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Budget Magic: How Will You Win if You Can't Target My Creatures? (Modern)


Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! This week, we're heading to Modern to see if we can build the biggest, least-killable threat of all time with Bogles! If you don't know Bogles, the deck's goal is to load a one-mana hexproof creature like the namesake Slippery Bogle up with auras to turn it into a massive, hopefully unkillable game-ending threat. While Bogles has been around in Modern forever, it recently got a massive power boost thanks to Sheltered by Ghosts, which offers Bogles something that it never really had before: a powerful removal spell that works with the deck's auras theme! Can Bogles keep up in 2025 Modern on a $100-ish budget? Let's get to the video and find out!

Budget Magic: Bogles

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The Deck

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The plan of Bogles is pretty unique. We're built around two one-mana hexproof creatures that are essentially the same card in our deck, in Slippery Bogle and Gladecover Scout. The biggest upside of both cards by far is hexproof, which means our opponent can't target them with spells or abilities, which hopefully means they are more or less unkillable against most decks (although wraths, sweepers and, edicts can still run our deck). Our Bogles having hexproof means that we can feel safe aggressively loading them up with auras to try to build a hilarious game-ending threat!

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The only other creature in our deck is Light-Paws, which is very much not a Bogle. But it does have the potential to be incredibly strong in a deck full of auras thanks to its ability to tutor auras directly to the battlefield as we play auras from our hand. Heading into our games, I was pretty hyped about Light-Paws in the deck, but after I played with it a bunch, it actually felt a bit slow and risky. Since all of our other creatures have hexproof, odds are that any removal our opponent happens to have is going to target Light-Paws by default, which means that Light-Paws often ends up dying without doing much of anything, although it can take over a game more or less by itself if we can get it to stick (perhaps by protecting it with Shardmage's Rescue)!

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As I mentioned in the intro, the biggest new addition to the deck is Sheltered by Ghosts, which almost seems like it was designed to be an upgrade to Modern Bogles. Not only does Sheltered by Ghosts give us removal that comes on an aura so it works with our deck's theme, but it also offers lifelink, making it a weird less-aggressive backup for Daybreak Coronet (one of our best auras), while the ward can be used to help protect Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice from removal. It's absurd. Meanwhile, Daybreak Coronet is one of our best auras. Giving +3/+3, lifelink, first strike, and vigilance is a great deal for just two mana. The biggest drawback is that we can only put it on a creature already wearing an aura, although this isn't usually an issue in our deck with 29 auras.

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Outside of Sheltered by Ghosts and Daybreak Coronet, our aura plan goes something like this: use Ethereal Armor to grow our Bogle (it often gives +5/+5 or more for just one mana, which is great). Unfortunately, just making a massive Bogle isn't enough because our opponent can just chump block it with a smaller creature. Thankfully, we've got a bunch of evasion-granting auras in our deck to get through blockers, including Rancor and Audacity for trample, Gryff's Boon for flying, and even Spirit Mantle, which just straight up makes our creature unblockable by giving is protection from creatures. The final piece of the puzzle is more protection, which includes cards like Hyena Umbra (which can protect from wraths and other sweepers thanks to totem armor, which causes the aura to die rather than our creature if it would be killed) and Cartouche of Solidarity (which protects against edicts by giving us a random 1/1 token we can sacrifice instead of our mighty Bogle). 

And that's basically the deck, although I will give you a piece of advice: if you decide to play Bogles, make sure to mulligan aggressively for a Bogle. In general, you shouldn't keep an opening hand without [[Gladecover Scout] or Slippery Bogle until you are down to at least five cards. The problem with keeping a hand without a Bogle is that because so much of our deck is auras, if we don't have a creature to put our auras on, there's a chance we'll do nothing for several turns while we wait to try to draw into a creature, which is usually just too slow.

Wrap-Up

Record-wise, we ended up going 3-3 with Bogles. (I had an issue with one recording, so I had to record a replacement match, but it was a not-that-interesting loss to Dimir Murktide anyway where we got locked by a Harbinger of the Seas that our budget mana base simply couldn't beat.). This is a pretty reasonable record for a budget deck, especially in a format as powerful as Modern. 

In general, Bogles does really well in metas where decks mostly rely on targeted removal, and much worse in metas where many decks are playing sweepers and edicts. Overall, the meta didn't feel too bad for Bogles. We did get hit by a Wrath of the Skies once, and the Flickerwisp blink deck was super annoying since it had a ton of main-deck enchantment removal, but we actually ended up winning both of those matches anyway. On the other hand, we lost an absurd match to Boros Energy where we quickly built a 20-power, trampling, lifelinking Bogle but still couldn't race Guide of Souls and friends, which was super awkward. 

If you're looking to upgrade the budget deck, it's basically all about the mana. While the budget mana is very functional and consistent, it does struggle against Blood Moon effects, and we did occasionally have issues being color screwed, especially with hands where our only land was Branchloft Pathway. Basically, the current budget mana base is good, like, 95% of the time, but the other 5% of the time, you'll notice the lack of fetch lands and shock lands. If you do want to upgrade, just toss in a bunch of fetches and some Temple Gardens, keep the Razorverge Thickets, and you are pretty much good to go!

So, should you play budget Bogles in Modern? I think the answer is yes! While I don't think Bogles is tier one, it can pick up a lot of wins since some decks simply can't deal with a massive hexproof creature! This is a natural upgrade pathway if you have the Free Light-Paws deck we played a few years ago. This also seems like a pretty solid starting point if you are just looking for a cheap deck for Modern that can win an FNM-type event (especially if you hit good matchups!)! Plus, as a bonus, you can get away with making the Slippery Bogle face at your opponents. Who wouldn't want to do that?

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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