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Magic: The Gathering’s special Avatar expansion will not become widely available in the coming days, yet following prerelease weekends this past weekend, a low-cost green spell experienced a surge in price.

Even during previews, this small creature drew widespread focus. A creature with stats 2/2 requiring a single green and one generic mana, it features level 1 earthbending (perhaps the most effective among the elemental mechanics available). Its key advantage with this card is another power: Each time a creature is tapped to produce mana, add an additional green mana.

When first listed, this card could be purchased at around $27. Post-prerelease, yet, the going rate jumped to $49.66 and one seller offering priced at sixty dollars. What explains premium pricing for this little creature? Mainly thanks to the incredible mana acceleration it can produce.

As it hits the board, Badgermole Cub converts a land into a creature granting it earthbend. And with that second ability, if it remains on the board, those lands yields two mana instead of one — along with mana-producing creatures in your control that generate mana.

An ideal partner to combine with includes this one-mana elf, a low-cost creature which can be tapped for a green resource. But many other mana generation creatures available. This particular druid costs a bit more that’s a 1/3 costing two mana as an alternative.

By playing lands, mana-producing creatures, plus the cub, you can easily get a massive high-cost creature into play by round three or four. Momentum builds out of control if you keep the pressure on after that.

By incorporating a secondary color in this strategy, examples including versatile mana producers work perfectly which produce any color of mana. Additionally, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove allows you to put an additional land each turn AND turns all of your lands providing all land types. Another possibility is such as this six-mana enchantment, costing six mana provides all of your permanents the ability to produce any color mana — including each creature under your control.

Badgermole Cub may be OP in terms of ramping up your mana generation, but how do you win with this archetype? One obvious and popular answer is Ashaya. Its stats are both equal to the number of lands you control, and it makes all of your nontoken creatures into Forests as well as their other types. In other words, each creature on your board may tap for two G if used for mana.

Harmonious Grovestrider is a costly, large threat that thrives with lots of lands (as with the previous card, its power and toughness match how many lands you have).

Nissa is an excellent fit as a go-to Planeswalker. One of her abilities causes every Forest generate an additional green mana. (Combined with earthbend, so all earthbend forests generate three green mana.) Her plus ability functions like an early earthbend, putting +1/+1 counters to a noncreature land, handy but it isn't redundant with earthbend. The minus ability, though, grants all of your lands unbreakable and lets you search for your remaining Forests in your deck. Should you manage to use this power, this typically means you win.

Badgermole Cub is pretty much essential for all green-based Avatar strategies that use earthbend. If you dip into Gruul colors, there’s this legendary card. He has earthbend 4, plus if it hits a player in combat, all land creatures become untapped for another attack. Although this card has become a popular Commander choice, this small creature will surely stay one of, if not the most popular pick in the Avatar set.