Also it does super well vs. Bogles. They win game 1. They're too fast and we have no interaction. Then we have to hope that we stick a Stony Silence and their draws don't lead them to Engineered Explosives or Nature's Claim before we kill them. Spiritdancer is probably the best way, although they technically can side in Galvanic Blast (but I don't think they do).
I didn't use to have any problems at all with this matchup at all when I played it before. The deck isn't actually super fast, it's very rare that they can win on turn 3 and even turn 4 is far from guaranteed simply because they won't always find the KCI. Compared to Bogles their average goldfish might be 0.3 turns or so quicker, which isn't much at all. After sideboard I would bring in 3 Stony Silence, 3 Nature's Claim, 2 Rest in Peace and 2 Gaddock Teeg and I felt that this would give me a massive advantage post-sideboard.
The version of KCI currently played includes 3 Engineered Explosives maindeck and 4 Nature's Claim in the sideboard and that's really the big issue, not their pure speed. Even so, the sideboard suite is really strong, especially Gaddock Teeg. It's possible they have a slight advantage overall, maybe 55-60%, but it's nothing we need to be too worried about.
Kinda out of left field, but anybody have thoughts on the potential playability of Karn, Scion of Urza? It doesn't directly contribute to our game plan, but it offers a solid card advantage engine to colors that are lacking in that regard. I'm tempted to try out one MB copy, but I also think it could have SB potential in matchups where board wipes are a threat as we tend to dump our hand early, so something like a Supreme Verdict is often game over if we don't already have an aura and creature in-hand or fetchable dryad arbor.
Edit: Also interested in thoughts on Frenzied Rage and whether or not it strengthens the argument for exploring a Naya build.Temur Battle Rage alone had me curious about splashing red and Frenzied Rage seems like a nice complement to it, but isn't anything to write home about on its own.
As you say Karn doesn't contribute to our game plan at all and even if it did 4 mana cards are completely unviable here. He's much worse than Gideon/Elspeth if we wanted a 4-mana planeswalker, but we don't. Supreme Verdict is not a huge problem because of the Umbras. Occasionally they'll be able to bounce/kill all the umbras before playing the sweeper, but trying to get around such rare situations is not worth the trouble, better just hope we can reload after with a Spiritdancer.
Frenzied rage is mostly just a bad Spirit Mantle so doesn't seem interesting. Temur Battle Rage also does very little for our game plan as we are not primarily trying to race our opponents but rather present unanswerable threats. There are certainly situations where it's relevant, but it's not really what we are looking for most of the time and as a splash it's not worth it.
For most interesting Dominaria card for Bogles I vote Triumph of Gerrard, but it seems slightly too weak.
All three of those things are clearly game rule violations and each one merits a warning. Three (not two) game rule violations in the same event is automatically upgraded to a game loss and it seems like that should have happened here. Did you appeal to the head judge when he got off without warnings? Maybe there was only that one judge? It's still fine to ask "is he getting a warning?" and if the answer is "no" you can follow up with "why?". If the judge persists you should probably back down as it's improper to be telling the judge what to do too much.
The Judge told essentially that he could try to do it and if he gets away with it, it's on the Judge's discretion if it can be taken back, but there is no consequence other than a warning for trying to do it.
I'm not really sure what the judge is trying to say here and I'm almost certain that you misunderstood something. He is absolutely not allowed to "try it and see if you notice", doing so intentionally is cheating. If he makes a mistake and tries to target you with a Liliana when you have hexproof that's a game rule violation but it's not at all up to the judges discretion whether he can take it back or not. Activating Liliana and targeting you is illegal so it never actually happens and he has to choose another play, including upticking Liliana. He would never be forced to choose himself as a target for the sacrifice. Same thing goes for the ultimate really. If someone tries to do something illegal, you give them a warning and the game is in the state it was before the declaration.
So these things are not takebacks and it's not comparable to for example declaring a bad attack or playing the wrong land and wanting to take it back. There's a difference between a bad play and an illegal play.
I personally have not played this deck a TON, per se, but this is something I have more or less thrown together to get my brother back into MTG.
