I've been reading this primer a lot lately but I never really participated. Since I became a huge Bogle-lover, I decided to register and to participate here =)
I decided to run GW Hexproof in order to beat all the nasty Zoo and Burn decks. My loval meta is faily agressive and creature based, usually. Lately some people started to deviate and built a lot of Living End and Storm decks.
I have a pretty hard time dealing with these two decks and I would like to ask you for some advice.
Storm - I usually lose game one against Storm, since they seem just be 1 turn faster than us, which is generally turn 3 - otherwise I win pretty often on turn 4. My sideboarding plan is to add 3x Rest in Peace and 2x Silence and Nature's Claim +/or Seal or Primordium to get rid of the Ascentions. It's still pretty rough to beat the deck in my opinion and i turn out to lose this matchup like 65% of the times (or even more often)
Living End - This feels like automatically losing, unless the Living End player just keep missing any of his Cycles to find a cascade spell or enough lands. Otherwise then just seem to wreck our board whenever we swing in for lethal. Rest in Peace seems to be appealing but turned out pretty mediocre to me. Silence is a spell I consider usefull in response to a cacade spell. But it just feels terrible to play that matchup.
My current sideboard:
2x Nature's Claim
1x Seal of Primordium
2x Silence
1x Gaddock Teak (running 1 main)
3x Rest in Peace
3x Stony Silence
3x Leyline of Sanctity
What should I put mainboard against these decks. I can generally cut 1-2 Stony Silences I think, since Tron is pretty rare in my local meta and Affinity is not TOO worrysome.
Thanks for your help.
It seems to me that you have it pretty much figured out. Those matchups are rough and while sideboard cards help you won't always draw them and sometimes they won't do enough. I would be careful about over-sideboarding against these specific matchups. Even if it feels like you play against it a lot, it would have to be a very weird meta for these decks to actually be that prominent. Most likely they won't be more than 10-15% each even in a very specialized meta, and it's very important to maintain your win rates against the remaining 70-80% of the field.
That being said, Ethersworn Canonist is another card that is excellent against both those matchups. Against Storm it's better than RiP/Silence, against Living End RiP is probably still the strongest card.
Went 3-2 on a MTGO last night with the following list both losses came against Ad Nauseam - any tips for that matchup ?
Stony Silence slowed them down a bit but still was able to combo out at 1 life.
You're correct in bringing in Stony Silence, from your list I would also bring in Seal of Primordium and Silence. Personally I play 2 Gaddock Teeg in the sideboard which are better than any of those cards, but sideboard space is at a premium and Ad Nauseam by itself is not popular enough to warrant too specific sideboard cards. Depending on your meta you may want to add a few, it's also good against Abzan Company, Elves, Scapeshift, and to some extent Through the Breach and various control decks. Leyline of Sanctity is a trap, as they can easily kill it with Patrician's Scorn when they combo off.
All in all the matchup isn't that bad though. Since it's almost impossible for them to win before turn 4 we can often race them while on the play, and we have a much better sideboard for the matchup. I have won once by lifelinking high enough to survive a Lightning Storm, but I don't think this is reliable enough to be worth keeping the Spirit Link/Unflinching Courage in. Often they will have Laboratory Maniac as a backup win condition.
Sin Prodder seems like a trap to me. It's important to understand that as cards are generally more valuable than life, the default is not that you get any card advantage. The default is that your opponent takes damage in your upkeep. How much damage? Looking at 3drinks recent list, the average mana cost of the deck is around 1.5. This means that effectively, the best case is "At the beginning of your upkeep, deal 1.5 damage to your opponent". But, it's even worse than that, because if you reveal a high casting cost card like a Fireblast or Flametongue Kavu, the opponent is still given the choice of letting you have the card instead. Just like with Vexing Devil, the opponent will take damage to gain card advantage, until the damage really starts mattering.
What we're left with is a 3/2 menace for 3 with a minor upkeep effect, which isn't terrible but probably too slow.
According to tappedout.net, my average cmc is 2.5. But this aside, the point of Sin Prodder isn't to give me cards persay, so much as get through more of my deck. It allows me to see more cards. Smiley put it best - "drawing excess lands in the late game is detrimental". And this helps to alleviate that problem. lus it comes on a reasonably costed 3/2 with evasion.
