Where does Smallpox lie in terms of salt?

Hey guys,

So I was playing at a casual commander night a couple days ago and had some fun games but my last game of the night there was a bit of an argument over the card [[smallpox]]

So for bit of background this is at the LGS I usually attend. I been playing for a very long time and go like twice a week. I pretty much exclusively play my [[Glissa the Traitor]] deck as it’s my favourite deck by far and it’s absolutely blinged out. It operates at a high 4 and 95% of the players I play with have no issue. Occasionally someone gets mad as I’m always blowing up their creatures but most are fine, some actually really like it because while it’s an annoying deck it’s very unique compared to the typical decks and strategies. The way our LGS is set up we get 3 random pods to play with every night so you get to play with a variety of people

For the final round of the night I was paired against 2 regulars that have also been playing a long time and a new player that started a couple months ago. The one regular (let’s call him Mike for now on) asked what bracket are we playing. The other 2 guys say strong 3 but don’t care what others play and just want to play MTG, I said I was on Glissa and it’s a 4. Mike is a little annoyed as he wanted to play a commander from the TMNT set but it’s bracket 2 so he switches to his bracket 4, which I’ve played against before and is a mix of stax and combo. I start the game ramping with mana rocks and by turn 2 I have access to ~6 mana, Glissa and an Ornithopter of paradise. Turn 3 comes around and I play [[Vraska the Silencer]] and Smallpox, sacking an artifact land and the ornithopter plus discarding an artifact. Vraska triggers and I end up stealing someone’s [[Jhoira’s Familiar]] as a treasure plus all the other stuff goes to my hand on Glissa trigger. I pass turn and Mike immediately scoops then starts getting all mad saying that he just wanted to play his deck and do what he wants yet I’m running mass land destruction and smurfing with a CEDH deck. I tell him that it’s a 4 and that’s the only form of LD I have besides beast within and he starts going on about brackets and saying 4 is CEDH and I don’t know brackets (at this time everyone else silent and watching). This goes on for 5 min then tells me that I should just go play CEDH and he’s going home, doesn’t say goodbye to anyone.

After he leaves I shrug and look at the rest of the pod and the one guy says , “I don’t know” and we continue. I ended up losing as someone wiped all artifacts and I got some bad draws but it’s ok, it’s just a game and everyone can have lucky/unlucky draws. I was very shocked by the reaction though as smallpox generally doesn’t get a huge reaction as it’s a good card but not mass land destruction plus it’s symmetrical. It’s also not game ending, it’s not like I’m running a Narset wheel combo

Where would you guys rank small pox and do you think it’s fine for bracket 3/4?