Hiya! Long time Boros player here.

What kind of mulligan do you use? I saw 30 lands and was immediately concerned. I read in your most recent update that you cut lands because you kept flooding. If that's the case, what kind of mulligan are you using? If you're using a very forgiving mulligan, then I can see why 30 lands would be enough. If you're using the standard London mulligan, and your games go the average 10 turns (7-10 for high power games, not cEDH), then 30 lands is faaaar too few. Why am I so convinced of this? Well, I've actually run the statistics on this, so I know what the numbers look like. You have a 40% chance of drawing a hand with less than 3 lands (within 2 mulligans, your first hand and your free). That's a really high chance of getting mana screwed there, so the times you felt like you were flooding were outliers.

You love the value that Osgir gives you, and that's great. However, if you're not making your land drop every turn, Osgir's value is only making up for your missed land drops. EDH is a resource game (naturally, you've got triple the opponents after all), so you want to be making every land drop AND ramping.

So, rather than being the sour-puss that just tells you to put more lands in your deck, let me also propose a solution to the (not as often as you think but still relevant) times that you feel like you're flooding. Red is REALLY good at filtering. Play more effects that let you discard to draw. Not only does that let you filter through a flooded hand, but it synergizes with Osgir because you can get artifacts into the grave that way. You're already playing cards like that, why not play more? Add in a Faithless Looting and/or a Thrill of Possibility and then up the land count to 36 (that gets the numbers up to 75% rather than 60%).

Hey jakeyuki12! I do use the standard London mulligan for my commander games. While I would normally agree with you in the fact the land count is rather low, with this particular deck being so low to the ground we can consistently hit our curve. You'd be surprised at how quickly you can run out of things to do if you've got too many lands.

With my mana base, I've got a lot of 0 drop and 1 drop artifacts, and cards like Thrill of Possibility to pitch to the grave to fuel my 3D printer, so it's normal to open with a hand of 1 or 2 lands and have 3 artifacts we can cast on turn 1. Additionally in playtesting I didn't really like using Faithless Looting , simply because I didn't want to run many sorceries in the deck, we've got a handful of targets for Isochron Scepter and with the way I'd play this deck I'd much rather be casting instants over sorceries.

Osgir has a unique ability to crack open an artifact and turn it into 2, in the Mana Weaving section of my deck description we cover all the ways we can do this. We end up with a lot of mana, and most of the time it's not even from the land base. With this being a high-power deck as well, we look for a turn 5-7 win, not technically cEDH, but we don't want to drag it out too long.

I have a scenario actually from a night of commander games. Taught me to really take in everything going on at the table. The board just got wiped by an Ashling the Pilgrim boosted by a Dictate of the Twin Gods and the active player healed a ton through Basilisk Collar , my board had a bunch of artifacts that stuck around. Notably 2 Thousand-Year Elixir s, 4 Sol Ring s, 8 Wurm tokens from 4 copies of Wurmcoil Engine , 2 Coveted Jewel s, Boros Signet and I believe Rings of Brighthearth , nothing of value in hand, also only on 4 lands at like turn 6 or 7, not an uncommon occurrence. In my grave I had a ton of artifacts, one of them being Mirage Mirror . Life Totals for the 3 players remaining were 158 for the Ashling player, 28 for the player across from me, and I was at 14. So doing the math my turn, I had to kill everyone somehow, I drew and it wasn't Basalt Monolith , which would give me infinite mana for my Walking Ballista in the grave I could get out with Myr Retriever ... so first thing was first, I recast Osgir for 6 mana tapping those Coveted Jewels. Then I used my lands and my signet to reconstruct Mirage Mirror 4 times thanks to Rings, paid 8 mana into 4 different Mirage Mirrors to make copies of a thing. We chose to make 4 Dictate of the Twin Gods and swung 3/3 Wurms for the win. Doing the math, one 3/3 dealt 96 damage with 5 Dictates in play. With all of this situational stuff it doesn't explain much, but it shows that the land base doesn't matter all the time, 1 land and 2 land opening hands in paper magic are a common thing for this deck, and that's fine, we make more mana along the way. Not everything has to be statistically accurate when it comes to making your own mana.