Tappedout ignores lands for that calculation. The sum of mana costs is 151 (if I didn't miscount), which is an average of 2.5 when counting only spells but 1.5 overall. The second part is a common mistake people make when evaluating this card. It actually doesn't affect your draw step at all. Taking away a card from the top of the deck doesn't make you draw less lands. You could mill a land and draw a spell instead, but you could also mill a spell and draw a land instead. One way to make this even more obvious is to imagine that the trigger took cards from the bottom of the deck instead of the top. If you are not manipulating your library that would be the exact same thing as it does not.
As for the reasonably costed evasive body, I don't disagree, but I would probably rather have something like Chandra's Phoenix that can deal damage right away and also provide some amount of value. The payoff for 3+ cost cards need to be extremely good to warrant playing something that you need to untap with.
Sin Prodder seems like a trap to me. It's important to understand that as cards are generally more valuable than life, the default is not that you get any card advantage. The default is that your opponent takes damage in your upkeep. How much damage? Looking at 3drinks recent list, the average mana cost of the deck is around 1.5. This means that effectively, the best case is "At the beginning of your upkeep, deal 1.5 damage to your opponent". But, it's even worse than that, because if you reveal a high casting cost card like a Fireblast or Flametongue Kavu, the opponent is still given the choice of letting you have the card instead. Just like with Vexing Devil, the opponent will take damage to gain card advantage, until the damage really starts mattering.
What we're left with is a 3/2 menace for 3 with a minor upkeep effect, which isn't terrible but probably too slow.
Okay, so I have to ask the question...If you cut the brushlands and add more fetches, potentially to 7. You have 4 Temples, 2 basic's and a dryad arbor to fetch? I am cutting the Thickets for brushlands (only because I don't have them).
What's everybody's opinion on creature totals?
Personally I run 8 fetch lands with just 2 Temple Garden, 2 basics and Dryad Arbor. Running out of fetchable lands isn't really an issue as by the time this happens you already have 4 lands in play with 3 of each color (plus arbor). Sometimes you will have a fetch land and nothing to get, but it's unlikely that you need the mana at that point. The only time it's an actual issue is when you are up against someone running land destruction such as the RW Boom/Bust deck or if someone draws 3+ Fulminator Mages/Spreading Seas. With BGx decks being almost completely gone from this current meta and Dryad Arbor being awful against UW eldrazi I could consider switching 2 fetches for Temple Gardens to save some life.
There's not much to say regarding creature totals really. I think everyone agrees that just the 8 hexproof creatures isn't enough so we fill out with 3-4 others, most commonly Kor Spiritdancer. Combined with the Dryad Arbor fetching, this seems to be enough.
Storm folds pretty hard to Leyline--empty the warrens is usually not good enough to beat a lifelinking bogle.
Storm will always bring in Echoing Truth and when going off they can typically draw their entire deck to find it and bounce your Leyline(s). Leyline of Sanctity is not a recommended sideboard card against Storm, it's better to have cards that stop them from going off, like Rest in Peace, enchantment removal for Ascension and even Grafdigger's Cage for Past in Flames.
Sunpetal Grove for the Thicket. You can also fetch for Canopy Vista but you will need to run more basics if that's the case.
Lands that cannot be used to play a Bogle on turn 1 are really sub-par in this deck. Playing a Bogle on turn 2 because of land problems sucks because the deck is already fragile enough. What we have available is pretty much:
Generally if you don't have Horizon Canopy you fill up the slots by including more Temple Gardens and fetches. Same goes for Razorverge Thickets, though the problem is shocks/fetches aren't exactly budget. If you don't have enough fetches you can use a couple of Brushland/City/Confluence, but the damage adds up fast if you use too many. I wouldn't really run the deck unless you have at least a couple of Temple Gardens and the Windswept Heaths.
Best card against living end that I found is Wheel of Sun and Moon (Cast on your opponent). It is also at least somewhat useful in general against many other decks.
Wheel of Sun and Moon is vastly inferior to Rest in Peace as it does not remove creatures that are already in the graveyard. If we get a Rest in Peace we are actually quite likely to win the game. Unlike some other decks Bogles will almost never lose to hardcasted dumb creatures, and even if they have a Beast Within they already lost their graveyard and might not have time to rebuild again.
The problem is just that we don't play enough Rest in Peace to draw it reliably.
