In fact, you should wait until you can protect Kudo sufficiently before you play your commander
Your strategy here consists of playing as many cards as you can from exile to create a lot of Treasure and generate some strong mana advantage to play even more cards
The life rider for card drawing was dropped, because the card already had an inherent risk, and it helped make the effect feel more different from the drain (and was less wordy)
Many Cleric creatures have abilities that trigger when other creatures enter or leave the battlefield and will often have some form of lifegain attached to their abilities
In a Two-Headed Giant game, the Beast token can attack or block with a creature controlled by your teammate, even if no other creatures you control are attacking or blocking
(I originally wanted to say Sephiroth as Atraxa since she's the most popular commander, but it's a reality already) The second is how they handle rarity distribution