MTG Salvation

Molten Vortex



A Seismic Assault that only costs R to cast instead of RRR but that costs R to activate instead of for free. This looks great as a flood insurance plan for red based aggro decks that run out of things to do with land fairly quickly, not to mention the potential for shenanigans with Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds and this could also be another toy for people running the lands-matter archetype.

I think this card is insane and I will be slamming it into my cube without a second thought. Turning every land into a shock for the rest of the game is easily worth a R investment.

This is a massive upgrade over Seismic Assault, and is a really neat combo piece that can also just slot into Sligh for reach. Not to mention abuse with my beloved Land Tax. Will gleefully test.

Oh God this card is awesome.

Yeah, this looks testable for sure to me. If you pitch one land (or, at worst, 0), it's pretty bad. At 2 lands, you are pretty happy (basically staggershock). If you pitch 3 or more lands, this card is fan-freaking-tastic. I like it as flood insurance in Rx aggro/burn, and in the UR decks that draw a lot of cards.

Windmill. Slam. Seismic Assault would be a fantastic cube card with a more forgiving mana cost.

There's a very old school feel to some of the spoiled cards, like this one. The name and effect could've been straight out of Tempest.

Seems strong at preventing the RDW decks worse case board states. But also very bad when you have the curve you want. It does seem to provide a lot of reach to decks that don't normally have it, and open up some interesting space.

Seems like a solid test, with a side of hopeful.

Wow, really surprised at this card. Huge tool for burn in lots of formats... and in my Cube, the synergies already mentioned will be fantastic. Someday I want to Upheaval with this card and a bunch of floating red mana...

Good synergies and gives land draws more value. Very nice!

Seems good but not insane, at what cube size does this card not make the cut?

I'll be very happy to run this. Looks like there are a lot of neat interactions with this.

Closing out with Meloku got a little bit quicker. I find this interesting with delve cards as well.

Excited to try this one out, seems like a very useful card.

Quote from BacchusNL »

Just when I was looking to cut LftL from my cube they print this...

This.

So many times I've almost cut LFTL and each time it shows up in a deck and does really busted things (but it stays on my radar as a potential cut). Molten Vortex is certainly going to give me more reason to keep LFTL around. In fact, it may end up being THE BEST reason outside landfall.

This card has a obvious interactions in RG and RW decks with Life From the Loam and Land Tax, but I would also be stoked to run it in any Rx aggro deck or RB and RU control decks that have decent card draw. I bet ACS is Staggershock, but the ceiling on this card is MASSIVE.

I'll be adding this and putting Life from the Loam back in as well.

Wow, so much hype. Is everyone else here a fan of that card? To be blunt, that card leaves me totally cold. I hated Stormbind and I don't like this. If you could discard any type of card with it (not saying that nonlands should have dealt 2 damage, too), I would cube it as another red discard outlet. As printed, I am not touching that thing.

I think it's okay. Obviously sweet with Loam and stuff, but I don't like it as much as everybody else. I usually don't find myself desperately needing to pitch excess lands, and my decks operate pretty tight with the resources they have available. It's nice to be able to discard excess lands if you do have them, but I don't know if the cases are going to show up often enough to make this a windmill slam into every aggro deck.

I think this is a better card than Seismic Assault for the cube, and I'll be happy to test it at 540 ...but I don't think it's going to ultimately be good enough for smaller cubes.

So cheap! I'm very surprised to see Molten Vortex so pushed as you cannot be much more efficient than this. It's not great in aggressive decks but if you're playing Crucible of Worlds and Life from the Loam then this is a slam dunk. I could see this breaking into 360 lists.

I don't think this card will be much sought after in aggro. Aggro decks are much too tight for cards like this, unless they're called Cursed Scroll.

It does have some nice synergies going on, and it works nicely with draw 7s. Not sure I'm going to find a cut though, red is super tight these days and this card in not essential to any of the many red archetypes.

I think this card is potentially better than cursed scroll. Of course, I also think scroll is one of the most over-rated cards of all time, and is way to durdley for what modern cube aggressive decks want to be doing.

I don't think this is as good as Cursed Scroll unless you're finding specific synergies with it. Scroll doesn't cost you cards to activate, and it can go into aggro decks of every color, and is available as a weapon without access to spare lands.

I like this card in decks that have Loam/Crucible/Tax, and also in decks with access to draw-7 effects. It might be good enough at face value for aggro decks as a way to ensure that every topdeck is live, but those decks need to have a really low curve because you can't afford to pitch lands at the cost of failing to curve out. And those decks don't have a very high land count to begin with.

I think there's certainly potential; Seismic Assault has a strong effect, and it's nice to have it available without access to RRR, but I'm not sure that this slams into every cube, or even every red deck for that matter. But if you do add it into your deck as an insurance policy against flood, and you can play it at the end of your curve with a couple of spare lands in hand and and/or off the top, it can really pay off for you. Potentially in a game-salvaging manner.

I love the card, but ....
People are realllly overrating this card in anything but a cube loam/seismic assault style deck. That style of deck is extremely hard to assemble reliably in most people's cubes. Certaintly not in unpowered cubes without access to draw 7's.

This card is very significant card disadvantage, it's not something you blindly throw in as a red deck curve topper. Costing you a card to have the ability to discard more cards is a huge draw back without ways to generate a lot of cards. Only way I'd run this in a red agro deck is if I had wheel of fortune or maybe in a R/u deck with some card draw.

BUT I'm anxiously awaiting a couple premium land fall cards so there's enough pieces to support this style of deck. This card would be an amazing roll player in a dedicated powered landfall deck.

With cards like time spiral, wheel of fortune, time twister, life from the loam, land tax , this is great payoff card. It can be done, but it can't be done without a dedicated package and at the moment, there aren't the right number of payoff cards for that to be a good idea IMO.

Looking forward to return to zendikar more than any set I can rememeber, precisely for the likelyhood to put lands.dec into playable range.

Thank goodness others spoke against this card; I thought I was the only one underwhelmed by it. It seems like it needs far too much work and cards to get it going, and even if it does it's nothing spectacular.