Out of the 1-drops listed, I definitely think Favored Hoplite is the strongest as it's much more explosive than the others. The prevention effect can also be quite useful against double blocks, and if you want to mix it with Dromoka's Command it gets really juicy. Still, this doesn't get away from the problem that any non-hexproof creature will turn on your opponent's removal. There needs to be a significant upside to counteract this and I don't think any except Kor Spiritdancer has that. If unanswered, Kor Spiritdancer provides both a really fast clock (comparable to 1-drops) and a lot of card advantage. In situations where you only have 1-2 auras you would often prefer Spiritdancer over the hexproof creatures. If you are hit by removal, the Spiritdancer will at least have helped you draw into a hexproof creature. I tried Silhana Ledgewalker in this spot but found it was too slow to be useful as it could no longer dodge discard/counterspells and was too easy for combo decks to race. For example if you are on the draw against a deck where Spiritdancer is bad such as Burn, it's almost impossible to win with Ledgewalker anyway.
I encourage you to test different creatures though, Favored Hoplite is definitely within the realm of possibility.
On a completely unrelated note I also wanted to share my testing results for GP Bologna. All but the first 30 games were played post-Pro Tour.
A win rate of 63.55% is not bad but significantly lower than previous results. In 2015 I had 70.7% over 123 games and in 2014 I had 67.6% over 108 games. It may be that the meta is less favorable, though I also think that Leagues are quite a bit tougher than the 2/8-mans I played previously. The problematic matchups currently seem to be:
Abzan Company - Their increased combo potential instead of goodstuff is bad for us, and the addition of Angel combo makes graveyard hate unreliable. Grafdigger's Cage/Gaddock Teeg help but aren't enough to turn the matchup around.
Infect - Not much to say here, this matchup has always been bad as their clock is too fast. It's hard to put on enough pressure without opening up to a one turn kill. The banning of Twin makes Spellskite a less viable sideboard choice.
GR Tron - I used to think this matchup was decent but surprisingly Newlamog is a problematic new addition. Previously we could shut them out of the game with Stony Silence+Gaddock Teeg but Newlamog gets past all that. The slow prison-like game plan no longer works and I'm not sure in which direction to go. Luckily this seems to have fallen out of the metagame with the rise of Eldrazi.
Living End - Always been a terrible matchup, seem to be on the rise. Rest in Peace is good but doesn't do enough, and now that it doesn't work against Abzan Company it's not as good in the sideboard.
The good news is that the Eldrazi matchup is excellent no matter their colors. A 24-11 record overall and 5-0 vs UW make Bogles a strong choice for the later segments of a tournament where Eldrazi rises from the baseline 15-20% representation to 40-50%. We can also abuse the fact that some people target Eldrazi too much with removal spells and sweepers. Watch out for Ensnaring Bridge and Worship though, Nature's Claim needs to be sideboarded in almost every matchup.
As for the GP, unfortunately I did not register in time and did not get to play.
They tried to make this exact change 7 months ago but after significant push back they said it was a bug and reverted it. Hopefully the same this time, otherwise it should be simple enough to set up a style in Stylish that fixes this readability issue.
It's interesting how Bogles got moved down from Tier 2. This deck is one of the best decks against Eldrazi. Outside of Chalice of the Void, they simply cannot beat us. Not to mention, Bogles is incredibly good in this meta, probably losing only to Infect and Living End. What do you guys think?
MTGSalvation's tiers don't take into account how good a deck is, it's just based on pure representation percentages overall and in day 2/top 8. If too few people play the deck it won't put up the numbers regardless of how good it is. Of course if a deck is super good you would expect people to start playing it, so indirectly it matters to some extent. Still, Amulet Bloom never made it into the tier 1 forum since it was never played enough, even though many considered the deck very overpowered.
I haven't tested specifically against Eldrazi but I've run into it a total of 20 times and managed to win 13.
GR Eldrazi: 5-2
Colorless Eldrazi: 3-1
UR Eldrazi: 1-1
Other Eldrazi: 4-3
So while these sample sizes are obviously way too small to be very useful, I still think it's unlikely the matchups are terrible.
