Played a game with Sage and Minion. Fun! I opened Sage/Monument, picked up a couple Silvers, but otherwise bought Sages with $3-$4 and Minions with $5+ until the stack was gone. The Sages found Silver or Monument to help me buy Minions faster and cycled to get those Minions in my hand faster. Then when the pile was gone and I was ready to actually use the Minion engine, it turned out to be pretty sweet how Sages would skip over Coppers and Estates to pull additional Minions into my hand. They'd hit Silver or the Monument sometimes, but this was almost never a problem, as more often than not finding an extra $2 got me to the $8 threshold. If not, I'd just use a Minion already in hand to cycle.
The result was that the Sages increased the effective density of my Minions, which in turn increased their effectiveness overall. Snapping up Provinces was easy after that. But what I really appreciated was that it made the Minion stack fun to play. Minions on their own are pretty mechanical, but this made me think a little more about how to play the hands out.