Lol, I gotta say, I love that you refer to Osgir's ability as a 3D printer.

I see now that this deck is meant to play at very high-power, combo metas it seems if you're going for turn 5-7 wins. There's a reason I made the disclaimer, the amount of turns you're expecting the game to go makes a big difference. If that's how long you're expecting the game to go, then opening 1-2 lands with some extra action makes a lot more sense- you don't need to make 10 land drops, you need to make like half of them (not to mention mana rocks that get doubled with Osgir). This is why you see about this many lands in full cEDH decks, they go for wins around turn 3 typically. This deck isn't fully cEDH, but it looks like the build philosophy is more in that direction, so this makes more sense.

I disagree with ignoring statistics as a scientist and statistician myself, but if the deck is working for you, keep having fun with it.

Hey jakeyuki12! I'm not necessarily ignoring the statistics. Its important for any good deckbuilder to know so you have at least some form of consistency. I've looked at a lot of other Osgir decks on here and many builders have him running at 33-35 lands and a handful of mana rocks... I'm definitely on the lower end with 30 lands, but we run probably the most mana rocks from what I've seen lol

I'm glad that at least someone else appreciates the fact Osgir is a living 3D printer, he does it quite a bit faster though haha!

But again, with tutors and fast mana in mind, this deck could theoretically play at cEDH levels, since this deck is in paper for me I'll be able to change it here when I get the actual cards to improve it further on down the line. But again, I do appreciate your input and suggestions! :D

Thanks for the decklist, I'm putting my own list together and I'm trying to figure out what path I want it to take. I appreciate the work you put in to explain what you're looking at.

Just a heads up though, Isochron Scepter and Wear / Tear don't work like you think, the mana value for the card is 3. I'm not sure how long ago that rule changed, but it was relatively recent I believe.

Hey kuster!! I see now, I was going off old rulings and sort of just went with it. Checked the updated rulings and I'll update my description to reflect that. Thanks for bringing this to my attention and I'll start playing by the rules! xD

Quote: "Easily Zirda, the Dawnwaker , this card makes it to where your permanents that have activated abilities cost 2 less to activate. Absolute powerhouse for this deck. While it can't make it to where Osgir can tap to bring back 2 drops for free, it will work for 1 drops. So go ahead and tap him to bring back Sol Ring for a discount! "

How does that work exactly? It cant reduce the cost to below 1, and sol ring already costs 1.

Hey seldomridgej!

I may have misunderstood my own wording here. I may have intended to say the discount is reduced to 1 mana for 1, 2 and 3 drop artifacts. I wrote the whole description in one night, I may have misinterpreted Zirda's ability and guessed that returning Sol Ring could be done for "0" mana, since Osgir's tap ability would have some investment into it. It was my mistake and I'll update the description for a better explanation.

MaltOMeal Gotcha, that makes sense. Thought I was going crazy.

seldomridgej nah you're not going crazy, I was running on fumes and made some mistakes out of pure excitement. I'm sure more kinks will get worked out down the line lol

Great work on the deck. It looks amazing.

How have you been finding it plays?

Hey glhfJKiHax! Sorry I'm getting to you so late, start of the year has been busy.

I have this deck in paper and it plays like a machine, opening hands can be meh on occasion, but generally you have enough mana to cast Osgir turn 1 or 2. The looting spells get you to tutors/combo pieces or more card draw, but you look for a win while building your mana base in the meantime. In a good game you play very fast and can end the game in roughly 4-5 turns, outside of interaction of course.

Hope that answers your question!!

Was a blast to play. Played it in a table where we are fairly new to the game (maybe like 4 months of playing). I flooded the board by turn 8 with insane mana and i milled my entire deck and activating Osgir 4 times a turn 6 activations each. Absolute blast, absolute mess. kudos