Seems curiously worse than Nantuko Elder. I suggest you either take this down by 1 mana (turning it into a delayed Burning-Tree Emissary) or increase the payoff by 1 mana.

this was meant to be a reference to nantuko elder so i'm glad that's what came to mind!

could be right about the costing, maybe i'll make him a 2/2 with two counters? definitely agree that as it is right now he's not a strong card. hard to reference older cards these days; power creep is a hell of a drug.

EDIT: changed him to 1G like you suggested; not a whole lot of point making him a 2/2 when the goal isn't to attack.

this is probably too complex for common, and likely too powerful

i want a card that interacts with growth counters and also provides a good take on llanowar elves, but this could be a step too far.

Mm. Yes, this will be tricky to balance. A oneoff Llanowar Elves is pretty awful, but ETBing with even two growth counters would be very scary.

Perhaps make it a Wirewood Elf with two growth counters? So it can tap for twice, or once (at which point it's reminiscent of Basal Thrull).

the thing to remember about this set is that this isn't strictly speaking a one-off. there's a lot of enablers in this set, and if you get 4 or so counters on this dude can do some serious ramping

might be right about colorless though