Pauper Commander - Bogled

I mentioned in the last article that the Universes Beyond precons had a ton of good Pauper commanders, and here's another one. Trygon Prime is some sort of Tyranid, a giant space monster. I don't play Warhammer 40K, so I don't really know much more about it's lore than that, but I do know that, in Magic, giant space monsters are quite cool. Apparently, they love +1/+1 counters and swinging for lots of damage.

That's exactly what our deck is going to do today. Whenever Trygon Prime attacks, it and another creature get a counter, while the other attacking creature also gains unblockable. Having a consistent way to get unblockable is really strong, and I think we can combine it with an old Modern archetype to create a ton of value and damage. 

Bogles was a really interesting Modern deck that never quite popped off. To this day, no part of the deck has ever received a ban, and it's still playable, just severely behind in terms of power creep. The idea behind it is to get a "Bogle" into play, either Slippery Bogle or Gladecover Scout. These creatures do one thing, and that's have hexproof. Because Modern is so efficient and fast, the only removal that most decks have are single-target removal pieces, which can't get around hexproof. Essentially, these Bogles are unkillable, and once you stack them up with a ton of Auras, they become huge threats your opponent just can't deal with. 

I think we can also take advantage of Bogles here because, thanks to the Pauper card pool, there are almost no commonly run board wipes. That means we can get our Bogles huge and unblockable with Trygon Prime, then swing in without fear of punishment. 

First things first: since we're not running a Bogle in our command zone, we need to have constant access to one from our 99. Gladecover Scout and Slippery Bogle are both included of course, but they're our only one-drops. For two mana, we can play Saiba Cryptomancer and Silhana Ledgewalker, and for three mana, we can play Jungleborn Pioneer and Sacred Wolf. After that, however, the power-to-mana-cost ratio gets really bad, and we don't want to paying four mana for just the hexproof ability. Because of this, we're gonna have to make our own Bogles. 

Given that we're mostly going to use enchantments to stack up our Bogles, it would make sense to run enchantments as our means of giving hexproof. Unfortunately, there are only four Auras in Pauper with the word "hexproof" on them, and they only give it for a single turn. In some ways, they're worth playing for the minor buff they also provide, but they're somewhat overcosted if all we want to do is give our creature hexproof for a turn. Instead, we'll run the standard protection spells, like Tamiyo's Safekeeping, Snakeskin Veil, Gaea's Gift, etc. More than ten of these cards seems excessive, but this is a deck all about making unkillable creatures, so I think overkill on protection is going to make a lot of sense. 

Now, what do we do with these Bogles? Funnily enough, Slippery Bogle is a legal Pauper commander, and its page on PDHREC has a ton of helpful suggestions. The first card on that page, Ancestral Mask, is by far the best enchantment in the deck, creating huge creatures out of nowhere, but to turn it on, we need to play more enchantments. For some simple scaling up, Oakenform and Hardened-Scale Armor are fantastic. Yes, they're a bit expensive, but it's well worth it to get a lot of power and toughness out of single cards. Cards with umbra armor, like Eel Umbra and Snake Umbra, are also welcome here as yet another layer of protection, and Favor of the Overbeing is mostly here for vigilance, but every once in a while flying will come in handy along with our commander's unblockability.

Hopefully, flying won't be needed much thanks to the enchantments we're running the most of. At first, it doesn't make sense to run enchantments that give unblockable, because obviously, our commander does that already, but keep in mind, our commander is not unblockable itself, and it needs to attack to trigger. If we give Trygon Prime unblockable as well, we'll have free attacks for as long as that enchantment sticks around. That can be huge, because our commander grows itself as well, and, of course, it never hurts to have a bit of, or in this case a lot, of redundancy in the deck. 

Combining loads of protection spells with unblockability allows us to create some pretty tough Bogles that our opponents will struggle to deal with. Over the course of the game, I believe we'll be able to get in for a lot of damage, slowly growing creatures with enchantments and +1/+1 counters, but I'm not sure we'll ever manage to really pop off. At best, our commander grows our board by two power every turn, and while that two power is going to be unblockable, it's not exactly a threat until late in the game. 

We need a way to raise our damage output, but enchantments alone aren't gonna cut it. Yes, Ancestral Mask is very strong, but we only have one in the entire deck, and the rest of the buffs in Pauper are quite weak. 

Sounds like it's time to break out the secret weapon of PEDH. While Bogles never took a ban in Modern, infect absolutely had to in Pauper, because its potential for rapid wins was just too much. Invigorate, Giant Growth, and Larger Than Life all helped Glistener Elf win out of nowhere, taking out players in a single swing. Buffs that last till the end of turn are inefficient here, so we won't be using those, but our deck is absolutely capable of getting in ten hits with infect creatures, and it's already been built to protect them against the hate that'll inevitably come their way. A Bogle that our opponents can't deal with is already scary, but how about one with infect? 

We have so many good options to work with, too. Glistener Elf is a turn-one game-ender, Blighted Agent is naturally unblockable, and Blight Mamba can regenerate itself. I didn't expect Pauper to be so saturated with infect creatures, but I guess it is. There are enough infect creatures in Pauper that we'll never have to worry about our odds of drawing one, and that means our opponents will have to keep their guard up every game. 

To top off the deck, we're running a ton of proliferate effects. We can add +1/+1 counters and poison counters with that mechanic, rapidly progressing our clock. Thrummingbird is fantastic, getting in for combat damage itself, and most likely triggering every turn. The rest of the proliferate cards are one time instants and sorceries, but they have plenty of utility, from acting as fight spells to counterspells.

The end result of this deck is a big jungle of strange looking cards that all serve a myriad of purposes, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the pile struggles a bit with consistency. Making sure we can find an infect creature, keep it alive, and get in for combat damage with it is quite the task. Still, we're in Simic, and we have the necessary pieces to keep ourselves around long enough to take a shot at it. If the timing is right, this deck can win out of nowhere, and that's my favorite thing to do in Magic, so I'll consider this deck a success.