Saltiest Cards in Commander: EDHREC's 2026 Salt Score List

The saltiest cards in Commander for 2026 are the same kind as always: cards that stop lands from untapping. EDHREC published the results of its yearly Salt Score vote on October 16, and Stasis is first again, ahead of Armageddon and Winter Orb. Before voting opened, EDHREC asked whether Stasis would "remain undefeated for a third straight year". It did.

Here's the part the ranking hides. The top three are in very few decks. The salty cards you'll actually sit across from are Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe and The One Ring, three Game Changers that together show up in more than twice as many EDHREC decks as the other 17 cards on this list combined. Our numbers are from EDHREC's Top 100 page on October 22.

How the EDHREC Salt Score works

Voters see a card and rate how tilted it makes them "on a scale from 0 to 4". Voting ran October 5 to 9, and EDHREC counted 2.2 million votes, its highest total in three years. The list is sorted by the average score, not by how many people voted on a card, so a card a few people hate fiercely can outrank one that mildly annoys everyone.

EDHREC is clear that this is for fun: the vote "has nothing whatsoever to do with bans or changes to any part of the Bracket system". It measures the mood of the people who chose to vote, and that's all.

The 20 saltiest cards in Commander, 2026

Salt Scores of the top 20, coloured by the kind of salt. Image: BaseMTG chart. Data: EDHREC, Wizards' bracket rules and Scryfall, October 22, 2026.

"Mass land denial" is our reading of Wizards' definition: cards that "destroy, exile, and bounce other lands, keep lands tapped, or change what mana is produced by four or more lands per player". Wizards names Armageddon, Sunder and Winter Orb as examples. "Game Changer" means the card is on Wizards' current list of 53.

Land denial: the eight that switch off your mana

Every card in this group goes after the one resource everyone shares: mana. Until somebody answers it, nobody at the table casts much of anything.

• Stasis: "Players skip their untap steps." Nothing untaps, ever, while its owner pays one blue mana each upkeep to keep it around. EDHREC's summary was short: "nothing untaps, nobody has fun".
• Armageddon: "Destroy all lands." The biggest climb of the year, from seventh to second. EDHREC's read is that "voters felt that MLD was getting too comfortable."
• Winter Orb: players can untap only one land a turn. It dropped one place, to third.
• Static Orb: the same lock, with two permanents a turn instead of one land.
• Ravages of War: Armageddon again, printed in Portal Three Kingdoms. It jumped from 21st into the top ten.
• Jokulhaups and Obliterate: both destroy all artifacts, creatures and lands. Obliterate also can't be countered, which is the part that stings.
• Sunder: returns every land to its owner's hand. It's an instant, so it can land at the end of the turn before yours.

Taxes and locks

• The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale: every creature on the battlefield needs one mana each upkeep or it dies. EDHREC notes it's "roughly $3,000 and rarely seen at most Commander tables", and it still climbed two places to fourth.
• Grand Arbiter Augustin IV: your white and blue spells cost one less, every opponent's spell costs one more. Up from 11th, he's in the top ten for the first time.
• Humility: every creature loses all its abilities and becomes a 1/1, commanders included.
• Drannith Magistrate: opponents can't cast spells from anywhere but their hand. In Commander that shuts off the command zone, so a two-mana creature can stop three people from casting their commanders.

Wizards' own reason for putting Tabernacle and Drannith on the Game Changers list matches the votes: they "efficiently lock out your opponents' ability to use their cards, often in frustrating ways."

The value engines everyone plays

• Rhystic Study: whenever an opponent casts a spell, you draw a card unless they pay one. Fifth last year, fifth this year.
• Smothering Tithe: whenever an opponent draws, you get a Treasure unless they pay two.
• The One Ring: protection from everything for a turn cycle, then more cards every turn.

Wizards grouped these three on the Game Changers list for the same reason players vote them salty: they "provide overwhelming resource advantage for their mana value and tend to cause a player to snowball with the game."

How many EDHREC decks run each of the top 20. Image: BaseMTG chart. Data: EDHREC, October 22, 2026.

That chart is the useful one. Stasis is in about one EDHREC deck for every 60 that run Rhystic Study, and all eight land denial cards together don't reach a fifth of Rhystic's count.

