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Magic: The Gathering’s collaboration with Avatar will not hit the general market before the end of the week, but after prerelease weekends over the last few days, an affordable green creature experienced a surge in price.

Throughout the spoiler season, the earthbending cub garnered significant interest. This two-power, two-toughness that costs a single green and one generic mana, Badgermole Cub features Earthbending 1 (perhaps the strongest within the set’s four “bending” mechanics). The major perk in its design is its second ability: Whenever you tap a creature for mana, you gain one extra green mana.

At its cheapest, Badgermole Cub was available below $30. Post-prerelease, however, the market price has shot up to $49.66 and one seller offering priced at sixty dollars. The reason for premium pricing for this cute lil guy? Mainly because of the incredible mana acceleration it can produce.

As it hits the board, this creature converts a terrain card so it becomes a creature that has earthbending. And with that second ability, as long as it stays in play, those lands generates double mana — plus any creatures in your control that produce resources.

An ideal partner to combine with would be Llanowar Elves, a cheap 1/1 which can be tapped for one green mana. However there are plenty of alternative mana dorks available. This particular druid is a higher-cost choice that’s a 1/3 costing two mana as an alternative.

Deploying terrain, dorks that generate resources, plus the cub, you may quickly play a very big high-cost monster on the battlefield by round three or four. The situation escalates exponentially with continued aggression from there.

By incorporating another color using this method, options such as these mana-fixing creatures are excellent picks that can make all five colors. Another card, a useful enchantment creature allows you to put an additional land per turn plus makes all of your lands providing all land types. Another possibility is something like the enchantment A Realm Reborn, which for six mana grants every card you own the capacity to be tapped for a mana of any type — even any creature you have on the board.

This card could be too strong when it comes to accelerating your resources, but what closes out the game in such a strategy? An often-seen solution already is Ashaya. Power and toughness are set by the number of lands you control, and it changes all of your nontoken creatures into Forests along with their other types. In other words, each creature you control is able to tap for two G when tapped.

This additional option is a costly, large threat that thrives with lots of lands (as with the previous card, P/T are based on how many lands you have).

Nissa works perfectly in this deck. Her static effect makes every Forest produce extra green. (With a Badgermole Cub, that means each one generate three green mana.) Her plus ability acts as a proto-earthbend, putting +1/+1 counters on terrain, a useful effect but does not overlap with the cub's ability. The minus ability, on the other hand, grants your entire land base immune to destruction and allows you to search for every Forest left from your library. If you can actually activate this power, it almost certainly you win.

This card is nearly mandatory for all decks using green and Avatar built around the earthbend mechanic. If you dip into red and green, consider Bumi Unleashed. It possesses earthbend 4, plus if he deals combat damage to a player, each animated land are ready again for another attack. Although this card has become a popular Commander choice, the cute little Badgermole Cub is set to be one of the most, maybe the popular pick from this expansion.