This being said, I just have a few (hopefully) quick questions as to deck options:
--I've been seeing a lot of Seal of Primordiums in sideboard lists, but I've also seen Disenchant and Deglamer/other 2-drop instants of the like. What are the particular benefits of running the instants over Seal? The only benefits I can think of for Seal is that you don't have to pop it straight up (saves mana for later turns and avoids discard) and pumps up Ethereal Armor, but I feel like Disenchant would be better here.
--When I've used this deck, I seem to rely very heavily on Dryad Arbor as a backup Bogle on a regular basis. Is this considered more correct, or should you generally wait for more creatures to draw in normal circumstances?
--I think I know the answer to this one, but is there any decent answer to discard that isn't Leyline of Sanctity? I have a playset, but I'm using them in my deck, which needs them equally as much (Ad Nauseam). The best I've come up with are Noxious Revival and Aegis of the Gods, but these are a stretch at best.
--Until I can acquire Horizon Canopy copies, how should I adjust a deck to compensate? Do I just cut a land or two and throw in some more enchantments?
--What spice have any of you thrown into your decks? My brother on more than one occasion has used his 1-of Mana Tithe and loved every second of it, and if I can find something else to throw in there, that would be awesome. Even just a singleton in the sideboard is good to know.
Thank you guys in advance, this seems like a nice homely community that really knows the deck well. Look forward to the responses!
1. You're pretty much on point regarding Seal of Primordium, the reason to use it is to avoid having to keep mana up and that it boosts Ethereal Armor. If you'd rather run an instant I'd recommend Nature's Claim/Natural State over Disenchant and Deglamer.
2. Yes, the deck does rely heavily on Dryad Arbor and uses it as the prime aura target fairly frequently. Mulliganing heavily for a Bogle doesn't guarantee you'll get one, and there's also a risk that you get a Bogle but not enough lands and Auras to use it. In a discard heavy meta a single Bogle will often get discarded on the draw anyway, so it's often correct to keep a good 7 card hand without a Bogle on the draw.
3. Not really any other answers to discard no. Are you playing both decks at the same time? Otherwise it's fairly typical to be moving around cards depending on what you want to play in a particular tournament.
4. Just replace them with more Temple Gardens and green fetch lands or Brushlands. I wouldn't go below 20 lands, I'd recommend 21 with Canopies or 20 without.
5. I've used Mana Tithe in the past but it's at its best when there's a lot of instants and specifically blue decks with counterspells in the meta. I'm just not sure if this is the case now. If you do run it I would recommend maindeck rather than sideboard, as it's just way too weak in the sideboard compared to more specific answers. If you want sideboard "spice" some options include Guttoral Response and Gutshot, though again I'm not sure they're a great fit for the current meta.
I like this list. Since there's a blue mana source, what're your thoughts on including 1-2 Hadana's Climb / Winged Temple of Orazca? I've never liked running auras with cmcs >2, but I like the idea of an alternate win-con besides Daybreak in those grindier matchups where you have your opponent on the ropes, but just can't draw that Rancor/Daybreak to push damage through. Even if we whiff on our draws and never topdeck that gas, giving our Bogle flying & +x/+x is almost always gg if we get to transform it.
On another note related to this list, would you consider playing some number of unstable mutation? I remember seeing them in older lists that splashed for blue and they always got much praise.
Hadana's Climb seems incredibly slow and not very effective. For 3 mana I would rather just play Unflinching Courage. It's possible to imagine situations where Hadana's Climb is good, such as a grindy match against BGx or UWx control, but 90% of the time Unflinching Courage is just gonna be much better.
Unstable Mutation is more interesting, though as always the question is what you can cut from the deck. Aura space is already so extremely tight.
Curious Obsession is definitely a very interesting card. I strongly disagree with just lumping this in with Keen Sense. Keen Sense and Spirit Link are both examples that would be automatic inclusions if they also gave +1/+1. It really makes all the difference in terms of being able to get through blockers and win tight races. That being said, the end of turn trigger can probably be inconvenient sometimes and adding a color comes with its own set of problems.
What is the motiviation behind running Spirit Mantle over Gryff's Boon? I mean, yes Boon can make us open to being chumped by Lingering Souls, but it's not THAT common in the meta at the moment. Secondly, it seems as though most lists have dropped Spirit Link.