Commanders and combos

• Tergrid, God of Fright: whenever an opponent sacrifices or discards a permanent card, you can put it onto the battlefield under your control. She slipped two places to sixth but is now the saltiest commander in the game.
• Vivi Ornitier: last year's saltiest commander fell from third to eighth. Vivi makes blue and red mana equal to its power and pings each opponent whenever you cast a noncreature spell. It isn't a Game Changer.
• Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger: doubles your land mana, and an opponent's land tapped for mana stays tapped through their next untap step. Wizards first listed it as "an extension of the mana-denial restriction", then took it off the Game Changers list in October 2025.
• Thassa's Oracle: the win-the-game half of the format's best-known two-card combos. Wizards calls it "a best-in-class way to win the game on the spot".
• Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur: draws you seven cards at your end step and cuts each opponent's maximum hand size by seven. It left the Game Changers list in the same October 2025 update.

What moved since 2025

The top of the list barely changed shape, but the order did.

• Up: Armageddon (seventh to second), Ravages of War (21st to tenth), Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (11th to seventh), Tabernacle (sixth to fourth).
• Down: Vivi Ornitier (third to eighth), Tergrid (fourth to sixth), Winter Orb (second to third), Static Orb (eighth to ninth).
• Commanders: Tergrid now leads EDHREC's commander ranking, with Grand Arbiter Augustin IV second and Vivi third. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is the one EDHREC flags to watch, up from 2.03 to 2.28 and the most-voted commander in that group.
• New cards: the saltiest new card, The Legend of Yangchen, scored 2.09 and isn't close to the overall top 50. Reality Fracture put three cards on the new-card list, among them Karn, Argent Defender, which we ranked fifth in our best cards in Reality Fracture list.

We'd ignore the "biggest risers" chart in EDHREC's write-up. By EDHREC's own account those are niche cards with "only a couple dozen ballots apiece".

What the saltiest cards in Commander mean at your table

Put the list next to the Commander Brackets and the bracket rules already deal with most of it. Wizards says not to expect mass land denial anywhere in Brackets 1 to 3, and Brackets 1 and 2 allow no Game Changers at all. That covers 17 of the 20. If your pod plays Bracket 2, none of those 17 should appear without someone asking first.

The three left over are the interesting ones. Vivi, Vorinclex and Jin-Gitaxias aren't Game Changers, so no bracket rule keeps them out of a Bracket 1 or 2 game, and two of them were taken off the Game Changers list in October 2025. Wizards stopped worrying about them; voters didn't. If you're bringing one of the three to a casual game, say so in the Rule Zero talk before anyone shuffles. Our Commander Bracket Calculator won't move your deck up a bracket for them.

What players are saying

The r/EDH thread announcing this year's vote called the result before a single ballot was counted. "Like every year, overcosted old land destruction cards that nobody has ever seen played," wrote u/vibranttoucan, and Armageddon finished second.

Tabernacle drew the same reaction. "I've been playing commander for 16 years in a pretty thriving scene and have never come up against it," wrote u/Kakariko_crackhouse. The deck counts back that up: Tabernacle is in fewer EDHREC decks than any other card in the top five. The longest argument in the thread was over Rhystic Study, with one camp saying it should be banned and the other calling it a skill issue in casual games.

One reply named the obvious weakness of the whole exercise: "People with complaints are more likely to voice their opinions than people without any," wrote u/mariomaniac432.

Cardmarket's team built decks around the salt list for a game in November 2025, before this vote, which shows what these cards look like when someone actually casts them:

Our take

Use the Salt Score as a list of things to mention before a game. The land denial cards at the top are a Bracket 4 plan anyway, and you'll almost never see them in a pickup game. The cards worth thinking about are the three value engines. If you run Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe or The One Ring at a casual table, say so before the game, and expect the table to point removal at it. If you're the one facing Rhystic Study, decide early which turns are worth paying the one, because the card wins by making you argue with yourself every time. If you're new to the format, our Commander guide covers the rest of the etiquette.

How we checked this: on October 22, 2026 we pulled EDHREC's Top 100 Saltiest Cards data and deck counts, read EDHREC's October 16 results article, checked each card's text and Game Changer status on Scryfall, and sorted the 20 with Wizards' bracket rules. The data and chart script are kept with our sources.

References

• EDHREC: The Results of 2026 Salt Score Voting is Here!
• EDHREC: Top 100 Saltiest Cards
• EDHREC: Salt Score Voting is Now Open!
• Wizards of the Coast: Introducing Commander Brackets Beta
• Wizards of the Coast: Commander Brackets Beta Update, October 21, 2025
• Scryfall: Game Changers search
• r/EDH: EDHRec's Salt Vote is back
• Cardmarket: We Play Only Problematic Cards (YouTube)