MTG Salvation

Great job on the top 8! Sorry I missed it before.

It doesn't look like a great metagame for you, actually. If you are saying that more people are going to be playing MBC and Angler, you're out of luck. I really wouldn't recommend playing Hexproof in that kind of meta.

Perhaps you could maindeck some more creatures that soak up Edicts, like Young Wolf? Fists works too, I suppose. You can always cast it on one of their creatures if you don't care about the trample.

I wouldn't worry too much about only a couple decks running a few Rancid Earths... You can easily work around them, and you may not even face them!

I think it should definitely help against MBC. However, I think I would board out some number of Rancors instead for the Fists. They have a similar role, and you want your cratures to survive combat, so Cloak and Mask actually seem more useful.

I would go: +4 Young Wolf, +3 Fists of Ironwood, -3 Journey to Nowhere, -2 Spider Umbra, -2 Rancor.

I imagine you could play with the numbers in other ways, but I think this would be a good start.

Cawblade is a ton of fun, and I'd recommend trying that. Tron might also be a fun pick, seeing as there wasn't much of it in your meta.

You can get Urza Lands for something like 80 cents a piece at the right online stores, so don't let budget be an issue to play what you want!

Trying to inject some life in this, today went 5-0 in an MTGO league with ths deck:

https://deckbox.org/sets/1342941

Games were:

1) Burn : No story, drop Armadillo Cloak and another aura and that's game. My opp tried to drop a Martyr of Ashes, but by the time it came on board was too late, he did not even get to activate it since due to summon sickness.

2) Infect : Had a lucky break on this one, won game one going fast and dropping an Ancestral Mask, lost game two, on game three ended up with no bogles on board, and dropping a Heliod's Pilgrim that was press-ganged into acting as a bogle. Tangle saved my back twice and that delay proved invaluable to get to a point where I was able to have a 11-something pilgrim swinging against someone with 10 life and all is critters tapped due to Tangle.

3) and 4) Kuldotha Jeskai : Both game were essentialy a repeat, they were very slow to start going and by the time they were about to start getting a significant boardstate I was swinging with +10 power bogles. Once you remove their removal (cunning eh?) by dropping hexproof guys they struggle heavily. Not only that, but their enchantment removal is on a stick and slow. They remove one aura, you tehn put in a bigger one and swing. Had a moment when he destroyed my Ethereal Armor, which would prevent me from winning in the next swing, but I dropped my faithful Heliod's Pilgrim , fetched another Ethereal Armor and swun for the win.

5) Affinity : A straight race, trading bogles to prevent damage and gaining time. Also good that Naturalize hits their lands heavily. The other thing is that it was massively important to either have a flying bogle ( Call to Serve ) or to only equip Silhana Ledgewalker since she has natural evasion against their heavy critters that are all ground-based.

MVP's : Ancestral Mask, Tangle and a mention to the Heliod's Pilgrim for his sacrifical duty...

Keep bogling!

Your Burn opponent made a HUGE misplay then if he thought he couldn't activate Martyr of Ashes ability due to summoning sickness. Martyr doesn't have to tap for the ability so summoning sickness doesn't matter. You got lucky on that one!

According to MTGGoldfish, 100% of Bogles decks are running Crumbling Vestige. Is anyone else puzzled by this?

We're also seeing way more off-colour sideboard cards, which is very interesting. Dispel, Electrickery, Curse of the Bloody Tome, as well as Flaring Pain... I even saw a list with Sisay's Ingenuity.

Quote from Upkeep »

According to MTGGoldfish, 100% of Bogles decks are running Crumbling Vestige. Is anyone else puzzled by this?

We're also seeing way more off-colour sideboard cards, which is very interesting. Dispel, Electrickery, Curse of the Bloody Tome, as well as Flaring Pain... I even saw a list with Sisay's Ingenuity.

Unfortunately, they do very little to solve the structural issues that affect bogles. I've run negate in the past, but the issue is that it just adds yet another variable to mulligans. Then you are suddenly faced with mulligan for these cards and end up binning a reasonable hand for a crap hand with your hate spell. Or, you keep your hand and draw your hate spell when its pointless.

What bogles needs is:

- Ways to improve consistency
- Ways to not fall apart at the first edict

At this point I would probably prefer to run a cantrip like ponder or preordain. But even that would largely be bad if you're busy cantripting whilst your unequipped bogles are getting -1 wrath effects.

Well, for cantripping, there's always Commune with the Gods which is pretty good.

These lists have had very good finishes, going 5-0 in Leagues. The decks would need to be pretty consistent to pull off that many wins in a row. Or be very lucky, I suppose. I imagine there is merit to such a large amount of off-colour spells if so many people are doing it and having success with it.

Quote from Upkeep »

Well, for cantripping, there's always Commune with the Gods which is pretty good.

These lists have had very good finishes, going 5-0 in Leagues. The decks would need to be pretty consistent to pull off that many wins in a row. Or be very lucky, I suppose. I imagine there is merit to such a large amount of off-colour spells if so many people are doing it and having success with it.

I went 5-0 in a league, if you check my deck list is has Negate on it, guess how many times it was used? 0. Did not make it out of the board a single time.

What I understand from that is that you included cards you weren't comfortable using in your sideboard, or that they just weren't useful in the matchups you faced (which I would find a bit surprising).

But again, there must be some merit to including off-colour sideboard cards if so many top-finishing decks are using them. I assume many of them actually boarded in their cards. thinking the opposite wouldn't make any sense. It must be worth the risk to many people, to some degree.

The way most placing decks have been recently have leaned towards the Manamorphose, ''thin'' deck that you mentioned. But I've also seen lots of decks splashing all sorts of colours. I think a cool blue card that saw a maindeck on a couple occasions was Aqueous Form. The card is actually really good. You can't get better evasion, and scrying, while not card advantage, can really fix your draw steps and give you more gas.

