Top 10 Worst Salty Cards

Stench of Evil | Art by Mark Tedin

Welcome to Too-Specific Top 10, where if there isn’t a category to rank our pet card at the top of, we’ll just make one up! (Did you know that Apocalypse is the least played non-commander card with a salt score of more than 2?)

It's rounding around to the end of Salt Week, which means that if you're anything like me, you've wasted hours of your life ranking cards already. Still, this is the last day, so why not waste a few more?

For me, the cards that I appreciate seeing the most during Salt Week are the ones that I have to read. Rhystic Study? Just click four. Aven Mindcensor? Easy two. Defense Grid? That'd be a one if I could trust folks to not hand others the game with it, but I can't, so it gets a two as well. Dovescape? That card is hilarious, give it a zero. Temporal Distortion? Wait, what is this card? Okay, so hang on, it puts hourglass tokens on things, which makes them not untap, but then you remove the hourglass tokens... Oh, okay, it's bad. That's what this card is, it's bad. Uhhh... Give it a one, I guess?

The cards I have to slow down and read are the ones I relish when it comes time for salt voting. That's what keeps me coming back, despite the sometimes doom-scrolly mindless feel salt voting gives. When I have to read a card, think about what it does, make sure that's actually what it does, and then think about whether that hypothetical makes me salty or not.

So, shall we take a look at some of those obscure cards you may not have run into while voting this week?

Top 10 Least Played Salty Cards

Criteria: Cards with at least a 1.2 on the Salt Scale. As is tradition, all results are ordered by EDHREC score, however, in this case we will go by which cards have the lowest amount of inclusions, rather than the most.

10. Mist of Stagnation

(716 Inclusions, 0.01% of 5M Decks; Salt Score: 1.41)

We get a weird one to start off our list, and I can see at face value why it's sitting at a salt score of 1.41. I have to ask, though: does this card even do anything? Mist of Stagnation's first sentence reads like just another version of Stasis, but then as you read on, it totally undoes it all. By the time I get down a five-mana enchantment, folks are going to have cards in graveyards. They just are.

Now, the only question is: does having a five mana do-nothing enchantment option make me less salty?

9. Presence of the Master

(607 Inclusions, 0.01% of 4.73M Decks; Salt Score: 1.27)

I know what you're thinking, because it's what I was thinking: "Doesn't this just hard lock the game with that one card that makes everything enchantments?" Unfortunately (fortunately?) not, as the card we're thinking of is Enchanted Evening, which only makes permanents in play into enchantments.

In other words? Presence of the Master is some extremely random hate for enchantment decks that is probably only seeing 607 inclusions because someone's Enchantress got a little out of control and someone else's communication skills are lacking.

Ironically, though, there actually is one combo that is up on Commander Spellbook for Presence of the Master, and it would be quite good in an Enchantress deck.

Guile says that if a spell you control would be countered, you exile it instead, and you can cast it for free. In other words? You can get infinite Enchantress triggers by combining Guile and Presence of the Master, assumedly all the while declaring your status as a master Enchantress.

8. Stench of Evil

(560 Inclusions, 0.01% of 5.15M Decks; Salt Score: 1.22)

There was a time when all of Magic was designed around single color archetypes that defined Standard, or what was then called Type II. White Weenie. Skies. Black Suicide. Sligh. Stompy. All of these but mono-red aggro have now more or less gone by the wayside, as has arguably Standard itself. In that day and age, however, before $200 land-bases were the norm, cards like Stench of Evil were the boogeyman.

Even with all the Shocks and Fetches around today, however, these cards can still cripple a complex mana base, to say nothing of the mono-color Commander decks out there running 15-20 basics. That is what has earned Stench of Evil this score, even if it's much less well-known than the original Alpha cards that did this same sort of thing. For me personally, I would have it even higher, not because it's good, but rather the opposite. Like Presence of the Master, this is only good for targeting a specific deck, not for tackling Commander pods as a whole, at least outside of some sort of weird Magical Hack kind of deck. In other words? Stench of Evil makes me salty because it's bad. At least play some real mass land destruction that isn't just randomly targeting me.

