Evolution Sage – MTG War of the Spark Review

Proliferate on landfall is potentially a very powerful ability, given that playing lands is a thing 98% of decks will generally want to do in most cases. Evolution Sage is a pretty solid body to enable a lot of proliferate shenanigans; while this lacks the set-up of blocks like the Zendikar blocks, it doesn’t stop proliferate on command from making things spicy. Particularly since a lot of planeswalkers come down on or around turn 3 in War of the Spark, enabling Evolution Sage + land on turn 4 to be a Thing. I think that the mediocre body (good for Limited, not as hot elsewhere) is still workable all the same, and Evolution Sage offers a lot for all sorts of counter-heavy or “super-friends” decks.

Constructed: 3.75
Casual: 4.25
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander: 4.13

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Evolution Sage reminds me of a card from Future Sight or Time Spiral, although in either of those sets he’d have had the actual keyword “landfall” rather than having it spelled out. Either way, he follows in those innovative sets’ footsteps in the sense of combining two known abilities to make something even greater than the sum of its parts. He might look innocuous, but will quickly get out of control alongside even one or two creatures with +1/+1 counters. When you have some kind of way to get more than one land into play at once – or an even bigger payoff for those counters, along the lines of Helix Pinnacle or a powerful planeswalker – he looks dangerous and plays even more dangerously. Don’t even get me started on Collective Voyage!

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
EDH/Commander: 4/5