Slippery Bogbonder – Commander 2020 MTG Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Slippery Bogbonder was designed to be a reference to Eventide‘s infamous Slippery Bogle, although it raises some questions – there aren’t any humans on Lorwyn. Did some make their way there somehow, perhaps aided by planeswalkers? Is that creature an example of convergent evolution? Either way, the card doesn’t play too well with its conceptual ancestor, as bogles are much more aggression-oriented and don’t have as much space for answer cards of this type. It makes up for that by going well with big green creatures of all types. If its effect were just countering a removal spell and giving you an additional resilient creature, that might be good enough for some settings, but moving a bunch of counters onto the creature puts a whole new spin on it. Don’t forget that this can now potentially grant additional keywords, post Ikoria.

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
Commander: 3/5

Turning any creature into a Bogle of the slippery kind is an interesting approach, and Slippery Bogbonder lets you give one creature a lot of power by shielding it and pumping it full of counters. Keyword counters are the obvious synergy, but +1/+1 counters also work, and there can be board states where you can use this to secure an alpha strike in one go. Which is pretty powerful in the right hands! That said, it really only shines if you have the means to make it explode then and there; it is a 3/3 with hexproof, which helps it to stave off a rough combat, but friends make it a stronger overall trick. There are definitely times where this can turn a seemingly-innocuous turn into a blowout, so there are certainly uses for this in more fun formats.

Constructed: 2 (not in a great spot in Legacy, but there are things you can do to make this really pop in a pinch)
Casual: 4
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander: 4 (shield your commander and make them an Absolute Unit…sure, why not)