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MTG’s special Avatar expansion won’t become widely available until later this week, however following prerelease weekends over the last few days, one cheap green card experienced a surge in value.

From the initial reveals, Badgermole Cub attracted widespread focus. A 2/2 requiring one green and one colorless mana, it includes Earthbending 1 (arguably the best within the four bending abilities in the set). The major perk in its design comes from its second ability: Whenever you tap a creature for mana, it provides bonus green mana.

When first listed, the card could be purchased at around $27. Post-prerelease, however, the market price jumped to nearly $50 including listings as high as $60. Why are we seeing such high costs for this cute lil guy? Primarily because of the rapid resource generation it enables.

Upon entering play, the cub converts a terrain card into a creature with earthbend. Alongside its mana-doubling effect, if it stays in play, those lands produces twice the mana — in addition to mana-producing creatures on your side that produce resources.

The obvious go-to for synergy includes this one-mana elf, a cheap 1/1 which can be tapped for a green resource. But many creatures that make mana available. This particular druid is a higher-cost choice with stats 1/3 costing two mana instead.

Using land cards, creatures that tap for mana, alongside this card, you may quickly play a massive and very expensive creature on the battlefield by round three or four. And things just keep spiraling rapidly by maintaining dominance from that point.

If you dip into an additional hue with this approach, options such as these mana-fixing creatures are all great options which produce any mana color. Another card, a useful enchantment creature lets you play an additional land every round plus makes all of your lands so they count as all basics. Another possibility is for example a card called A Realm Reborn, costing six mana gives all of your permanents the power to produce a mana of any type — which covers each creature in play.

This card may be OP when it comes to boosting mana production, yet how do you win with this archetype? One obvious and popular answer has been Ashaya. Its stats are set by your land count, plus it turns all of your nontoken creatures to be Forests along with other subtypes. Essentially, all your creatures on your board can generate two green mana if used for mana.

Another creature provides a high-cost, powerful body which gains from lots of lands (as with the previous card, P/T are equal to how many lands you have).

This Planeswalker works perfectly in this deck. Her static effect makes Forest lands tap for one more G. (With a Badgermole Cub, so those lands generate three green mana.) Her main ability is essentially an early earthbend, placing counters to a noncreature land, which is great though it doesn't stack with earthbending. The minus ability, though, grants each land you control indestructible and lets you draw out all the remaining forests in your deck. Once you trigger that ability, it’s pretty much you win.

Badgermole Cub is a must-have for any kind of decks using green and Avatar that use earthbend. When branching into red-green, consider Bumi. He has level 4 earthbending, and if damage is dealt in combat, land creatures untap and may attack once more. While that version is a popular Commander choice, the cute little Badgermole Cub is definitely going to remain one of the most, maybe the popular pick in the collaboration.