I am hoping that fixing the meld/flip issue fixes the “ghost” other category in custom categories, where no cards are attached.

I will report back if it doesn’t once it is updated.

Converting mana to life without a card is something wizards will not do again, see phyrexian mana. I think this hypothetical question has been asked and answered.

Basically, just gaining life without impacting the board is not worth going down a card, outside of against very specific matchups where you can buy multiple turns with such a card (which would require it to be more lifegain than what will ever be printed realistically).

The One Ring for example stopped you from losing life with its protection from everything, so that could be seen as a form of lifegain, and it also impacted the board, so it saw play. There's not many lifegain cards that see play outside of ones that stricly counter an archetype, like even Weather the Storm barely sees play and that gains an obscene amount of life vs its obvious target, storm decks.

I don't think any amount is enough, because you are losing out on a card, and not progressing the board at all. It needs to have a reusable ability or something like that to be worth it. There's plenty of cards at 1 mana that gain life multiple times and progress the board state. Soul Sisters, the new power crept energy version, etc.

There is no amount of life that makes a card worth it, but if it was lifegain per mana without being at the cost of a card, I would value it at around 4 life per mana, depending on other factors of course.

Hanweir Battlements  ^{Flip  Meld} seems to have both meld and flip currently, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make it only have meld when I look at the card submission to fix cards.

Thanks, I am not a huge fan of Cultivator Colossus mainly because it needs lands in hand to be useful (often 3+ to be comparable to Titan), and it also doesn't win the game on the spot, at a higher CMC than Primeval Titan, which often will.

If I wanted to avoid surgical more than I already do (Dryad + Analyst can already win on their own), I would probably add Scapeshift or Lumra, Bellow of the Woods back in, but I don't want to add back the second Lotus Field which enables the Scapeshift lines, and with only 1 lotus, lumra is like a colossus basically, really reliant on some outside factors to be good.

Analyst is slightly better mostly because it does its job from the grave, and can be used as ramp early then won with later. I would only run 1 of the graveyard creatures, with my minimalist package right now, and analyst just lines up better into hate and removal.