Ghost-Lit Redeemer

Lifegain with no other text attached has always been the hardest sell in design: a 1/1 that taps for two life is a card asking to be ignored. What keeps this Spirit out of pure-padding territory is the second mode. Channel never asks the card to hit the battlefield at all: you discard it straight from hand for four life, at any time the stack allows. That split is the whole point. The body is the floor, a repeatable two-life tick you can leave on board if a stalled position rewards patience, but the relevant line is usually the discard: pitch a card you didn't want, gain four, and never expose a creature to removal or burn a turn animating something that does nothing. It is the same instinct behind cycling and the discard-for-value cards of its era, the idea that a card stranded in hand should at least buy you something on its way out. The lifegain itself is unglamorous, but the Channel cost is cheap enough that the card never has to be a real draw to earn its slot; it is insurance you can cash whenever the game demands it, and a slow trickle of incremental life when it doesn't. That trade, a body that does nothing exciting paired with an exit clause that does exactly enough, is a cleaner answer to the lifegain problem than most cards of its vintage managed.