Living weapon

Living weapon is a keyword ability for equipment cards introduced in Mirrodin Besieged. It was reused in New Phyrexia, the Commander series and Modern Horizons 2.

Description
When a card with Living weapon enters the battlefield, it creates a 0/0 black Phyrexian Germ creature token and attaches itself to it. Thus Living weapons are themselves creatures until they die or their controller chooses to upgrade a different creature, with the detaching of the equipment and killing the Germ, as it is now a 0/0 creature. Due to state-based effects it is put into the graveyard and ceases to exist.

Future designs
With colored artifacts becoming more often used, equipment design space slowly expanded starting Core Set 2020. Three equipment - Ancestral Blade, Wolfrider's Saddle and Mask of Immolation - have the living weapon text, but on tokens that are otherwise functional creatures. The equipment also hence do not need to be costed to equip a creature-sized boost, expanding design options.

Kaldheim brought forth a cycle with another variation, with a quasi-kicker cost to generate a token and attach it. This puts the control under the player as to whether the token is necessary - some cost less to equip, some cost more, than getting the token.

Another similar equipment design was printed in Commander 2021 with Fractal Harness.

Becoming Phyrexian
Originally, Living weapon created a 0/0 black Germ creature tokens. Starting with Modern Horizons 2, these were errataed into Phyrexian Germ tokens.

Rulings

 * Like other Equipment, each Equipment with living weapon has an equip cost. You can pay this cost to attach an Equipment to another creature you control. Once the Germ token is no longer equipped, it will be put into your graveyard, unless another effect raises its toughness above 0.

Trivia

 * Living Weapon was featured as rules card 3 of 5 in the Mirrodin Besieged set and as rules card 2 of 4 in the New Phyrexia set.