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

That's exactly what our deck is going to do today. Whenever Trygon Prime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have so many good options to work with, too. Glistener Elf

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

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.