Spirit Mantle: You're correct in that if you already have a Rancor and a Daybreak Coronet, you don't need a Spirit Mantle. You also don't need a Spirit Link and you probably don't even need a Keen Sense. Alas, we can only play 4 each of the best auras and in the end we're left with having to fill up 3-5 spots with the less optimal ones. Which ones you want is a metagame choice. Currently I find Spirit Mantle very useful against the Eldrazi decks and it's also not bad against things like Infect and Affinity. Against pure aggro decks like Burn and Zoo you'd rather have Spirit Link of course. Unflinching Courage I don't really like as the cost makes it vulnerable to discard, counterspells and removal alike. Keen Sense I've never liked as it's slow and often a win more card, it's good against so few decks. Again, this comes down to metagame and to some extent personal preference.
Seal of Primordium: I disagree with maindecking cards that often do nothing at all. In my testing I've also found Seal of Primordium to be very underwhelming in every situation except specifically against Chalice of the Void. The extra mana and sorcery speed is quite a huge disadvantage compared to Nature's Claim/Natural State. Chalice seems to be in decline with UR and GR Eldrazi becoming more popular than colorless, so the advantage against that one card doesn't outweigh the drawbacks IMO.
Path to Exile: Even with Twin gone, this card is key against Infect, Affinity, and Chord decks. It's also very useful against any creature-based aggro deck like Burn and Eldrazi and it's almost never completely dead as virtually every single deck plays creatures you can kill. I don't see a good reason to play less than 4.
Lands: More fetches is generally better. There's little doubt that Razorverge Thicket is better than Brushland. I would be careful with too many white-only lands for the reason you say. Even two Plains is somewhat questionable as it's just so unlikely that you'll be in a position to have all 3 basics to combat Blood Moon. Still, it seems that in this meta we're fetching for Dryad Arbor less frequently than before, so it's not unreasonable to go down to 3 or 2 green fetches in favor of Extra Temple Garden/Plains.
TL;DR: By having a fast draw, opponent not having a fast draw, or opponent drawing the wrong "big spell" for the situation.
Longer version:
Bogles can theoretically goldfish turn 3, though more frequently it's turn 4-5. Tron will often not be able to play something big until turn 4 as they want 1 green land and then 3 Tron lands. They need a very specific draw to have Tron active on turn 3. So, sometimes we will just win before they get anything scary online.
When they achieve Tron, they have a number of big spells but each have weaknesses. They have 3 Wurmcoil Engine that we can kill with Path to Exile and that is often too small to match up against our trampling lifelinking first strike monster (Spirit Mantle lets you ignore it completely). They have 3-4 Oblivion Stone, but that one cost 8 mana to activate right away, and it's not really an auto-win. If you have an umbra the creature survives, you get your Rancors back and you can just reload and be in the same situation. They have 4 Karn, but it cannot kill a Bogle and killing one aura doesn't really slow us down that much. Finally, they have 1-2 Ugin which is the only real trump card that will win them the game every single time it resolves. Still, they only have 1-2 and it costs 8 mana, meaning it cannot be played before turn 4 and even then it's vulnerable to Mana Tithe.
Of course, this makes it sound a bit better than it actually is. Sometimes you will get your Bogle Pyroclasmed and just die, sometimes you relied on an Arbor or Spiritdancer and Karn wrecks you. Sometimes the Oblivion Stone does enough that the next turn's Wurmcoil stabilizes, and so on.
After sideboard we get to bring in Stony Silence, Gaddock Teeg and Nature's Claim. I find that this improves the matchup by a lot. Frequently you can lock them out completely except for some really fringe scenarios like Nature's Claim targeting Stony Silence, Oblivion Stone blows up auras, Pyroclasm kills Teeg and finally they can cast real spells. Stony Silence will also screw with their early artifacts and often keep them from getting Tron. Overall I feel the matchup is quite even, if you have enough sideboard cards and they don't I would even say Bogles are slightly favored.
The thing is, we don't need Spellskite against Burn. It is actually a rather bad card in the Matchup since I am running 4x Leylines in the Sideboard. Besides that, the Matchup favors us a lot since we play 6-8 MB Lifelink Auras and have a pretty fast clock against them. I am still running 1x Spellskite in the SB, don't get me wrong, I think it is a great card. But our Infect matchup is really bad and I want to give her a shot and see, if she can turn things around G2/G3.
