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the popular card game’s special Avatar expansion will not hit the general market in the coming days, yet due to pre-releases this past weekend, a low-cost green spell saw a sharp rise in value.

Even during previews, the earthbending cub attracted a lot of attention. A creature with stats 2/2 requiring one green and one colorless mana, Badgermole Cub includes Earthbending 1 (perhaps the best of the set’s four “bending” mechanics). The real boon with this card is an additional effect: If you tap a creature for mana, it provides bonus green mana.

At its cheapest, this card sold at around $27. Following the early events, though, the market price jumped to $49.66 and one seller offering priced at sixty dollars. The reason for premium pricing for this cute lil guy? Primarily because of the incredible mana acceleration it provides.

When it arrives the board, Badgermole Cub turns a terrain card into a creature granting it earthbend. Combined with its other power, as long as it stays in play, those lands yields two mana instead of one — in addition to other creatures in your control which tap for mana.

An ideal partner for maximum effect includes the classic Llanowar Elves, an inexpensive 1/1 which can be tapped for a green resource. But numerous creatures that make mana in the game. Druid of the Cowl costs a bit more a 1/3 creature for two mana as an alternative.

Deploying terrain, mana-producing creatures, plus the cub, you can easily get a very big high-cost creature on the battlefield by round three or four. The situation escalates out of control with continued aggression from there.

By incorporating a secondary color in this strategy, examples including Fuel Tank Feaster, Ilysian Caryatid, and Paradise Druid work perfectly that can make all five colors. And something like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove enables playing an additional land per turn AND turns your entire land base providing all land types. It's also worth trying for example this six-mana enchantment, costing six mana provides each permanent you control the ability to produce one mana of any color — even all creatures in play.

This card may be OP when it comes to accelerating your resources, but what closes out the game for a deck like this? One obvious and popular answer is this legendary creature. Its stats match how many lands you have, plus it turns all of your nontoken creatures into Forests along with other subtypes. In other words, every single creature in play is able to produce double green when tapped.

Harmonious Grovestrider provides a high-cost, powerful body that benefits from lots of lands (as with the previous card, its stats are equal to the number of lands you control).

Nissa, Who Shakes the World is an excellent fit in this deck. One of her abilities makes all Forests generate an additional green mana. (If you have the cub, that means those lands generate three green mana.) Her plus ability functions like a proto-earthbend, adding counters on terrain, which is great though it doesn't stack with the cub's ability. The minus ability, though, renders your entire land base unbreakable and allows you to search for all the remaining forests from your library. If you can actually activate that ability, it almost certainly you win.

This card is a must-have in any green Avatar deck that use Earthbending. If you dip into Gruul colors, you can use this legendary card. It possesses earthbend 4, and if damage is dealt to an opponent, land creatures are ready again for another attack. While that version has emerged as a beloved leader, the cub is definitely going to remain one of the most, maybe the popular pick in the Avatar set.