?

A community rating from 0 to 4 of how annoying a card is to play against, collected by EDHREC's salt survey. Higher means more disliked. It has no effect on the rules, on legality, or on a deck's bracket.

What is the saltiest card in Commander?

Stasis, at 3.06 out of 4. Winter Orb is second at 2.96. Both are fully legal in every bracket, including Bracket 1.

Does a high salt score make my deck a higher bracket?

No. Brackets are set by Game Changers, fast mana, tutors, combos and how quickly a deck can win. Salt is not an input. 118 of the 158 saltiest cards carry no bracket penalty at all.

Is Rhystic Study salty?

Yes — 2.73, the saltiest card that is also a Game Changer. It is one of the few cards that is both widely disliked and formally restricted.

How do I check my deck's salt score?

Paste a Moxfield or Archidekt link into the Commander Bracket Calculator. It returns the deck's total salt and its five saltiest cards alongside the bracket verdict.

Are salty cards banned?

Almost never. Exactly 1 of the 158 cards here is banned in Commander (Dockside Extortionist, and it was banned for power, not salt). Being disliked and being illegal are unrelated.

Related

• Commander Bracket Calculator — salt score and bracket verdict for a pasted deck.
• Game Changers list — the 53 cards that do change your bracket.
• Commander banned list — the cards that are illegal outright.
• Commander brackets explained — how the five brackets are defined.
• Salt score methodology — how we handle the data.