pokemon card vivillon (193/191) – PokeGuard your opponent’s Active Pokemon is now affected by 1 Special Condition of your choosing. Vivillon | Surging Sparks |

The Hope of Ghirapur is a 1/1 Thopter artifact creature and costs only a single mana, allowing it to reliably be cast during the first turn of each game

That is the idea behind the creature card Risen Reef, which perfectly depicts such an impossible phenomenon

Some of these lifegain cards arent just one-trick ponies

If you cast an X spell without paying its mana cost, perhaps from the effect of Beseech the Mirror, you cant pay anything for and its treated as 0 on the stack

Technically, both cards can do the same theft effect with a small difference: The creature half can exile a card from an opponent's hand, and they pay its mana value to have Valki transform into it

If you have specific questions you can also reach out in the comments, @Draftsim on X, or on Draftsims Discord