Sideboard cards are not about "needing" something, they are about improving as many matchups as possible as much as possible. Looking at your decklist it would seem that against Burn you would optimally want to take out 7 cards: 1 Keen Sense, 2 Spirit Mantle and 4 Kor Spiritdancer. There are only 5 cards to bring in with 4 Leylines and 1 Spellskite. In my opinion, Spellskite is significantly more useful against burn than Kor Spiritdancer, so being able to make that replacement helps the matchup. It's not needed to achieve a >50% win rate, but it will get you extra wins occasionally. Spellskite in the Burn matchup is not primarily about redirecting bolts to the face, it's more often used as a blocker and as a way to protect against Destructive Revelry. Worth noting in this context is that Nature's Claim is reasonable to bring in against burn, but Natural State is not.
I'm not saying you absolutely must have Spellskites, I'm just saying that in general you want your sideboard cards to be useful in more than 4% of the matchups.
Well, one of the reasons I chose the Melira is the fact, that she is about 2e and Spellskite is about 30e. I do have one Spellskite though and will probably put im in the SB as well. She also doesn't die to Nature's Claim and Twisted Image, which is another bonus. And while Spellskite stops all the pump spells, he doesn't stop an Exalted Inkmoth Nexus from attacking. Time will tell what will be better, for now I am going with the Meliras.
There's little argument that Melira is a stronger sideboard card than Spellskite against Infect. It could very well be the strongest sideboard card of all in that matchup. The problem, of course, is that having sideboard cards dedicated to a ~4% deck is a bit questionable. Spellskite is also great in the mirror and against Twin, plus it's pretty decent in some other matches like Burn, Amulet Bloom and even BGx. With Twin and Amulet Bloom removed from that equation, it might make sense to skip the Spellskites, but even then I'm not sure something as narrow as Melira is the best choice.
It seems to me that you have it pretty much figured out. Those matchups are rough and while sideboard cards help you won't always draw them and sometimes they won't do enough. I would be careful about over-sideboarding against these specific matchups. Even if it feels like you play against it a lot, it would have to be a very weird meta for these decks to actually be that prominent. Most likely they won't be more than 10-15% each even in a very specialized meta, and it's very important to maintain your win rates against the remaining 70-80% of the field.
That being said, Ethersworn Canonist is another card that is excellent against both those matchups. Against Storm it's better than RiP/Silence, against Living End RiP is probably still the strongest card.
You're correct in bringing in Stony Silence, from your list I would also bring in Seal of Primordium and Silence. Personally I play 2 Gaddock Teeg in the sideboard which are better than any of those cards, but sideboard space is at a premium and Ad Nauseam by itself is not popular enough to warrant too specific sideboard cards. Depending on your meta you may want to add a few, it's also good against Abzan Company, Elves, Scapeshift, and to some extent Through the Breach and various control decks. Leyline of Sanctity is a trap, as they can easily kill it with Patrician's Scorn when they combo off.
All in all the matchup isn't that bad though. Since it's almost impossible for them to win before turn 4 we can often race them while on the play, and we have a much better sideboard for the matchup. I have won once by lifelinking high enough to survive a Lightning Storm, but I don't think this is reliable enough to be worth keeping the Spirit Link/Unflinching Courage in. Often they will have Laboratory Maniac as a backup win condition.
Tappedout ignores lands for that calculation. The sum of mana costs is 151 (if I didn't miscount), which is an average of 2.5 when counting only spells but 1.5 overall. The second part is a common mistake people make when evaluating this card. It actually doesn't affect your draw step at all. Taking away a card from the top of the deck doesn't make you draw less lands. You could mill a land and draw a spell instead, but you could also mill a spell and draw a land instead. One way to make this even more obvious is to imagine that the trigger took cards from the bottom of the deck instead of the top. If you are not manipulating your library that would be the exact same thing as it does not.
As for the reasonably costed evasive body, I don't disagree, but I would probably rather have something like Chandra's Phoenix that can deal damage right away and also provide some amount of value. The payoff for 3+ cost cards need to be extremely good to warrant playing something that you need to untap with.
What we're left with is a 3/2 menace for 3 with a minor upkeep effect, which isn't terrible but probably too slow.
