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the popular card game’s special Avatar expansion won’t get a wider release in the coming days, but after early access events recently, an affordable green creature saw a sharp rise in market worth.

Throughout the spoiler season, the earthbending cub attracted a lot of attention. A creature with stats 2/2 priced at a single green and one generic mana, the card has Earthbending 1 (possibly the strongest of the set’s four “bending” mechanics). Its key advantage in its design is an additional effect: If mana is generated by tapping a creature, add an additional green mana.

At its cheapest, the card could be purchased for $26.98. After the pre-release weekend, however, the going rate jumped above $45 with at least one listed for sale at $60.00. Why are we seeing such high costs for this cute lil guy? Mainly because of the rapid resource generation it can produce.

As it hits play, Badgermole Cub transforms a terrain card into a creature granting it earthbend. Alongside its mana-doubling effect, as long as it is not removed, those lands produces twice the mana — plus mana-producing creatures in your control that produce resources.

A clear choice to combine with would be this one-mana elf, a cheap 1/1 that produces a green resource. Yet numerous creatures that make mana available. Druid of the Cowl costs a bit more that’s a 1/3 costing two mana instead.

Deploying terrain, mana-producing creatures, alongside this card, you can easily get a massive and very expensive monster on the battlefield within a few turns. Momentum builds exponentially by maintaining dominance from that point.

If you dip into a secondary color with this approach, cards like Fuel Tank Feaster, Ilysian Caryatid, and Paradise Druid are all great options that generate any mana color. And something like a useful enchantment creature lets you play one extra land every round AND turns your entire land base into every basic land type. Another possibility is such as a card called A Realm Reborn, at a six-mana investment grants all of your permanents the capacity to produce one mana of any color — including any creature in play.

The cub could be too strong regarding boosting mana production, but what closes out the game for a deck like this? A common and powerful choice has been this legendary creature. Its power and toughness match your land count, plus it turns all of your nontoken creatures into Forests in addition to other subtypes. This means, each creature on your board may generate two green mana if used for mana.

Harmonious Grovestrider is another expensive, beefy creature which gains from a high land count (as with the previous card, its power and toughness match your land total).

Nissa works perfectly as a go-to Planeswalker. Her passive ability causes Forest lands generate an additional green mana. (If you have the cub, so those lands produce triple green.) One loyalty ability acts as an early earthbend, adding counters to a noncreature land, handy though it doesn't stack with the cub's ability. Her ultimate, however, renders all of your lands immune to destruction and lets you put onto the battlefield your remaining Forests in your deck. Should you manage to use that ability, it almost certainly the game ends.

This card is nearly mandatory in any green-based Avatar strategies built around earthbend. When branching into red and green, consider Bumi. It possesses earthbend 4, and if it hits a player in combat, land creatures become untapped and can attack again. While that version is a popular Commander choice, this small creature is set to be one of the most, maybe the popular pick in the Avatar set.