Recently I just picked up the last of my Horizon Canopies. As some in this thread know, I've been experimenting with Cartouche of Strength to replace Unflinching Courage, but now the move from 3cmc auras to 2 and 1 has me guessing.
Gryff's Boon is by no means bad, it's just that there's a lot of competition for the slots after Cartouche of Solidarity was printed. The problem with Gryff's Boon is that many decks can block fliers. Lingering Souls is not the only problem, there's also Birds of Paradise, Kitesail Freebooter/Mantis Rider, Narcomoeba, a ton of Affinity creatures, and so on. Perhaps more importantly though, Spirit Mantle is a much better defensive play. Against decks like Death's Shadow, Humans and Eldrazi Tron it's quite common to block with a Spirit Mantled creature on turn 2/3.
But, as I said Gryff's Boon is still a fine card. If you start out with 20 lands, 12 creatures, 4 paths and 16 mandatory auras (Coronet/Rancor/Ethereal/Spider), there's 8 slots remaining. In my most recent tournament I put 2 Hyena Umbra, 3 Cartouche of Solidarity and 3 Spirit Mantle here. Other options include Gryff's Boon, Unflinching Courage and Spirit Link, and the best choice among these are heavily meta dependent. Maindecking Leylines makes it even more difficult to fit Gryff's Boon.
I was considering trying out 3-4 Mana Tithe for *****s and giggles. Has anyone had experience with that card?
I played with 2 Mana Tithe maindeck for quite a while and the card was great in some matchups. It is at its best when the opponent tries to play a lot on your turn. Countering a Cryptic Command or Mana Leak can be gamebreaking. It was at its best against UR Twin, RUG Scapeshift and UR(x) Control. Unfortunately, those matchups don't really exist anymore. Against fair decks that play mostly on their own turn it's pretty bad. If you hold up mana for Mana Tithe instead of playing things, you lose a lot of tempo and there's no guarantee that the opponent will tap out even if they don't know about Mana Tithe. If you play out everything first your opponent might have so much mana that Tithe does nothing. In the current meta it's really awful against Eldrazi Tron, Affinity and GBx decks and it's fairly weak against Death's Shadow decks as they will see it with discard spells. Against classic Tron decks it's pretty good since you can often predict their plays and catch a Karn or Ugin when they're expecting to just win. Against Burn it's quite good to stop Skullcrack type effects and also Deflecting Palm.
So my advice is that it's only a good card if you are expecting a lot of blue decks with counterspells (and especially Cryptic Command). If you are going to play it I recommend 1-2 copies as playing too many makes it easy and worth it to play around. Half the strength is that it scares the opponent into playing around it when they shouldn't, but if you play too many copies it's always correct to play around.
Thanks for the great tips for moving forward, I really appreciate it! Could you just give me a quick list of the ideal manabase with that procedure of obtaining said cards? like, do I still keep the 2 wooded foothills if I get the fourth windswept? And it looks like most people play 4 canopys?
My ideal manabase is:
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills (or other green fetch)
2 Temple Garden
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Dryad Arbor
I find 5 fetchable lands to be enough, it's extremely rare that you'd need the third Temple Garden and every chance to fetch Dryad Arbor helps. If you don't have Horizon Canopy I would replace them with 2 Temple Gardens, a 5th green fetch, and go down to 20 lands. Brushland is a decent alternative if you don't have all the Thickets, Fetches and Shocks. Sunpetal Groves and more basics are not recommended.
And are there any preferred auras? Or is it all pretty much up to preferance at this point? are people using the white Cartouche?
Previously I considered these auras to be mandatory:
4 Daybreak Coronet
4 Ethereal Armor
4 Rancor
4 Spider Umbra
4 Hyena Umbra
The remaining ~4 aura slots were metagame/preference. With the printing of Cartouche and the general lack of sweepers in the format, I feel that it's possible to shave a couple of Hyena Umbras, but the specifics come down to metagame variation and preference. My preference right now is to play 3 Spirit Mantles since they are generally good against many popular decks.
Also, saw some people talking about running glistener? Sounds like an awesome game 2 trick! what would you take out for it? A hexproof? spiritdancer? mixture of things?
