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MTG’s special Avatar expansion won’t become widely available before the end of the week, but due to prerelease weekends over the last few days, one cheap green card saw a sharp rise in market worth.

Even during previews, Badgermole Cub garnered significant interest. A 2/2 that costs one green and one colorless mana, it features the Earthbend 1 ability (arguably the most effective within the elemental mechanics available). The real boon in its design comes from its second ability: Whenever a creature is tapped to produce mana, it provides bonus green mana.

Initially, Badgermole Cub was available at around $27. After the pre-release weekend, though, its value escalated to nearly $50 including listings priced at sixty dollars. The reason for such high costs on this adorable card? Mostly thanks to the incredible mana acceleration it provides.

Upon entering the battlefield, this creature transforms a terrain card so it becomes a creature that has earthbending. Combined with its other power, as long as it remains on the board, every earthbent land yields two mana instead of one — along with mana-producing creatures on your side that generate mana.

An ideal partner to combine with would be Llanowar Elves, a cheap 1/1 which can be tapped for a green resource. However there are plenty of other mana generation creatures available. Druid of the Cowl costs a bit more that’s a 1/3 for two mana as an alternative.

Deploying terrain, mana-producing creatures, and Badgermole Cub, it's simple to summon a very big high-cost threat on the board by round three or four. And things just keep spiraling rapidly with continued aggression from that point.

If you dip into an additional hue with this approach, examples including Fuel Tank Feaster, Ilysian Caryatid, and Paradise Druid are excellent picks that can make any mana color. Another card, this powerful dryad enables playing one extra land every round as well as transforms all of your lands providing all land types. It's also worth trying such as a card called A Realm Reborn, at a six-mana investment grants all of your permanents the ability to produce any color mana — including each creature under your control.

The cub might seem overpowered regarding boosting mana production, yet what’s the endgame finisher with this archetype? One obvious and popular answer already is Ashaya. Power and toughness are set by how many lands you have, plus it turns all of your nontoken creatures to be Forests along with their original types. Essentially, each creature you control can tap for two G when tapped.

Harmonious Grovestrider is another expensive, beefy creature that thrives with many terrain cards (like Ashaya, P/T match how many lands you have).

Nissa works perfectly as a go-to Planeswalker. Her passive ability makes all Forests tap for one more G. (With a Badgermole Cub, so each one yield three G.) Her main ability acts as a form of land animation, placing counters to a noncreature land, handy but does not overlap with earthbending. The minus ability, on the other hand, makes each land you control immune to destruction and allows you to search for your remaining Forests in the deck. If you can actually activate that ability, it’s pretty much the game ends.

The cub is pretty much essential for any kind of green-based Avatar strategies that use earthbend. If you dip into red-green, you can use this legendary card. It possesses level 4 earthbending, plus if damage is dealt to a player, all land creatures become untapped and may attack once more. Even though Bumi has emerged as a beloved leader, this small creature is definitely going to remain one of the most, maybe the popular pick from this expansion.