Excalibur II Youll need a ton of lifegain support for Excalibur II to be good, as it does absolutely nothing without it (unlike Minwu, White Mage or Aerith Gainsborough)
Second is that the whole stack will be your commander, meaning regardless of which is on top, it will deal commander damage
Notably, it does not matter if Hope wasn't on the battlefield when you gained life , so long as Hope is on the battlefield at the end step, you'll still get the mill trigger
3) Materials and finish are specified, not hand-waved ProxyMTG explicitly states: S33 German black-core cardstock UV coating precision die cutting files enhanced to a minimum of 300 DPI Thats the boring stuff that makes cards feel consistent in sleeves, which is what you actually want
I suggest you keep things simple and get one of the more recent sets