I have never understood why people want to run Glistener Elf since it goes completely against the deck's strategy. The goal is normally to establish a creature that is larger than anything the opponent does and beat them down turn after turn while they can do nothing about it. One turn more or less is rarely going to matter. Against combo decks the game can sometimes come down to a race where the speed increase would be relevant, but in almost all of those cases you still can't really live without the Hexproof.
People often overestimate how much removal actually gets sided out against us. Some removal will go out yes, but almost every single deck keeps a healthy amount. Lightning Bolt/Galvanic Blast is kept to go face. Abrupt Decay/Kolaghan's Command are kept for their versatility. Even Path to Exile/Fatal Push/Dismember are often kept in simply because there's not enough relevant cards to bring in and there's always Kor Spiritdancer/Dryad Arbor to hit.
The only matchup where Glistener Elf actually sounds like a good plan is Ad Nauseam because of how it gets around Angel's Grace/Phyrexian Unlife, and that's just too narrow for a matchup where we already play ~10 sideboard cards for.
Hey Guys! Haven't played MTG, much less modern, most of the year, and was thinking about getting back into bogles. I have some value trades and was looking to upgrade my bogles to make it a little more competative and was hoping I could get some pointers on where the best place to start would be and what is good in the current meta. Here's what I currently have built that has served me pretty well last year:
Do people not use Open the Armory at all anymore? I was thinking about starting out with Horizon Canopy and Gaddock Teeg since they seem to have dipped in price recently.
You seem to be pretty much finished with the non-land maindeck, so you're not far away. The manabase can certainly use some work though. You only have 11 lands that can cast a turn 1 Bogle and that's way too low. I'd say 15 is a minimum but personally I prefer 18-19. As you say Horizon Canopy has dropped in price recently so it could be a good pickup, but more important and less expensive is Razorverge Thicket (picking up a 4th Windswept Heath wouldn't hurt either).
These are pretty much all straightforward upgrades with similar effects but just better versions of it. I would also recommend removing Unflinching Courage and Spirit Mantle, in my opinion they're not great in the sideboard. They're pretty all-round so they're decent to good in the maindeck, but in the sideboard you want stronger cards that can really impact a matchup. The more expensive auras also generally get worse after sideboard as they're vulnerable to removal and sort of clunky. In their place I would naturally suggest 4 Leyline of Sanctity, which has always been great.
If you're on a budget I would start with the Razorverge Thickets, then get the semi-cheap sideboard cards like Stony Silence and Rest in Peace, then try to get Horizon Canopies.
This is slightly off-topic, but how do people justify running two basics if Blood Moon is in their meta? I'm currently running three basics (two plains, one forest) and six fetches, and I still get Blood Mooned.
For starters it depends a lot on what is meant with that "Blood Moon is in a meta". Since currently not even burn decks run Blood Moon, the only decks really using it is storm and some various fringe decks like Blue Moon, Skred Red and RW Prison. Additionally, even if a deck plays it they are not guaranteed to draw it. And even if they draw it, they can usually only play it on turn 3 meaning you already have an enchanted bogle in play, on the play you even have time to put a Coronet on it. And even if you don't have enough stuff in play, the 1 of each basic you still have will allow you to play every aura except Coronet. Plus, of course, against Blood Moon decks you'll typically bring in the enchantment removal so you have at least some defense against it.
You also have to consider that Bogles is an extremely color hungry deck. With your first 3 lands you typically want at least 2 of them to produce green and all 3 to produce white. Even if you have more basics in the deck you will often fetch for a Temple Garden just to improve the mana. When I was less experienced with the deck I frequently tried to save life by fetching a basic early but I kept getting punished when I drew another aura and was unable to play Ethereal Armor+Daybreak Coronet on turn 3.
I do sometimes get destroyed by Blood Moon. But this is most common in games where I could not afford to fetch 2 basics or even 1, and as a result get completely locked out. Having more basics in the deck would not help significantly in these situations, and it could really hurt in every other situation. At the moment I see very little reason to run something other than:
Thinking about building Bogles to round out my Modern decks - I've got many and just want to even my numbers out plus have something fun/different to play.
I'm not running Horizon Canopy as it's impossible to find and I don't really want to spend the money on it.
Side board is tuned for my meta which is a pretty mixed bag - Robots, Dredge, Lantern, Tron variants, etc.
Opinions on the deck?
