If there’s one thing Elves love [beyond having Hobbits do their dirty work, but that’s another plane entirely], it’s mana. Lots and lots of mana. Enormous, obscene piles of green mana, ready to be converted into an astoundingly large spell, or into many little elves, who will make even more mana. Continuing the trend of “That’s a lot of mana” in the Elf bloodlines is Gyre Sage, a Simic-aligned elf from Gatecrash. This Elf makes green mana equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on it, AND has Evolve, so it fits well in ramp: Cast increasingly bigger dudes to make Gyre Sage increasingly bigger, and also make it produce increasingly stupid amounts of green mana. But another mana-flooding elf doesn’t play so well with it as you might thing: Elvish Archdruid! Pretty much a Priest of Titania and a Lord all in one, Archdruid SHOULD be a good friend to Sage. However, because of that Lordly +1/+1 he passes out to all his Elf buddies, he won’t Evolve a Gyre Sage. As we learned yesterday with Flinthoof Boar, there’s no point that the Archdruid is on the battlefield and NOT pumping up the Sage with his ability. The very second that Archdruid comes down, Sage is a 2/3 from the anthem, meaning that the 2/2 Archdruid won’t trigger Sage’s Evolve. Oh well. You’ll just have to make do with a truckload of green mana rather than a boatload for now!