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Magic: The Gathering’s special Avatar expansion won’t hit the general market until later this week, but due to prerelease weekends recently, an affordable green creature experienced a surge in price.

Throughout the spoiler season, Badgermole Cub drew significant interest. A creature with stats 2/2 priced at a single green and one generic mana, the card includes the Earthbend 1 ability (possibly the strongest among the four bending abilities in the set). The major perk in its design is its second ability: Each time a creature is tapped to produce mana, it provides bonus green mana.

At its cheapest, this card sold for $26.98. Following the early events, though, the market price has shot up above $45 including listings as high as $60. Why are we seeing such high costs for this cute lil guy? Mostly thanks to the rapid resource generation it enables.

When it arrives the board, this creature turns one land so it becomes a creature with earthbend. Alongside its mana-doubling effect, if it remains on the board, those lands yields two mana instead of one — along with mana-producing creatures on your side that produce resources.

An ideal partner to combine with includes the classic Llanowar Elves, a low-cost creature that taps to generate one green mana. But numerous other mana generation creatures out there. This particular druid is a higher-cost choice with stats 1/3 for two mana in comparison.

Using land cards, mana-producing creatures, and Badgermole Cub, you may quickly play an enormous high-cost monster on the board within a few turns. Momentum builds rapidly by maintaining dominance from that point.

If you dip into another color using this method, cards like versatile mana producers work perfectly which produce any color of mana. And something like this powerful dryad lets you play one extra land each turn AND transforms your entire land base providing all land types. You can also consider something like a card called A Realm Reborn, which for six mana gives all of your permanents the capacity to tap and generate any color mana — even any creature in play.

Badgermole Cub might seem overpowered in terms of accelerating your resources, but what’s the endgame finisher with this archetype? One obvious and popular answer already is Ashaya. Power and toughness are both equal to the number of lands you control, plus it turns your non-token creatures into Forests along with their other types. This means, every single creature you control can generate two green mana by tapping.

Another creature is a costly, large threat that thrives with many terrain cards (similar to Ashaya, P/T are equal to the number of lands you control).

Nissa, Who Shakes the World works perfectly in this deck. Her passive ability makes all Forests produce extra green. (Combined with earthbend, that means all earthbend forests produce triple green.) Her plus ability is essentially a proto-earthbend, putting +1/+1 counters on terrain, handy though it doesn't stack with the cub's ability. Her -8 ability, on the other hand, grants all of your lands unbreakable and allows you to draw out your remaining Forests in your deck. Should you manage to use this power, it almost certainly you win.

The cub is nearly mandatory in any decks using green and Avatar focusing on Earthbending. By including Gruul colors, consider Bumi Unleashed. It possesses earthbend 4, and if damage is dealt in combat, land creatures are ready again and may attack once more. Although this card has emerged as a popular Commander choice, the cub is definitely going to remain one of the most, maybe the desired card from this expansion.