7 Basic lands is way too many and you will frequently find yourself lacking a green mana for turn 1 or double white on turn 3 (in fact you often want triple white). If you don't have Horizon Canopies, you can use green fetch lands (Wooded Foothills) or Brushland.
4 Rancor is mandatory, it's such a great card in the deck providing both a lot of aggression, evasion and resilience to removal.
For the sideboard, Rest in Peace is generally a better grave hate card than Surgical Extraction. Also if the meta actually looks like you say you should probably be running 3 or even 4 Stony Silence as it's great against Robots, Lantern and Tron.
I'm at 19 lands, including 1 Arbor. It's working pretty well so far, usually if I'm mulling it's due to not having a creature as opposed to not having any lands. This is my current list, for those that were interested. The sideboard works pretty well for my meta.
If you're running without Horizon Canopies it makes sense to play fewer lands I suppose, as you can no longer use their cycling to get you out of mana floods.
How many lands to you all feel is the most optimal? To be honest, this is the least tinkered thing in my deck, but recently I've noticed a lot of people going sub-19. It's also nice to see people trying out Cartouche of Solidarity. The card always seems like a bit of a trap, since it turns on all of their blanked removal in game one. It's supposed to protect against edict effects, but I haven't really seen it work out that well.
Personally I play with 21 including Dryad Arbor. My feeling is that the better half of the deck is much better than the worse half, so I don't want to mulligan/lose to mana issues when I draw the good half. I'd rather cut one marginal flex spot and have better mana.
The thing with Cartouche is that even if it turns on a removal spell, that's mana spent and we do have other targets for removal. You're also getting it essentially for free and it's not like you'll regularly load it up with multiple auras unless you know it will survive. Compared to Hyena Umbra, both give +1/+1 first strike but unless the opponent has sweepers the extra effect there is useless. It mostly just comes down to how much sacrifice effects there are compared to how much sweepers there are.
But with the 75 as is, were my decisions correct in these matchups?
VS Stompy: I'm not sure exactly what the stompy list looks, but in general Path is good enough against aggressive creature decks to be worth it. If I don't expect any sweepers I will generally remove Umbras instead of Cartouches.
VS UW control: Sideboarding seems reasonable, though I do like Mana Tithe here since they play a lot of spells on your turn. Countering a Cryptic Command or even a Mana Leak will often be game over. Otherwise the weakness of Mana Tithe is that it's really awkward to keep mana up with Bogles and maybe not get to use it, but against counterspells you don't need to do that.
VS Counters Company: I would not take out any Gladecover scouts here, in fact I don't think there's a single matchup where they should be taken out right now. Also again same argument with Umbra vs Cartouche.
VS GW Tron: Stony Silence definitely needs to come in here in addition to the rest, and as before keep Scouts in and probably remove all the Spirit Mantles. That card is really poor in the matchup and I would probably keep Paths in instead to handle Spellskites and to kill Wurmcoil/Worldbreaker/Ulamog if the game goes later. Mana Tithe is also pretty good here as it's easy to get them on a Karn/Ugin if they don't know about it.
VS Storm: Removing Gladecover Scout here seems like madness... you need to be as quick as possible. I would much rather remove Spiritdancers as they can get owned by Echoing Truth, but Spirit Mantle is probably worse than both.
I didn't use to have any problems at all with this matchup at all when I played it before. The deck isn't actually super fast, it's very rare that they can win on turn 3 and even turn 4 is far from guaranteed simply because they won't always find the KCI. Compared to Bogles their average goldfish might be 0.3 turns or so quicker, which isn't much at all. After sideboard I would bring in 3 Stony Silence, 3 Nature's Claim, 2 Rest in Peace and 2 Gaddock Teeg and I felt that this would give me a massive advantage post-sideboard.
The version of KCI currently played includes 3 Engineered Explosives maindeck and 4 Nature's Claim in the sideboard and that's really the big issue, not their pure speed. Even so, the sideboard suite is really strong, especially Gaddock Teeg. It's possible they have a slight advantage overall, maybe 55-60%, but it's nothing we need to be too worried about.