Personally I run 8 fetch lands with just 2 Temple Garden, 2 basics and Dryad Arbor. Running out of fetchable lands isn't really an issue as by the time this happens you already have 4 lands in play with 3 of each color (plus arbor). Sometimes you will have a fetch land and nothing to get, but it's unlikely that you need the mana at that point. The only time it's an actual issue is when you are up against someone running land destruction such as the RW Boom/Bust deck or if someone draws 3+ Fulminator Mages/Spreading Seas. With BGx decks being almost completely gone from this current meta and Dryad Arbor being awful against UW eldrazi I could consider switching 2 fetches for Temple Gardens to save some life.
There's not much to say regarding creature totals really. I think everyone agrees that just the 8 hexproof creatures isn't enough so we fill out with 3-4 others, most commonly Kor Spiritdancer. Combined with the Dryad Arbor fetching, this seems to be enough.
Storm will always bring in Echoing Truth and when going off they can typically draw their entire deck to find it and bounce your Leyline(s). Leyline of Sanctity is not a recommended sideboard card against Storm, it's better to have cards that stop them from going off, like Rest in Peace, enchantment removal for Ascension and even Grafdigger's Cage for Past in Flames.
Lands that cannot be used to play a Bogle on turn 1 are really sub-par in this deck. Playing a Bogle on turn 2 because of land problems sucks because the deck is already fragile enough. What we have available is pretty much:
Horizon Canopy
Razorverge Thicket
Temple Garden
Windswept Heath
Other Green Fetches
Other White Fetches
Brushland
City of Brass/Mana Confluence
Generally if you don't have Horizon Canopy you fill up the slots by including more Temple Gardens and fetches. Same goes for Razorverge Thickets, though the problem is shocks/fetches aren't exactly budget. If you don't have enough fetches you can use a couple of Brushland/City/Confluence, but the damage adds up fast if you use too many. I wouldn't really run the deck unless you have at least a couple of Temple Gardens and the Windswept Heaths.
Also see this post from a while ago: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/developing-competitive-modern/220251-g-w-auras-bogle?page=46#c1155
Wheel of Sun and Moon is vastly inferior to Rest in Peace as it does not remove creatures that are already in the graveyard. If we get a Rest in Peace we are actually quite likely to win the game. Unlike some other decks Bogles will almost never lose to hardcasted dumb creatures, and even if they have a Beast Within they already lost their graveyard and might not have time to rebuild again.
The problem is just that we don't play enough Rest in Peace to draw it reliably.
I encourage you to test different creatures though, Favored Hoplite is definitely within the realm of possibility.
On a completely unrelated note I also wanted to share my testing results for GP Bologna. All but the first 30 games were played post-Pro Tour.
A win rate of 63.55% is not bad but significantly lower than previous results. In 2015 I had 70.7% over 123 games and in 2014 I had 67.6% over 108 games. It may be that the meta is less favorable, though I also think that Leagues are quite a bit tougher than the 2/8-mans I played previously. The problematic matchups currently seem to be:
The good news is that the Eldrazi matchup is excellent no matter their colors. A 24-11 record overall and 5-0 vs UW make Bogles a strong choice for the later segments of a tournament where Eldrazi rises from the baseline 15-20% representation to 40-50%. We can also abuse the fact that some people target Eldrazi too much with removal spells and sweepers. Watch out for Ensnaring Bridge and Worship though, Nature's Claim needs to be sideboarded in almost every matchup.
As for the GP, unfortunately I did not register in time and did not get to play.
See http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/community-forums/community-discussion/forum-software-feedback-and-bug/615519-forum-updates-july-1-9-mobile-info-feedback?page=2#c27
MTGSalvation's tiers don't take into account how good a deck is, it's just based on pure representation percentages overall and in day 2/top 8. If too few people play the deck it won't put up the numbers regardless of how good it is. Of course if a deck is super good you would expect people to start playing it, so indirectly it matters to some extent. Still, Amulet Bloom never made it into the tier 1 forum since it was never played enough, even though many considered the deck very overpowered.
I haven't tested specifically against Eldrazi but I've run into it a total of 20 times and managed to win 13.
GR Eldrazi: 5-2
Colorless Eldrazi: 3-1
UR Eldrazi: 1-1
Other Eldrazi: 4-3
So while these sample sizes are obviously way too small to be very useful, I still think it's unlikely the matchups are terrible.
Seal of Primordium: I disagree with maindecking cards that often do nothing at all. In my testing I've also found Seal of Primordium to be very underwhelming in every situation except specifically against Chalice of the Void. The extra mana and sorcery speed is quite a huge disadvantage compared to Nature's Claim/Natural State. Chalice seems to be in decline with UR and GR Eldrazi becoming more popular than colorless, so the advantage against that one card doesn't outweigh the drawbacks IMO.
