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Magic: The Gathering’s Avatar crossover set will not become widely available before the end of the week, yet after prerelease weekends recently, one cheap green card saw a sharp rise in price.

Throughout the spoiler season, Badgermole Cub drew significant interest. A creature with stats 2/2 that costs one green and one colorless mana, Badgermole Cub has level 1 earthbending (arguably the most effective of the four bending abilities in the set). The real boon in its design comes from its second ability: Whenever you tap a creature for mana, add an additional green mana.

At its cheapest, Badgermole Cub could be purchased at around $27. Post-prerelease, however, the going rate has shot up to nearly $50 including listings for sale at $60.00. What explains Vivi prices for this little creature? Primarily because of the rapid resource generation it can produce.

Upon entering the battlefield, the cub converts a land to a creature land that has earthbending. And with that second ability, while it remains on the board, every earthbent land yields two mana instead of one — plus any creatures in your control that generate mana.

The obvious go-to for maximum effect is this one-mana elf, a low-cost creature that produces G mana. However there are plenty of other mana generation creatures available. Another option is a higher-cost choice that’s a 1/3 costing two mana instead.

Deploying terrain, mana-producing creatures, and Badgermole Cub, you can easily get a massive high-cost creature on the battlefield early in the game. And things just keep spiraling exponentially by maintaining dominance from there.

If you dip into another color using this method, examples including versatile mana producers are excellent picks which produce all five colors. And something like this powerful dryad enables playing another terrain each turn AND transforms your entire land base providing all land types. It's also worth trying something like the enchantment A Realm Reborn, at a six-mana investment grants each permanent you control the ability to tap and generate one mana of any color — even any creature in play.

This card may be OP in terms of accelerating your resources, however how do you win in such a strategy? A common and powerful choice has been this legendary creature. Power and toughness match how many lands you have, and it changes each creature you own to be Forests as well as their other types. This means, each creature in play is able to tap for two G when tapped.

Another creature is another expensive, beefy creature that thrives with a high land count (like Ashaya, its power and toughness are based on how many lands you have).

Nissa works perfectly in this deck. Her passive ability allows Forest lands generate an additional green mana. (With a Badgermole Cub, so all earthbend forests generate three green mana.) Her main ability is essentially a proto-earthbend, putting +1/+1 counters on a land, handy but it isn't redundant with the cub's ability. The minus ability, on the other hand, grants all of your lands unbreakable enabling you to draw out every Forest left from your library. Once you trigger the ultimate, it almost certainly you win.

The cub is nearly mandatory for any kind of green Avatar deck focusing on Earthbending. By including red and green, consider Bumi Unleashed. This card features level 4 earthbending, and if damage is dealt to a player, each animated land untap and can attack again. Although this card is a popular Commander choice, this small creature is set to be one of the most, maybe the popular pick from this expansion.