The Living Pet Deck - Foreword
A couple of months ago, I was on Scryfall looking through legendary creatures to find one for an UN commander when I came across a card from the Unknown Event featured at MagicCons. As soon as I read the card, I knew it was the one. That card is “The Beleaguered Boxer”.
The Beleaguered Boxer is a 5-color (WUBRG) 6/6 Human Warrior that reads:
“The Beleaguered Boxer can’t be your Commander unless your deck is 100 cards and originally built out of no more than 36 booster backs, plus basic lands.
When The Beleaguered Boxer enters the battlefield, open a Magic booster pack. Remove up to three cards in your hand or graveyard from your deck permanently. For each card removed this way, add a card from that pack to your hand. Those cards are now permanently part of your deck.”
THIS IS AMAZING! Using this card allows a person to play like the Yu-Gi-Oh! video games of old or the now failed Magic League format, without having to convince a group of people to join. All that is required is allowing this singular UN-card in the pod (and maybe a few more but that’ll be talked about later).
There are two other points about this card that I’d like to mention. The first is that playing this card means I’ll be buying sealed product from my local game store (lgs) or wherever I play for years to come. It may not be much, but supporting play spaces in even a small way feels good. The second point I want to briefly touch on is with the format of Commander itself. I hope that by having people see this deck, people will pause for even a half a second longer before responding to questions about brackets, play styles, what casual means and others. EDH is no longer a side format where you get to play with rares just sitting in your binder or old favourites you wish you could cast again. EDH is now the main way to engage with the game. I feel as though definitions and philosophies across the greater community haven’t been able to catch up with the growth of and influx of people into the format.
Anyways, back to this deck and the fun planed to come with it. Everything about and for it is planned to be a collection of its own; the cards and accessories will be kept separate from everything else I have. Long term, all accessories will be custom but for now I’m working on a quick sleeve design that’ll be ordered from Dragon Shield. Also planned is to record and track the growth, journey, and evolution of this deck. This will take form in updates to this Blog and videos as well. Since you’re here reading this, you can see that I’ve already started (*insert big grin here*). The most exciting or thrilling idea for this deck is date stamping every single card. I’ll be ordering a custom date stamp to stamp every card when it is entered or removed from the list. Be it a bulk common or an elusive 1 in X cases, its getting a stamp! Crazy? Mayhaps, but being able to see the “age” of a card when played is cool and will contribute to the deck feeling alive.
What is the stage is this project in currently? Still in prep. I don’t know yet how the initial list will be constructed. Do I buy a booster box, multiple collector boxes? Should I go a la catre and get a variety of loose packs? I could also get a collector boxes and loose packs. There are so many possibilities. Also to figure; assuming I don’t get enough lands in all the packs, what basics should i use? The plan is to replace them as soon as able. The initial build of this deck is planned to be in January 2026.
Let me know your thoughts and ideas. You can comment here or on this really bad YouTube video. I appreciate you reading this and hope to you join following this adventure.
