Last updated 27 April 2018
Bogles is a deck built around casting its namesake card: Slippery Bogle on turn 1 and then piling it up with 1-2 mana enchantments to turn it into a huge creature. The deck has a fast clock with turn 4 wins being common.
A Slippery Bogle can easily be given lifelink, vigilance, first strike, reach, trample, unblockable and totem armor, making it easy to deal large amounts of damage and make that damage stick to an opponent.
Bogles is a great starting point for Modern’s new or returning players. It is also very viable competitively and sees play in Tier One and Tier Two even at the professional level.
For a budget alternative replace the 4x Horizon Canopy with 4x Sunpetal Grove. For a complete budget build 3x Forest and 1x Plains would do, but players aiming for Tier One would be running Sunpetal Grove until they can afford the playset of Horizon Canopy.
Bogle decks run 5-8x Fetchlands. A majority of the time, Fetchlands will be cracked between turn 1 and turn 4 to find one of the 4x Temple Garden.
In addition to deck thinning, fetch-shocking provides the advantage of giving the Bogles player the ability to generate either colour of mana that the deck needs (which is essential for Bogles' ideal play of a turn 3 Daybreak Coronet).
Cracking upwards of two Fetchlands during the first four turns is common and the only land drop that is preferred to fetch-shocking during the early-game would be an untapped Razorverge Thicket on turn 1, 2 or 3.
Running 5-8 green Fetchlands also allows Bogles to respond to your opponent's plays. Fetching for the 1x Forest or 1x Plains when Blood Moon is on the stack is a great example. Fetching for the 1x Dryad Arbor in response to a sacrifice effect is another ideal way to respond to an opponent's play.
Other than the 4x Windswept Heath, the extra Fetchlands can be anything that includes green (allowing to fetch for the Dryad Arbor to respond to a sacrifice effect). There are three options that fit this description: Wooded Foothills, Misty Rainforest and Verdant Catacombs.
Each of the three remaining green Fetchlands fills the same role within the deck. A choice of which to run a copy of does not effect gameplay, but it does effect financial cost.
Wooded Foothills is the third cheapest of all Fetchlands at $28 Australian per copy (Windswept Heath being the cheapest at $17 Australian per copy, followed by Flooded Strand at $21 Australian per copy). This makes it ideal for budget builds.
For $51 Australian per copy,Misty Rainforest will fulfil the same role, just as Verdant Catacombs will for $59 Australian per copy. Run either of these if you already have them or have the money to spare. Otherwise, Wooded Foothills fulfils the role of the 5th green Fetchland just fine.
Most Bogle builds run 2-3x Spirit Mantle, but some run 4x if their local meta is particularly creature-based (as the Modern format usually is).
Unflinching Courage is worthy of 2x slots in a Bogle deck, however a build with 3-4x Spirit Mantle gains little from running Unflinching Courage because unblockable is preferable to Trample (and using Unflinching Courage to give Trample to a Bogle already enchanted with Spirit Mantle's unblockable is redundant in most situations).
Unflinching Courage also has the highest mana cost of all cards in the deck (and also has two coloured symbols making it slightly more specific), but if a build is running 1-2x Spirit Mantle or less, it makes 1-2x Unflinching Courage necessary to get the damage to stick to the opponent.
Also, Spirit Link is useful for extra lifegain and neutralising opponent's threats (Eidolon of the Great Revel and Grim Lavamancer are ideal targets for resolving a Spirit Link on), but the ability uses the stack and therefore must resolve, allowing a Summary Dismissal to wreak havoc.
Also, the damage resolves before the Lifegain so if the damage dealt is lethal, you die and the game ends before the Lifegain is able to trigger.
Since the release of Amonkhet in April 2017, Bogles has some new toys to play with. 2-3x Cartouche of Solidarity can be run to play around opponent's sacrifice effects such as Celestial Flare and Liliana of the Veil's -2. Sure, Bogles does keep 2-4x Leyline of Sanctity in the sideboard, but some decks run Mainboarded sacrifice effects (particularly Lilianna of the Veil in the case of Jund and 8-rack) so mainboarding Cartouche of Solidarity can be very beneficial.