As you say Karn doesn't contribute to our game plan at all and even if it did 4 mana cards are completely unviable here. He's much worse than Gideon/Elspeth if we wanted a 4-mana planeswalker, but we don't. Supreme Verdict is not a huge problem because of the Umbras. Occasionally they'll be able to bounce/kill all the umbras before playing the sweeper, but trying to get around such rare situations is not worth the trouble, better just hope we can reload after with a Spiritdancer.
Frenzied rage is mostly just a bad Spirit Mantle so doesn't seem interesting. Temur Battle Rage also does very little for our game plan as we are not primarily trying to race our opponents but rather present unanswerable threats. There are certainly situations where it's relevant, but it's not really what we are looking for most of the time and as a splash it's not worth it.
For most interesting Dominaria card for Bogles I vote Triumph of Gerrard, but it seems slightly too weak.
I'm not really sure what the judge is trying to say here and I'm almost certain that you misunderstood something. He is absolutely not allowed to "try it and see if you notice", doing so intentionally is cheating. If he makes a mistake and tries to target you with a Liliana when you have hexproof that's a game rule violation but it's not at all up to the judges discretion whether he can take it back or not. Activating Liliana and targeting you is illegal so it never actually happens and he has to choose another play, including upticking Liliana. He would never be forced to choose himself as a target for the sacrifice. Same thing goes for the ultimate really. If someone tries to do something illegal, you give them a warning and the game is in the state it was before the declaration.
So these things are not takebacks and it's not comparable to for example declaring a bad attack or playing the wrong land and wanting to take it back. There's a difference between a bad play and an illegal play.
1. You're pretty much on point regarding Seal of Primordium, the reason to use it is to avoid having to keep mana up and that it boosts Ethereal Armor. If you'd rather run an instant I'd recommend Nature's Claim/Natural State over Disenchant and Deglamer.
2. Yes, the deck does rely heavily on Dryad Arbor and uses it as the prime aura target fairly frequently. Mulliganing heavily for a Bogle doesn't guarantee you'll get one, and there's also a risk that you get a Bogle but not enough lands and Auras to use it. In a discard heavy meta a single Bogle will often get discarded on the draw anyway, so it's often correct to keep a good 7 card hand without a Bogle on the draw.
3. Not really any other answers to discard no. Are you playing both decks at the same time? Otherwise it's fairly typical to be moving around cards depending on what you want to play in a particular tournament.
4. Just replace them with more Temple Gardens and green fetch lands or Brushlands. I wouldn't go below 20 lands, I'd recommend 21 with Canopies or 20 without.
5. I've used Mana Tithe in the past but it's at its best when there's a lot of instants and specifically blue decks with counterspells in the meta. I'm just not sure if this is the case now. If you do run it I would recommend maindeck rather than sideboard, as it's just way too weak in the sideboard compared to more specific answers. If you want sideboard "spice" some options include Guttoral Response and Gutshot, though again I'm not sure they're a great fit for the current meta.
Hadana's Climb seems incredibly slow and not very effective. For 3 mana I would rather just play Unflinching Courage. It's possible to imagine situations where Hadana's Climb is good, such as a grindy match against BGx or UWx control, but 90% of the time Unflinching Courage is just gonna be much better.
Unstable Mutation is more interesting, though as always the question is what you can cut from the deck. Aura space is already so extremely tight.
I might give something like this a try:
4 Slippery Bogle
4 Gladecover Scout
3 Invisible Stalker
Auras:
4 Rancor
4 Ethereal Armor
4 Spider Umbra
4 Daybreak Coronet
3 Curious Obsession
2 Cartouche of Solidarity
2 Spirit Mantle
Spells:
3 Path to Exile
2 Stubborn Denial
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Windswept Heath
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Path to Exile
1 Stubborn Denial
2 Stony Silence
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Rest in Peace
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Nature's Claim
1 Dissenter's Deliverance
1 Seal of Primordium
Gryff's Boon is by no means bad, it's just that there's a lot of competition for the slots after Cartouche of Solidarity was printed. The problem with Gryff's Boon is that many decks can block fliers. Lingering Souls is not the only problem, there's also Birds of Paradise, Kitesail Freebooter/Mantis Rider, Narcomoeba, a ton of Affinity creatures, and so on. Perhaps more importantly though, Spirit Mantle is a much better defensive play. Against decks like Death's Shadow, Humans and Eldrazi Tron it's quite common to block with a Spirit Mantled creature on turn 2/3.
