Why Cyclonic Rift is Irreplaceable, Part 1: a Matter of Salt
Cyclonic Rift seems to be a constant point of contention when discussing Commander, especially when talking about potential bans. There are three main factors at play: its ubiquity (at present the #2 blue card according to EDHrec, found in 29% of eligible decks), its relatively high “salt” score (the #15 saltiest card of 2022, and even saltier in 2023), and its uniqueness. The first two conflate to make Cyc Rift seem like an even worse problem than it is, keeping company with the infamous Dockside Extortionist, Rhystic Study, and Smothering Tithe. Join me in the salt mines for part 1 of this discussion.
In case you are unfamiliar with EDHrec, they aggregate Commander decklists and provide a ton of data regarding inclusion rates and deck archetypes. They also run a yearly poll to determine the saltiest cards, those which players hate to see or are disproportionately game-warping and powerful. At least that’s how I scored cards when voting. Most of the saltiest cards are stax pieces (such as Winter Orb and Stasis), which fit into specific decks that try to prevent opponents from doing anything. Anyway, there are 8 cards with a salt score above 1.99 and above 200,000 deck inclusions: Dockside Extortionist (2.50, 322k decks), Cyclonic Rift (2.43, 575k decks), Rhystic Study (2.29, 567k decks), Fierce Guardianship (2.22, 343k decks), Smothering Tithe (2.22, 477k decks), The One Ring (2.21, 203k decks), Jeweled Lotus (2.11, 303k decks), and Mana Crypt (1.99, 458k decks).
If you multiply the salt score by the number of decks (in thousands) we see an interesting trend when sorting by this new quantity: Cylconic Rift (1397), Rhystic Study (1298), Smothering Tithe (1059), Mana Crypt (911), Dockside Extortionist (805), Fierce Guardianship (761), Jeweled Lotus (639), and The One Ring (448). So I should really put Mana Crypt up there with the boogeymen of the format, but my intuition was fairly accurate when naming Dockside, Rhystic Study, and Smothering Tithe. Cylconic Rift takes the unique position of the most prolific saltiest card, followed by Rhystic Study (Blue is the enemy of the average Commander player), which is why I believe it takes the brunt of the hate when such discussions arise. This new quantity could be considered the actual salt generation of the card.
With this in mind, let’s look at two more examples at the boundaries of this quantity: the saltiest card and the most prolific card. Winter Orb is the saltiest card at 2.99 though it is only found in 32.6k decks. Meanwhile Sol Ring has a salt score of 1.13 but is included in over 3.4 million decks (84% of all decklists that EDHrec aggregates). The salt generation scores are a mere 95 for Winter Orb and a whopping 3849 for Sol Ring. So at the extremes, this salt generation quantity may not be accurate, becoming highly skewed by inclusion rates. Then again, an early game Sol Ring is very salt-inducing, and Sol Ring’s name is often thrown into the mix when bans are discussed (even if in jest). Sol Ring skirts by on the fact that unlike Mana Crypt, WotC reprints Sol Ring constantly. However, I am in the camp that the format would be better without it mainly because then you wouldn’t need to auto-include it in your decks, freeing up a slot for a more synergistic card.
I’ve digressed, but clearly Cyclonic Rift stands among the top saltiest cards even if it is relatively expensive at 7 mana and not as prone to abuse as taxing/stax cards (Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, Winter Orb) or permanents that can be flickered for infinite mana generation (Dockside Extortionist, Mana Crypt). It is the saltiest board wipe for non-lands (effects that destroy or bounce all lands are saltier, but far less popular), and it is not close. The fact that it is one-sided and instant speed contribute to its power, but it’s still expensive and doesn’t permanently deal with the problem. Unless the problem was non-land tokens. The bigger issue in my opinion is that Blue has no other good options, similar to how many Red decks must resort to Blasphemous Act and Chaos Warp for removal and Green has Beast Within as a crutch.
A section of my first Custom Magic Card Design article is dedicated to alternative Cyclonic Rift designs alongside a small discussion of Rift’s essential qualities. Part 2 of this series will delve even deeper into these qualities and compare would-be Rift substitutions. What do I hope to accomplish with this series? I want to explore why Cyclonic Rift is such a magnet for hate, and why that is unlikely to change any time soon. I think playable alternatives to Cyclonic Rift could exist, but don’t currently. And just maybe this will help convince Wizards of the Coast to hire me on as a designer, but that one is a longshot at best.
