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the popular card game’s collaboration with Avatar will not become widely available in the coming days, yet after prerelease weekends over the last few days, an affordable green creature has already exploded in price.

Throughout the spoiler season, Badgermole Cub garnered widespread focus. A creature with stats 2/2 requiring a single green and one generic mana, it includes level 1 earthbending (arguably the best of the elemental mechanics available). The major perk with this card is an additional effect: Each time mana is generated by tapping a creature, you gain one extra green mana.

At its cheapest, Badgermole Cub was available below $30. Post-prerelease, yet, its value escalated above $45 and one seller offering for sale at $60.00. The reason for premium pricing for this cute lil guy? Mainly due to the explosive mana ramping it can produce.

As it hits play, this creature converts one land to a creature land with earthbend. And with that second ability, while it is not removed, those lands yields two mana instead of one — plus any creatures on your side that produce resources.

A clear choice for synergy is the classic Llanowar Elves, an inexpensive 1/1 that taps to generate one green mana. But numerous other mana generation creatures in the game. Druid of the Cowl is a higher-cost choice with stats 1/3 for two mana as an alternative.

By playing lands, creatures that tap for mana, alongside this card, you may quickly play an enormous and very expensive monster on the battlefield by round three or four. The situation escalates rapidly by maintaining dominance from that point.

If you dip into another color using this method, examples including these mana-fixing creatures are all great options which produce any color of mana. Another card, this powerful dryad allows you to put an additional land every round as well as makes your entire land base into every basic land type. Another possibility is something like a card called A Realm Reborn, costing six mana grants all of your permanents the power to tap and generate any color mana — which covers each creature you have on the board.

Badgermole Cub could be too strong when it comes to boosting mana production, but how do you win in such a strategy? One obvious and popular answer already is Ashaya. Its power and toughness match your land count, plus it turns each creature you own Forests along with their original types. Essentially, each creature in play may generate two green mana by tapping.

Harmonious Grovestrider is another expensive, beefy creature which gains from many terrain cards (similar to Ashaya, its power and toughness match how many lands you have).

This Planeswalker fits really well as a go-to Planeswalker. Her passive ability causes Forest lands generate an additional green mana. (If you have the cub, that means each one yield three G.) One loyalty ability functions like an early earthbend, adding counters to a noncreature land, a useful effect but it isn't redundant with the cub's ability. The minus ability, though, grants all of your lands immune to destruction and allows you to search for all the remaining forests in your deck. If you can actually activate that ability, it’s pretty much game over.

Badgermole Cub is nearly mandatory for any kind of decks using green and Avatar that use Earthbending. By including red-green, consider Bumi. It possesses earthbend 4, and when he deals combat damage in combat, all land creatures untap and may attack once more. Even though Bumi is a beloved leader, the cub is definitely going to remain one of, if not the most popular pick from this expansion.