But, as I said Gryff's Boon is still a fine card. If you start out with 20 lands, 12 creatures, 4 paths and 16 mandatory auras (Coronet/Rancor/Ethereal/Spider), there's 8 slots remaining. In my most recent tournament I put 2 Hyena Umbra, 3 Cartouche of Solidarity and 3 Spirit Mantle here. Other options include Gryff's Boon, Unflinching Courage and Spirit Link, and the best choice among these are heavily meta dependent. Maindecking Leylines makes it even more difficult to fit Gryff's Boon.
I played with 2 Mana Tithe maindeck for quite a while and the card was great in some matchups. It is at its best when the opponent tries to play a lot on your turn. Countering a Cryptic Command or Mana Leak can be gamebreaking. It was at its best against UR Twin, RUG Scapeshift and UR(x) Control. Unfortunately, those matchups don't really exist anymore. Against fair decks that play mostly on their own turn it's pretty bad. If you hold up mana for Mana Tithe instead of playing things, you lose a lot of tempo and there's no guarantee that the opponent will tap out even if they don't know about Mana Tithe. If you play out everything first your opponent might have so much mana that Tithe does nothing. In the current meta it's really awful against Eldrazi Tron, Affinity and GBx decks and it's fairly weak against Death's Shadow decks as they will see it with discard spells. Against classic Tron decks it's pretty good since you can often predict their plays and catch a Karn or Ugin when they're expecting to just win. Against Burn it's quite good to stop Skullcrack type effects and also Deflecting Palm.
So my advice is that it's only a good card if you are expecting a lot of blue decks with counterspells (and especially Cryptic Command). If you are going to play it I recommend 1-2 copies as playing too many makes it easy and worth it to play around. Half the strength is that it scares the opponent into playing around it when they shouldn't, but if you play too many copies it's always correct to play around.
My ideal manabase is:
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills (or other green fetch)
2 Temple Garden
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Dryad Arbor
I find 5 fetchable lands to be enough, it's extremely rare that you'd need the third Temple Garden and every chance to fetch Dryad Arbor helps. If you don't have Horizon Canopy I would replace them with 2 Temple Gardens, a 5th green fetch, and go down to 20 lands. Brushland is a decent alternative if you don't have all the Thickets, Fetches and Shocks. Sunpetal Groves and more basics are not recommended.
Previously I considered these auras to be mandatory:
4 Daybreak Coronet
4 Ethereal Armor
4 Rancor
4 Spider Umbra
4 Hyena Umbra
The remaining ~4 aura slots were metagame/preference. With the printing of Cartouche and the general lack of sweepers in the format, I feel that it's possible to shave a couple of Hyena Umbras, but the specifics come down to metagame variation and preference. My preference right now is to play 3 Spirit Mantles since they are generally good against many popular decks.
I have never understood why people want to run Glistener Elf since it goes completely against the deck's strategy. The goal is normally to establish a creature that is larger than anything the opponent does and beat them down turn after turn while they can do nothing about it. One turn more or less is rarely going to matter. Against combo decks the game can sometimes come down to a race where the speed increase would be relevant, but in almost all of those cases you still can't really live without the Hexproof.
People often overestimate how much removal actually gets sided out against us. Some removal will go out yes, but almost every single deck keeps a healthy amount. Lightning Bolt/Galvanic Blast is kept to go face. Abrupt Decay/Kolaghan's Command are kept for their versatility. Even Path to Exile/Fatal Push/Dismember are often kept in simply because there's not enough relevant cards to bring in and there's always Kor Spiritdancer/Dryad Arbor to hit.
The only matchup where Glistener Elf actually sounds like a good plan is Ad Nauseam because of how it gets around Angel's Grace/Phyrexian Unlife, and that's just too narrow for a matchup where we already play ~10 sideboard cards for.
You seem to be pretty much finished with the non-land maindeck, so you're not far away. The manabase can certainly use some work though. You only have 11 lands that can cast a turn 1 Bogle and that's way too low. I'd say 15 is a minimum but personally I prefer 18-19. As you say Horizon Canopy has dropped in price recently so it could be a good pickup, but more important and less expensive is Razorverge Thicket (picking up a 4th Windswept Heath wouldn't hurt either).
