Vampire Cutthroat

Skulk and lifelink make an oddly tidy pair on a one-drop, because each ability shores up the other's weak point. Lifelink wants a creature that connects, and skulk is what keeps this one connecting: a 1/1 can only be blocked by creatures with power 1 or less, which on most developed boards means it slips past everything the opponent has grown. It is not unblockable (a lingering token or a small utility body can still step in front), but the pool of legal blockers shrinks as the game goes long and the opposing creatures big enough to trade have already climbed out of skulk's range. The catch is the same as the gift. A 1/1 swing is one life gained and one dealt, so the card never threatens to take over on its own, and the obvious fix only deepens the problem: pumping its power to drain harder is exactly what hands the opponent a legal blocker, since skulk keys off that same number. The two halves pull opposite directions. Output scales with power; evasion scales inversely with it. That tension is the discipline holding a hard-to-block lifelinker at one mana: it sneaks through most reliably only while it stays small, and staying small caps each connection at a single point of life. The way to compound it is repetition, not size, which puts this at the modest end of the skulk experiment: a creature that pays you a trickle in exchange for staying unthreatening.