7. Scorched Earth

(527 Inclusions, 0.01% of 5.05M Decks; Salt Score: 1.29)

Mass land destruction like Scorched Earth! Well, no. Not really. Because where Stench of Evil is bad because it only targets a very specific deck, Scorched Earth is bad because it's bad. If this just had you discard the cards, or pay to blow up the lands, it would be broken. Doing both? It's terrible, and therefore, the 527 inclusions.

Now that we have that covered, let me get on one of my favorite soapboxes: mass land destruction doesn't stop lands decks, it helps them. If we got rid of the salt and the social stigma tomorrow to allow the play of MLD, the first decks throwing in their good land destruction, like Armageddon, Jokulhaups, Tectonic Break, Wildfire, and Sunder, would be the lands decks. Why? Because they already play Lord Windgrace, five different flavors of Crucible of Worlds, and a Splendid Reclamation you can hold priority on as you cycle your Decree of Annihilation. Even failing all that? Lands decks play 40+ lands, meaning in a straight race to see who can draw lands first? They have the advantage there, too. So please, keep your salt salty, you're not busting any metas.

6. Reality Twist

(477 Inclusions, 0.07% of 683K Decks; Salt Score: 1.32)

One of my favorite cards in Magic has always been Naked Singularity. Apparently, I'm not alone in that, because Wizards decided to print two of them, in the same set! Reality Twist and Naked Singularity are essentially the same card, with one costing colorless and therefore more, and the other costing a bunch of blue pips instead. Neither are good cards, mind you, and they look like complete chaos on paper. Having tried to force that chaos on several kitchen tables, however, I can tell you that it isn't really chaos. It's boring, awful gameplay where everyone is mad at you, even after you fail to pay the ludicrous cumulative upkeep. Sad, really. If I ever worked at Wizards, I think I would make it my life's work to try and make a card that captured the feel these two cards emit upon reading them, without the terrible gameplay.

5. Cao Ren, Wei Commander

(Helms 46 Decks, Rank #3972; 465 Inclusions, 0.01% of 5.15M Decks; Salt Score: 1.43)

Why is this card here, you ask? I share your confusion, but I do have some theories. Cao Ren, Wei Commander, like all the names on Magic cards you recognize from playing Dynasty Warriors as a kid, is from Portal: Three Kingdoms. That is the reason for the ludicrous price tag associated with this 3/3 unblockable guy for four mana. P3K was underprinted, especially in English, as it was made for release in China and Japan, meaning the cards are rare, even though most of them aren't good. In other words, take a kind of bad commander that hurts you, make him over a hundred dollars, and folks vote what they feel: Salty.

4. _____ _____ _____ Trespasser

(434 Inclusions, 0.01% of 5M Decks; Salt Score: 1.29)

As I write this, I'm hoping that the image for this card is showing up for you, because I cannot for the life of me get _____ _____ _____ Trespasser to not error out on the card tagger. That, my friends, is the first reason that ...whatever you call this card... has a salt score of 1.29. You can't search it, you don't know what to call it, and then of all the things, it has the audacity to make you look up what the hell stickers are and what they do.

There are cards on this list I don't really agree with the salt for. This ain't one of them. Burn in hell, whatever your name is.

3. Mind Extraction

(370 Inclusions, 0.01% of 5.15M Decks; Salt Score: 1.24)

As a guy who tried to make a "friendly" discard deck work in Commander for years, I also get the salt when it comes to discard cards. Once again, however, I think that this one is less on the merits of how bad it is to play against, and more on the merits of how bad a card it is. Persecute or Mind Twist or Mind Sludge all do a better job than this does for not much more mana, and they're still largely considered not good enough because they only affect one opponent. Mind Extraction, on the other hand, might affect one opponent, if you play the same colors they do and have a creature that happens to fit the cards in their hand. I get why this made folks salty: it's a lot of reading to find out that this card is terrible at a thing that folks already don't want to be doing because it makes folks salty. Oof.

2. Territorial Dispute

(297 Inclusions, 0.01% of 5.05M Decks; Salt Score: 1.39)

Oh hey, look, it's another card that lands decks would abuse if they could! "Sure, we can't play lands, but we can search them straight out of our deck just fine, can't we? Oh, your deck can't do that?"

