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the popular card game’s collaboration with Avatar will not hit the general market until later this week, yet after prerelease weekends recently, an affordable green creature experienced a surge in price.

Even during previews, the earthbending cub attracted significant interest. A 2/2 that costs one green and one colorless mana, it includes the Earthbend 1 ability (perhaps the strongest of the set’s four “bending” mechanics). Its key advantage with this card lies in an additional effect: If a creature is tapped to produce mana, add an additional green mana.

At its cheapest, Badgermole Cub could be purchased for $26.98. Post-prerelease, yet, the going rate has shot up above $45 including listings priced at sixty dollars. What explains Vivi prices for this cute lil guy? Mostly due to the rapid resource generation it can produce.

When it arrives the board, the cub transforms a land to a creature land granting it earthbend. Alongside its mana-doubling effect, while it remains on the board, every earthbent land produces twice the mana — in addition to other creatures on your side which tap for mana.

An ideal partner to combine with is this one-mana elf, a cheap 1/1 that produces G mana. However numerous creatures that make mana in the game. Another option is a more expensive alternative a 1/3 creature for two mana instead.

Deploying terrain, mana-producing creatures, alongside this card, it's simple to summon a massive pricey monster into play early in the game. The situation escalates rapidly by maintaining dominance after that.

By incorporating a secondary color with this approach, options such as these mana-fixing creatures are excellent picks that can make any color of mana. Another card, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove allows you to put another terrain each turn plus transforms all of your lands providing all land types. Another possibility is such as this six-mana enchantment, which for six mana gives each permanent you control the power to tap and generate a mana of any type — which covers each creature in play.

The cub may be OP in terms of accelerating your resources, yet what closes out the game with this archetype? A common and powerful choice is Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Its power and toughness are both equal to how many lands you have, and it makes your non-token creatures Forests as well as their other types. Essentially, every single creature in play is able to generate two green mana by tapping.

This additional option is a costly, large threat that benefits from a high land count (as with the previous card, its stats are based on the number of lands you control).

Nissa, Who Shakes the World fits really well in this deck. One of her abilities allows Forest lands generate an additional green mana. (Combined with earthbend, that means all earthbend forests yield three G.) Her plus ability acts as a proto-earthbend, adding counters to a noncreature land, which is great though it doesn't stack with the cub's ability. The minus ability, though, renders all of your lands immune to destruction and allows you to draw out all the remaining forests in the deck. If you can actually activate this power, it’s pretty much game over.

This card is a must-have in any decks using green and Avatar built around the earthbend mechanic. If you dip into red-green, consider Bumi Unleashed. It possesses level 4 earthbending, plus if it hits a player to a player, land creatures become untapped and may attack once more. Although this card is a popular Commander choice, this small creature will surely stay one of, if not the most popular pick in the Avatar set.