Only death breeds in stagnant water.
-- Urborg saying
Salt Marsh is an uncommon colorless land card in Magic: the Gathering that enters the battlefield tapped, unless a permanent in play has determined otherwise. First printed in Invasion (INV), Collector #326, it has two other tournament legal printings as of this writing: Eighth Edition (8ED), Collector #325, and Starter Commander Decks (SCD), Collector #316. Two gold-bordered World Championships editions have also been printed: Antoine Rue's for Toronto 2001 and Carlos Romao's for Sydney 2002, neither of which are legal for tournament play. The 8ED and SCD editions have foil variants as well. All are illustrated by Jerry Tiritilli and feature the same landscape and the flavor text quoted above.
As of 2024-08-02, it is legal in the following official formats: Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Oathbreaker.
As previously mentioned, it usually enters tapped when played, and once untapped, it can be tapped to add either one blue (U) or one black (B) mana to one's mana pool. More often than not, this means it can't be used until one's next turn. This is considered slow in current common competitive usage. As such, it is mostly seen in the decks of beginners or in budget versions of decks that care about landfall; lands, or other cards, in the graveyard (looking at you, Gisa and Geralf) or lands with different names. As it is functionally equivalent to Submerged Boneyard, there could be an "additional copy" in a singleton deck. One should be prepared to hear the litany, "But such-and-such is strictly better," if one chooses to use this card.
It is named after the more impactful real-world geographical feature, and ecological system, of an intertidal coastal grassland, or saltwater marsh.
300 words for Brevity Quest 2024
and picked from wertperch's nodeshell challenge