Path to Exile: Even with Twin gone, this card is key against Infect, Affinity, and Chord decks. It's also very useful against any creature-based aggro deck like Burn and Eldrazi and it's almost never completely dead as virtually every single deck plays creatures you can kill. I don't see a good reason to play less than 4.
Lands: More fetches is generally better. There's little doubt that Razorverge Thicket is better than Brushland. I would be careful with too many white-only lands for the reason you say. Even two Plains is somewhat questionable as it's just so unlikely that you'll be in a position to have all 3 basics to combat Blood Moon. Still, it seems that in this meta we're fetching for Dryad Arbor less frequently than before, so it's not unreasonable to go down to 3 or 2 green fetches in favor of Extra Temple Garden/Plains.
TL;DR: By having a fast draw, opponent not having a fast draw, or opponent drawing the wrong "big spell" for the situation.
Longer version:
Bogles can theoretically goldfish turn 3, though more frequently it's turn 4-5. Tron will often not be able to play something big until turn 4 as they want 1 green land and then 3 Tron lands. They need a very specific draw to have Tron active on turn 3. So, sometimes we will just win before they get anything scary online.
When they achieve Tron, they have a number of big spells but each have weaknesses. They have 3 Wurmcoil Engine that we can kill with Path to Exile and that is often too small to match up against our trampling lifelinking first strike monster (Spirit Mantle lets you ignore it completely). They have 3-4 Oblivion Stone, but that one cost 8 mana to activate right away, and it's not really an auto-win. If you have an umbra the creature survives, you get your Rancors back and you can just reload and be in the same situation. They have 4 Karn, but it cannot kill a Bogle and killing one aura doesn't really slow us down that much. Finally, they have 1-2 Ugin which is the only real trump card that will win them the game every single time it resolves. Still, they only have 1-2 and it costs 8 mana, meaning it cannot be played before turn 4 and even then it's vulnerable to Mana Tithe.
Of course, this makes it sound a bit better than it actually is. Sometimes you will get your Bogle Pyroclasmed and just die, sometimes you relied on an Arbor or Spiritdancer and Karn wrecks you. Sometimes the Oblivion Stone does enough that the next turn's Wurmcoil stabilizes, and so on.
After sideboard we get to bring in Stony Silence, Gaddock Teeg and Nature's Claim. I find that this improves the matchup by a lot. Frequently you can lock them out completely except for some really fringe scenarios like Nature's Claim targeting Stony Silence, Oblivion Stone blows up auras, Pyroclasm kills Teeg and finally they can cast real spells. Stony Silence will also screw with their early artifacts and often keep them from getting Tron. Overall I feel the matchup is quite even, if you have enough sideboard cards and they don't I would even say Bogles are slightly favored.
Sideboard cards are not about "needing" something, they are about improving as many matchups as possible as much as possible. Looking at your decklist it would seem that against Burn you would optimally want to take out 7 cards: 1 Keen Sense, 2 Spirit Mantle and 4 Kor Spiritdancer. There are only 5 cards to bring in with 4 Leylines and 1 Spellskite. In my opinion, Spellskite is significantly more useful against burn than Kor Spiritdancer, so being able to make that replacement helps the matchup. It's not needed to achieve a >50% win rate, but it will get you extra wins occasionally. Spellskite in the Burn matchup is not primarily about redirecting bolts to the face, it's more often used as a blocker and as a way to protect against Destructive Revelry. Worth noting in this context is that Nature's Claim is reasonable to bring in against burn, but Natural State is not.
I'm not saying you absolutely must have Spellskites, I'm just saying that in general you want your sideboard cards to be useful in more than 4% of the matchups.
There's little argument that Melira is a stronger sideboard card than Spellskite against Infect. It could very well be the strongest sideboard card of all in that matchup. The problem, of course, is that having sideboard cards dedicated to a ~4% deck is a bit questionable. Spellskite is also great in the mirror and against Twin, plus it's pretty decent in some other matches like Burn, Amulet Bloom and even BGx. With Twin and Amulet Bloom removed from that equation, it might make sense to skip the Spellskites, but even then I'm not sure something as narrow as Melira is the best choice.