The sideboard could use some changes. What I would look to change is:
Naturalize -> Seal of Primordium
Relic of Progenitus -> Rest in Peace
Qasali Pridemage -> Stony Silence
Hallowed Moonlight -> Gaddock Teeg
Gelid Shackles -> Path to Exile
These are pretty much all straightforward upgrades with similar effects but just better versions of it. I would also recommend removing Unflinching Courage and Spirit Mantle, in my opinion they're not great in the sideboard. They're pretty all-round so they're decent to good in the maindeck, but in the sideboard you want stronger cards that can really impact a matchup. The more expensive auras also generally get worse after sideboard as they're vulnerable to removal and sort of clunky. In their place I would naturally suggest 4 Leyline of Sanctity, which has always been great.
If you're on a budget I would start with the Razorverge Thickets, then get the semi-cheap sideboard cards like Stony Silence and Rest in Peace, then try to get Horizon Canopies.
You also have to consider that Bogles is an extremely color hungry deck. With your first 3 lands you typically want at least 2 of them to produce green and all 3 to produce white. Even if you have more basics in the deck you will often fetch for a Temple Garden just to improve the mana. When I was less experienced with the deck I frequently tried to save life by fetching a basic early but I kept getting punished when I drew another aura and was unable to play Ethereal Armor+Daybreak Coronet on turn 3.
I do sometimes get destroyed by Blood Moon. But this is most common in games where I could not afford to fetch 2 basics or even 1, and as a result get completely locked out. Having more basics in the deck would not help significantly in these situations, and it could really hurt in every other situation. At the moment I see very little reason to run something other than:
7 Basic lands is way too many and you will frequently find yourself lacking a green mana for turn 1 or double white on turn 3 (in fact you often want triple white). If you don't have Horizon Canopies, you can use green fetch lands (Wooded Foothills) or Brushland.
4 Rancor is mandatory, it's such a great card in the deck providing both a lot of aggression, evasion and resilience to removal.
For the sideboard, Rest in Peace is generally a better grave hate card than Surgical Extraction. Also if the meta actually looks like you say you should probably be running 3 or even 4 Stony Silence as it's great against Robots, Lantern and Tron.
If you're running without Horizon Canopies it makes sense to play fewer lands I suppose, as you can no longer use their cycling to get you out of mana floods.
Personally I play with 21 including Dryad Arbor. My feeling is that the better half of the deck is much better than the worse half, so I don't want to mulligan/lose to mana issues when I draw the good half. I'd rather cut one marginal flex spot and have better mana.
The thing with Cartouche is that even if it turns on a removal spell, that's mana spent and we do have other targets for removal. You're also getting it essentially for free and it's not like you'll regularly load it up with multiple auras unless you know it will survive. Compared to Hyena Umbra, both give +1/+1 first strike but unless the opponent has sweepers the extra effect there is useless. It mostly just comes down to how much sacrifice effects there are compared to how much sweepers there are.
VS Stompy: I'm not sure exactly what the stompy list looks, but in general Path is good enough against aggressive creature decks to be worth it. If I don't expect any sweepers I will generally remove Umbras instead of Cartouches.
VS UW control: Sideboarding seems reasonable, though I do like Mana Tithe here since they play a lot of spells on your turn. Countering a Cryptic Command or even a Mana Leak will often be game over. Otherwise the weakness of Mana Tithe is that it's really awkward to keep mana up with Bogles and maybe not get to use it, but against counterspells you don't need to do that.
VS Counters Company: I would not take out any Gladecover scouts here, in fact I don't think there's a single matchup where they should be taken out right now. Also again same argument with Umbra vs Cartouche.
VS GW Tron: Stony Silence definitely needs to come in here in addition to the rest, and as before keep Scouts in and probably remove all the Spirit Mantles. That card is really poor in the matchup and I would probably keep Paths in instead to handle Spellskites and to kill Wurmcoil/Worldbreaker/Ulamog if the game goes later. Mana Tithe is also pretty good here as it's easy to get them on a Karn/Ugin if they don't know about it.
VS Storm: Removing Gladecover Scout here seems like madness... you need to be as quick as possible. I would much rather remove Spiritdancers as they can get owned by Echoing Truth, but Spirit Mantle is probably worse than both.