Sixth Sense is another new card that Bogles was gifted in Amonkhet. On the surface, Sixth Sense seems identical to Keen Sense, but the two are actually very different.
Sixth Sense triggers for any player that is dealt damage by enchanted creature, meaning that the Bogles player can enchant an opponent's creature and get the draw whenever that creature deals damage to them. This gives Bogles some more counterplay for creature-based decks such as Merfolk, Elves and Abzan Company.
Keep in mind that Sixth Sense only triggers for combat damage, which is a disadvantage, but not significant enough to discourage playing the card over Keen Sense.
Similar to other decks, the sideboard of Bogles changes with the meta. During 2014 and 2015 when Splinter Twin was at its peak, Bogles would run 2-3x Gaddock Teeg to make the Twin matchup more favourable.
Since the banning of Splinter Twin in April of 2016, Gaddock Teeg is not as essential to the sideboard as it was previously. As a result, Gaddock Teeg has been replaced in many Bogles sideboards and a majority of Bogle players only run a single copy.
However, running 2-3x Gaddock Teeg in the Sideboard can still be a good move depending on the current meta. Modern is a format of turn 4 wins and low mana costs, but there are more 4CMC cards than the average player is aware.
As anyone that has seen a Pro Tour will agree, Collected Company and Chord of Calling are regularly sleeved up in Modern tournaments, especially at the professional level. To give themselves an edge against Abzan Company and its variants, professional players often run Gaddock Teeg at the professional level.
Other decks that take a hit from Gaddock Teeg include Storm with Gifts Ungiven and Empty the Warrens, Jeskai Nahiri with its signature card Nahiri, the Harbinger and U/W Prison's Supreme Verdict.
The number of Gaddock Teeg to run or whether to run any at all is a matter of the current meta and your local meta.
Two cards that are being used increasingly in Modern Bogle sideboards are Fog (for Infect, Affinity and other turn-four one-shot decks) and Pithing Needle (for Liliana of the Veil, Grim Lavamancer, opponent's Spellskite in games 2 & 3 as well as opponent's Fetchlands if they're running 3 or more colours).
Liliana of the Veil's +1 is a strong argument to be running Pithing Needle because the 3-4x Leyline of Sanctity that Bogle decks run (for sacrifice effects, Burn and 8-rack) don't stop her completely, but Pithing Needle is not essential to the Bogle sideboard.
Pithing Needle also helps against Lantern Control, Affinity and even Merfolk as a result of their 4x Aether Vial, but because Bogles has access to Stony Silence, Pithing Needle is more focused on stopping your opponents from snatching up your Auras with their Spellskite or turning their graveyard into damage with Grim Lavamancer.
Kor Spiritdancer is the only creature without Hexproof that Bogle decks run. Because of Modern's high amount of targeted removal and Kor Spiritdancer's lack of Hexproof, it is very common for your opponent to use their creature removal on Kor Spiritdancer (as the opponent is likely to have some in their hand that is deadweight against a Slippery Bogle or Gladecover Scout).
For this reason, some Bogle players run 2-3x Kor Spiritdancer in the Mainboard and the remainder of the playset in the Sideboard. Opponents are likely to sideboard out their targeted removal (such as Path to Exile and Fatal Push) for Game 2 and Game 3. This allows the extra Kor Spiritdancer to be sideboarded in and stand a higher chance of staying on the board.
Since Fatal Push was printed, decks like 8-rack and Grixis Shadow have been given a removal spell that they otherwise would have lacked. This allows them to more easily deal with Kor Spiritdancer.
Additionally, midrange decks like Jeskai and Jund often run up to 14 removal spells, which makes it tough to have Kor Spiritdancer stay on the battlefield.
As a result, many Bogle players run Silhana Ledgesalker instead of Kor Spiritdancer so that these removal spells are all dead draws. Flying also helps against decks such as Counters Company, Grixis Shadow and Elves, all of which lack fliers. Bogles can use this to get some damage in the air over the opponent's head.
Last updated 27 April 2018