1. Phyrexian Reaper

(157 Inclusions, 0.00% of 5.15M Decks; Salt Score: 1.41)

Of all the cards I looked at in preparation for this article, however, the one that confuses me the most is Phyrexian Reaper. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate, encourage, and participate in the meme that is giving Island the maximum salt rating when I see it in salt voting, but if there's a meme to be had with Phyrexian Reaper, I don't get it. If anything, its got kind of a sweet "jamming on a guitar" feeling in its art, with the "guitar" admittedly being more of a jackhammer type of thing? Still, the aesthetic is good, which is more than you can say for the card itself. I'm gonna need someone to explain this one to me, so please do down in the comments.

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Honorable Mentions

There were a lot of lists to get to this list, but before we get to those alternate realities, let's talk about the stuff that just barely got left off.

I've made my love for Naked Singularity known, but once again I just have to mention how great this card reads as opposed to how bad it feels for all involved. If you've ever been the person tempted to build a chaos deck, then you've loved Naked Singularity, at least in theory. Also, the art? Get outta town.

The rest of the lists I went through to decide on the 1.2 salt score as the list all more or less have one thing in common: Edgar Markov is at the top of them. I join y'all in voting high salt scores on any of the eminence cards when I see them, but it makes sense that Edgar is at the top, given that he's by far the best of them. That said, it doesn't make sense to have your list of lesser-known salty cards led up by one of the best known commanders in the game.

If you've never run into a Celestial Kirin deck, then consider yourself lucky. They aren't good decks, but they are absolutely annoying and infuriating. Losing your board every turn would be fine if they would just win the game already, but their stuff is getting destroyed as well, so it's just a constant mire of nothingness. Oof.

Let's quickly take a look at the other lists that could have been, in order of saltiness.

Top 10 Least-Played Cards with a Salt Score of 2.1 or Greater

1. Apocalypse
2. Rising Waters
3. Devastation
4. Nether Void
5. Hokori, Dust Drinker
6. Sunder
7. Decree of Annihilation
8. Ravages of War
9. Jokulhaups
10. Scrambleverse

If you want the most salt, you're going to end up with a list full of mass land destruction. It's just what people hate the most. That said, the main problem with this list? I can tell you more or less what every card on it does without looking them up, failing the "lesser known" premise we were going for.

Top 10 Least-Played Cards with a Salt Score of 1.7 or Greater

1. Edgar Markov
2. Global Ruin
3. Acid Rain
4. Boiling Seas
5. Divine Intervention
6. Apocalypse
7. Sway of the Stars
8. Rising Waters
9. Thoughts of Ruin
10. Devastation

The 1.7 list is where the Acid Rains of the world came to rest, which isn't bad from the "lesser known" lens. Like the 2.1 list, however, it's dominated by mass land destruction in a way that becomes uninteresting to talk about very quickly. What almost made this the actual list, however, was the inclusion of Divine Intervention, one of the saltiest cards in the game not because it's good or bad or otherwise at winning the game, but because all it does is draw the game.

Top 10 Least-Played Cards with a Salt Score of 1.5 or Greater

1. Edgar Markov
2. Worldpurge
3. Mana Vapors
4. Global Ruin
5. Land Equilibrium
6. Razia's Purification
7. Embargo
8. Flashfires
9. Acid Rain
10. Mana Vortex

If you were looking for the weird blue Stax effects that you have to read three times to understand, they come to rest on the 1.5 list. Spoiler alert: They all say screw your lands, but with more words.

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Nuts and Bolts

There always seems to be a bit of interest in how these lists are made (this seems like a good time to stress once again that they are based on EDHREC score, NOT my personal opinion…), and people are often surprised that I’m not using any special data or .json from EDHREC, but rather just muddling my way through with some Scryfall knowledge! For your enjoyment/research, here is this week’s Scryfall EDHREC search.

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What Do You Think?

And finally, what is your favorite lesser-known salty card? Does it make you salty, or are you a fan?

Let us know in the comments, and we'll see you at the after-con restaurant table. Hold the salt.