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Magic: The Gathering’s collaboration with Avatar will not become widely available before the end of the week, however after pre-releases over the last few days, one cheap green card saw a sharp rise in price.

Throughout the spoiler season, this small creature drew a lot of attention. A creature with stats 2/2 requiring one green and one colorless mana, it features the Earthbend 1 ability (arguably the most effective among the elemental mechanics available). Its key advantage with this card lies in an additional effect: Each time a creature is tapped to produce mana, it provides bonus green mana.

At its cheapest, Badgermole Cub was available below $30. Following the early events, yet, the market price escalated to $49.66 and one seller offering priced at sixty dollars. The reason for such high costs on this adorable card? Mostly thanks to the incredible mana acceleration it can produce.

Upon entering the board, Badgermole Cub converts a land so it becomes a creature that has earthbending. And with that second ability, while it remains on the board, those lands yields two mana instead of one — plus other creatures you have which tap for mana.

An ideal partner for synergy includes Llanowar Elves, a cheap 1/1 which can be tapped for one green mana. However numerous alternative mana dorks out there. Druid of the Cowl is a more expensive alternative that’s a 1/3 costing two mana in comparison.

Using land cards, creatures that tap for mana, and Badgermole Cub, it's simple to summon a very big pricey monster on the battlefield by round three or four. Momentum builds exponentially with continued aggression from that point.

If you dip into a secondary color using this method, options such as these mana-fixing creatures are excellent picks which produce all five colors. And something like a useful enchantment creature lets you play another terrain each turn AND turns every land you control into every basic land type. You can also consider for example a card called A Realm Reborn, at a six-mana investment gives each permanent you control the ability to produce a mana of any type — which covers any creature under your control.

Badgermole Cub may be OP regarding ramping up your mana generation, however what closes out the game for a deck like this? An often-seen solution has been Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Its stats are set by the number of lands you control, plus it turns all of your nontoken creatures into Forests along with their other types. In other words, all your creatures you control may produce double green if used for mana.

Harmonious Grovestrider is another expensive, beefy creature which gains from a high land count (similar to Ashaya, its power and toughness are equal to the number of lands you control).

Nissa works perfectly as a staple. Her static effect causes all Forests produce extra green. (Combined with earthbend, that means all earthbend forests produce triple green.) Her plus ability functions like a proto-earthbend, adding counters on a land, handy though it doesn't stack with earthbend. The minus ability, though, makes each land you control unbreakable and allows you to search for every Forest left from your library. Should you manage to use that ability, it almost certainly game over.

The cub is nearly mandatory for all decks using green and Avatar that use earthbend. If you dip into Gruul colors, there’s this legendary card. It possesses earthbend 4, and when it hits a player in combat, all land creatures become untapped and can attack again. While that version is a beloved leader, the cub is definitely going to remain among the top, possibly the desired card from this expansion.