Retether

As some of you may know, I’m a big fan of SaffronOlive over at MTGGoldfish. He’s a brewer who is not afraid to do the weird stuff. While I was working on my last article, SaffronOlive posted his own about cards in Planar Chaos that he believes have Modern playability. I took this as a challenge, and I’m going to tackle his number one pick: Retether.

The Card

Retether is a Sorcery that reanimates all Creature-affecting Auras in our Graveyard. That’s pretty powerful if we do it right. SaffronOlive rightly points out that a Bogles build is the way to go with this idea, but where he seemed to be heading in a more traditional White-Green direction, I’ve decided to go down a White-Blue path. We’ll be playing three copies of Retether to ensure we draw it by turn four or five.

The Creatures

Bogles wouldn’t be Bogles without some Bogles, right? We’re packing a playset of Slippery Bogles. These little guys are Hexproof which makes them difficult to deal with unless our opponents have board wipes or the ability to make us discard. It makes them the second best thing we can attach our Auras to.

The absolute best Creature to stick an Aura on is Invisible Stalker. For one more mana than the Bogle, we gain Unblockable, which seems really nice. Nothing is worse than your opponent chump blocking your giant Bogle forever. Invisible Stalker gets around that problem. We are, of course, running the full four copies.

And that is it for creatures. We have no more. What we do have is a lot of Auras. Let’s talk about those.

The Auras

 

We’ve got some Auras in this deck that will seem familiar if you know the basic Bogles build. The reason for that is I want to have some play against decks with Graveyard hate. We’re not all in on the reanimation plan, and can function as a normal Bogles deck. Daybreak Coronet and Ethereal Armor are usually your payoff cards, and our deck will be little different. Both are incredibly powerful and are better with more Auras. These are a no-brainer for inclusion in this version of the deck, and we are playing four copies of each.

 

We’ve also got Hyena Umbra and Cartouche of Solidarity. These are not only cheap, at one mana each, but they also offer some protection. Hyena Umbra keeps our Creatures from dying to board wipes by sacrificing itself for the team. Cartouche of Solidarity protects from sacrifice effects by giving us a Warrior token that we can throw under that particular bus. These may not be as flashy as our other Auras, but they are very important. We’re running three copies of each of these.

 

Our last pair of Auras are the reason we’re playing Retether. These are more expensive than we might otherwise be able to cast, so we want to get them into our Graveyard at our earliest convenience. We’re talking about Corrupted Conscience and Eldrazi Conscription. Conscription turns our unassuming Bogles and Invisible Stalkers into hulking murder machines by giving them +10/+10, Trample, and Annihilator 2. Corrupted Conscience is not as overwhelmingly powerful, but it does have a few nasty tricks in store. When it enchants a Creature, we gain control of that Creature and it gets Infect. We don’t necessarily need to enchant our opponent’s creatures, for instance if we have a large enough Invisible Stalker to Poison our opponent in one swing, but the option is open. We’re only playing two copies of these Auras because they are so expensive, but we do have ways of making sure we get them where we need them.

The Support

Getting Auras in the Graveyard is the name of the game. To that end we are running four copies of Thought Scour, which should only be used to put our own cards in the Graveyard. We need to fuel Retether as best we can.

Speaking of the best we can: Gifts Ungiven, due to a quirk of wording, will let us search our library for our two high-casting cost Auras and deposit them straight into our Graveyard. We’ll be running three copies.

Two copies of Path To Exile round out our mainboard spells. If our opponent drops something big, we want to at least have a couple ways to deal with it, and Path is super efficient.

The Lands

We’re in two colors with a low curve, so our mana base is pretty simple. We’ve got the usual Flooded Strand and Hallowed Fountain combination for perfect mana. Glacial Fortress and Seachrome Coast will also do nicely to ensure we have our colors. Four copies of all of the above and an additional two Plains and two Islands mean that we shouldn’t have too many mana troubles.

Our last land is Geier Reach Sanitarium. This doesn’t help us cast our spells very well, being that it only produces colorless mana. What it does is let us discard our expensive Auras so they don’t get stuck in our hands. The lack of colored mana, and the fact that this land is Legendary, mean that we will only be running two copies.

The Sideboard

 

In order to protect our combo, we want our Sideboard to be a bit on the controlling side. To that end, we’re running a suite of counterspells in two copies each of Mana Leak and Stubborn Denial. We need our Creatures and Auras to survive into the mid-game.

We’re also running a full playset of Leyline of Sanctity. This will protect our creatures from sacrifice effects by keeping those effects from targeting us. It also helps out against discard spells and Storm decks.

We’re going to run two copies of Geist of Saint Traft in the event that we need more creatures that hit hard.  Think of his as backup in case a Bogle or Stalker gets hit by a Surgical Extraction or something of that sort.  This ghost has Hexproof, so he fits right in, and he brings an Angel buddy along for the ride.

We’ll also run three copies of Stony Silence against any decks that might bring in Engineered Explosives or Relic of Progenitus, as well as any decks that play Aether Vial. The same goes for Affinity and some Tron variants that play a lot of Artifacts.

Again, we’ll round out our slots with two copies of Path To Exile. It can be absolutely necessary against Death’s Shadow decks, as well as Abzan and Jund.

The Deck

Creatures (8)

• Invisible Stalker x4
• Slippery Bogle x4

Enchantments (18)

• Cartouche of Solidarity x3
• Corrupted Conscience x2
• Daybreak Coronet x4
• Eldrazi Conscription x2
• Ethereal Armor x4
• Hyena Umbra x3

Instants and Sorceries (12)

• Gifts Ungiven x3
• Path to Exile x2
• Retether x3
• Thought Scour x4

Lands (22)

• Flooded Strand x4
• Geier Reach Sanitarium x2
• Glacial Fortress x4
• Hallowed Fountain x4
• Island x2
• Plains x2
• Seachrome Coast x4

Sideboard

• Geist of Saint Traft x2
• Leyline of Sanctity x4
• Mana Leak x2
• Path to Exile x2
• Stony Silence x3
• Stubborn Denial x2

The Conclusion

This could be a pretty fun variant of Bogles. I don’t think it is as powerfully linear as the original, but I think it has the potential to go over the top in a mirror. I also like that the deck doesn’t just lose to Graveyard hate. We can hardcast just about everything up to Eldrazi Conscription (and even that, if given enough time).

A big thank you goes to SaffronOlive for producing quality content that inspires me to attempt shenanigans like this.  He was also a major inspiration in my starting this blog in the first place.

As always, thanks for reading. If you have any cards that you think should see more play than they do, feel free to comment on this post or head over to the Contact Page.