Gift of Orzhova has been given a common reprint variant in MM2017 which can a substitute for Asha's Favor if you rather have a +1/+1, Flying, Lifelink stead of Flying, Vigilance, First Strike. WGB decks can use it too, but it's still not enough for that style of deck.

Armadillo Cloak is still the better option for lifelink IMHO.

Armadillo cloak is not going any where any time soon.

I think the biggest problem with Gift of Orzhova is the WW mana cost. Some decks don't even run any plains at all, sometimes going for only 4 Blossoming Sands and relying on their enchantments to fix their mana. They would have to change their mana base in order to include such a White-heavy card.

Is it good enough to see play? Asha's Favor rarely or never saw competitive play, as far as I know. Gift is a much better card. The extra lifelink is very useful.

If anything I could see it replacing the Lifelinks that are already in people's sideboards and mainboards. The extra evasion and p/t certainly makes up for the mana cost, in my opinion.

It's important to note that Armadillo Cloak isn't true Lifelink. It's actually better since it's a triggered ability so it can stack with lifelink and multiple Armadillo Cloaks. If Gift of Orzhova was easier on the mana base or cheaper then it would be a great inclusion with Cloak, but this archetype already has a lot of great evasion and efficiently costed pumps.

Pauper seems to be getting some interest at my local store so picked up some stuff to make bogles and went in to play a few games using paper legal sets. It seems to be half and half when it comes to power level of decks. The few decks I played against were high tide, rw heroic, songs of the damned and some grixis deck (no idea what was in it as I beat it before I could get an idea of what it was about, I think it was standard commons). I could beat all the decks except for high tide as it'd combo off before I could kill.

Other decks there are dredge and u delver, though I didn't play against those.

This is the deck I am running:



There's some work to be done maybe change a few things in the land base, want to look at running at least hyena umbra (drop 1 mask for it?). I don't have a sideboard for it except for 3 Faerie Macabre I put in after the play testing to help with the high tide match up. Guess see how it goes with more playtesting to see how to tailor the sideboard for the local meta game.

Hi Skoo!

Your deck is a great start.

I would Cut Nylea's Presence. You don't want to be paying 2 mana for fixing, even if it does draw you a card. Sprawl and Growth are enough. This will make sace for Hyena Umbra, which is a great card.

You want to be able to fight Edicts. Most Hexproof decks run 2 Khalni Garden in their mana base as well as 3-4 Young Wolfs in their sideboard, which serves to soak up cards like Chainer's Edict.

High Tide is tough... Efficient graveyard hate should help you fight through it. Faerie Macabre should be pretty good. If not, there's nothing wrong with going for Tormod's Crypt or Relic of Progenitus, though they can more easily play around these cards.

Another idea to fight them (though it might be a little cute) is to use Beckon Apparition. This will exile any card from their graveyard on top of giving you a spirit. This card could be interesting over Young Wolf in this metagame, as it can be used to both create instant-speed edict-fodder or cherry-pick a card from their graveyard to disrupt them. I dig it!

Aside from that, running a few Moment's Peace will help you win races against other aggro decks like Boros Heroic or Stompy.

I think I'd go with something like this:

Fortunately it's only the one person running high tide for now, though I will deff give a play around with the macabre and beckon apparition over tormod's/relic as if the high tide goes off I'll at least have a chance to draw and be able to do something with them to counter the combo. Seems like a solid choice to me thinking about it now as there's a dredge and a song of the damned decks in the playgroup and from what I know there's no chainer's edicts... yet.

I'll also try cutting the nylea's and proxying in hyena umbra for that extra first strike against deathtouch.

I'll proxy up a sideboard and the hyena umbras and see how I go next Tuesday night. Hopefully pauper catches on and we can get some sanctioned events running. Thanks for the suggestions!

Amonkhet has so far 5 new common auras to play with. Some are possible options, but nothing really game changing. At least Red and Blue splash get some new toys to play with.

Cartouche of SolidarityNice cheap one mana +1/+1 First Strike and it brings a friend. But, Hyena Umbra gives damage protection.

Cartouche of Knowledge For Blue splash it's not too bad. Spectral Flight gives a bigger buff, but maybe an extra card could be good trade off?

Cartouche of Ambition another bleh card for black splash. Armadillo Cloak does a better job.

Cartouche of Zeal This could be useful for Red splash. Haste, +1/+1, can stun the biggest blocker from blocking for one red mana. Might not be good for multiple blockers, but maybe if you see an opening for a quick stab?

Cartouche of Strength So many better auras that can give you a better deal on trample. Plus, we are trying to get around blockers for direct damage to opponents.

Cartouche of Solidarity looks like a good inclusion for anyone that wants to smooth out their manabase and take out Khalni Garden since it enters tapped.

I think Cartouche will make it in any list that normally ran Hyena Umbra. While the Umbra does prevent damage, hexproof creatures generally aren't prone to dying to those. Cartouche will pretty much cover whatever Umbra will (edicts), on top of adding benefits from getting an extra power creature with vigilance.

You make a good point, I was thinking of battle damage prevention. But, if my creature is being blocked, need to learn to dodge better.

Also, First Strike isn't too prevalent in Pauper. Outside of some White Weenie builds I can't think of any decks that utilize the ability. Usually Bogle is a Trampler with First Strike and a slew of other keywords so it generally doesn't matter if he's blocked or not anyway.

Only other new card I find interesting is Benefaction of Rhonas which is a slightly more expensive Commune with the Gods, but its advantage is the possibility to grab not just a creature card or enchantment card, but grab a creature AND enchantment card.

It probably isn't worth playing in this deck, since 3-drops should be pretty sparse. It'll make a fine addition to other brews, though.