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the popular card game’s Avatar crossover set won’t get a wider release in the coming days, however due to prerelease weekends recently, an affordable green creature has already exploded in market worth.

Throughout the spoiler season, Badgermole Cub drew a lot of attention. This two-power, two-toughness that costs one green and one colorless mana, it features the Earthbend 1 ability (perhaps the strongest within the four bending abilities in the set). The major perk here comes from its second ability: Whenever you tap a creature for mana, add an additional green mana.

At its cheapest, this card was available for $26.98. After the pre-release weekend, however, its value has shot up to nearly $50 and one seller offering priced at sixty dollars. Why are we seeing such high costs on this adorable card? Mainly because of the rapid resource generation it provides.

As it hits the battlefield, this creature transforms a land so it becomes a creature that has earthbending. Alongside its mana-doubling effect, as long as it stays in play, those lands produces twice the mana — in addition to other creatures in your control which tap for mana.

A clear choice for maximum effect is this one-mana elf, a cheap 1/1 that produces one green mana. Yet there are plenty of creatures that make mana in the game. Druid of the Cowl is a higher-cost choice with stats 1/3 for two mana as an alternative.

Deploying terrain, creatures that tap for mana, plus the cub, you may quickly play a massive and very expensive threat into play within a few turns. And things just keep spiraling rapidly with continued aggression from that point.

By incorporating a secondary color with this approach, cards like versatile mana producers are all great options which produce any color of mana. Another card, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove enables playing an additional land each turn AND transforms every land you control so they count as all basics. It's also worth trying for example a card called A Realm Reborn, which for six mana grants every card you own the power to tap and generate a mana of any type — even all creatures you have on the board.

Badgermole Cub may be OP in terms of accelerating your resources, however what closes out the game for a deck like this? One obvious and popular answer has been Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Its stats are both equal to your land count, and it makes your non-token creatures Forests in addition to their original types. This means, all your creatures you control may tap for two G by tapping.

Harmonious Grovestrider is a costly, large threat that thrives with lots of lands (similar to Ashaya, P/T match the number of lands you control).

Nissa, Who Shakes the World works perfectly as a go-to Planeswalker. One of her abilities makes Forest lands produce extra green. (If you have the cub, this results in those lands produce triple green.) Her main ability functions like a form of land animation, adding counters to a noncreature land, handy but it isn't redundant with earthbend. Her ultimate, though, renders each land you control unbreakable and allows you to put onto the battlefield all the remaining forests from your library. If you can actually activate that ability, it almost certainly game over.

This card is nearly mandatory for all green-based Avatar strategies focusing on the earthbend mechanic. When branching into red and green, consider this legendary card. It possesses earthbend 4, and when it hits a player to an opponent, land creatures are ready again and may attack once more. Although this card has emerged as a popular Commander choice, this small creature is set to be among the top, possibly the popular pick in the collaboration.