#bogles

Hexproof?

Hexproof is a keyword that is found mostly on creatures, though there are the odd exceptions. Hexproof means that the creature can’t be targeted by spells or abilities an opponent controls. This means that your hexproof creature can’t be targeted by a lot of your opponent’s removal spells.

Core Cards

Let’s take a look at the core spells of the deck

First up we have the mainstay creatures of the deck. There’s the deck’s namesake, Slippery Bogle, and Gladecover Scout at 1 mana, and Silhana Ledgewalker at 2. These are your hexproof threats, you need to get one of these on the battlefield as early as possible. In fact, these are so important, that when you play the deck you’ll often find yourself mulliganing aggressively to make sure you start the game with one in hand.

Next up are your Land enchantments, Abundant Growth and Utopia Sprawl. These are crucial for fixing your colours and drawing some colours. Utopia Sprawl also helps ramp you, which can be vital if you’re racing towards being able to play multiple spells per turn.

Finally, we have the core creature enchantments. Ethereal Armor and Ancestral Mask can both make your creatures extremely large very quickly. Ancestral Mask also has the benefit of counting your opponent’s enchantments too. Rancor is vital as it can be recurred if your opponent does manage to remove your creature, ensuring you have an enchantment back in hand for a new creature. It also provides trample which prevents your opponent from sticking small creatures in the way of your massive attacks. Armadillo Cloak also provides trample, but it also helps you win a race by gaining life when the creature deals damage. 

An important note here, Armadillo Cloak does not give lifelink, it has a triggered ability. This means that you gain life for each Cloak on the creature.

Flex Slots

So that’s the core of the deck. But we have some flexible slots available to play about with. A couple of options that are very good in the main deck are Cartouche of Solidarity which gives you a 1/1 warrior token as sacrifice fodder for removal spells like Chainer’s Edict. Fling gives the deck a way to win against Stonehorn Dignitary decks, which look to take away all of your combat steps leaving you with a giant Bogle that does nothing. Heliod’s Pilgrim lets you search for a specific enchantment to help you in a certain situation. Kor Skyfisher has been included in builds of the deck for a while, it can pick up your land enchantments to let you draw more cards or reset your fixing, for a while it had faded out of use but has seen an increase in play recently.

The current builds of Bogles have begun to leverage the powerful artifact Arcum’s Astrolabe. Switching to a mana base of Snow Lands allows for Astrolabe to act as another Abundant Growth, drawing you cards and fixing your mana to make sure you can hit your splash colours. Astrolabe is also the main reason that many decks are running 4 Kor Skyfisher in the main again, as the Astrolabe/Skyfisher package is a powerful one.

Sample Decks

Here’s an example of a recent 5-0 Bogles deck from the Magic Online Pauper League. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/2362944#paper

As you can see to make room for the Astrolabe package, they’ve had to trim down the creature numbers, dropping to just 2 Ledgewalkers. Astrolabe also provides sideboard flexibility, allowing the deck to run 4 colours. This decklist is a great example of a good sideboard for an unknown meta. With some common staples in the list. I’m not going to go too in-depth on the sideboard here as I’d like to try to write up a sideboarding guide as a bonus article.

In case you’re interested my personal paper build of Bogles can be found here: https://deckstats.net/decks/129277/1291932-bogles

Aura Gnarlid has been a favourite pet card of mine, often acting as a massive unblockable threat in the late-game. In fact, I’m so attached to the fuzzy critter that I didn’t have the heart to break up the deck to convert it to the snow version, which I’m lobbying to be referred to as “Snowgles”. That means that I’ve just finished putting together a second copy of the deck with all the Astrolabe goodness, you can find that here: https://deckstats.net/decks/129277/1406459-snowgles

How to beat Bogles?

Hello Bogle-haters, here’s the section where we look at how to beat the deck. Bogles players, it’s always useful to know how your strategy can be stopped, it helps you play smarter.

There are a few ways to stop a Bogles deck. You can bring in enchantment removal to get rid of key enchantments, Leave No Trace is a very good example of such a card. Another option is to use counterspells to try to stop them from getting a creature big enough to threaten you. There are also some specific cards that work very well to shut down the deck’s whole plan.

I mentioned Stonehorn Dignitary earlier, big mana decks like Tron will use their mana to flicker it multiple times preventing Bogles from ever attacking again. With the recent prevalence of this deck, they do run two copies of Fling to counter this strategy, but hopefully by the time they’ve found a Fling you’ve got counter magic in hand.

Geth’s Verdict and Chainer’s Edict don’t target a creature, so they can be used to force the Bogles player to sacrifice a creature. Often you’ll find that a Bogles player will look to spend as much mana as possible on enchantments, so you can often find a hole where they only have one creature on their side of the board opening them up a being very disappointed as they have to sacrifice it.

Standard Bearer is a fantastic anti-Bogle card for white decks. If you’ve paid attention to most of the core enchantments in the deck, you’ll notice they all say “enchant creature”. This means they can enchant your creatures as well. Standard Bearer will force those enchantments to target it, effectively preventing the Bogles player from casting any more enchantments until they find a way to remove it.

Aura Flux is not a card you want to add to your sideboard against an unknown field, but if your Local Game Store meta has a known Bogles player, this can be a very powerful way to prevent them from keeping a lot of auras on the board.

Summary

So there you have it, that’s Bogles. I’ve not gone too deep on strategies for this deck because the deck itself is fairly linear. It’s easy to pick up and play if you’re new to the format, or just enjoy smashing in with giant creatures. There are more complex lines to be found as you begin to learn the deck and the metagame around it, so it’s a deck that will grow with you. It may not be a top-tier deck right now, but it’s a tonne of fun to play and I know that I’m almost always likely going to have a build lurking in paper for when I have the urge to suit up a 1/1 and get attacking.