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MTG’s Avatar crossover set won’t get a wider release before the end of the week, however due to pre-releases this past weekend, one cheap green card experienced a surge in value.

Throughout the spoiler season, the earthbending cub garnered significant interest. A 2/2 priced at G and 1 mana, it includes level 1 earthbending (perhaps the best among the set’s four “bending” mechanics). Its key advantage with this card lies in an additional effect: If you tap a creature for mana, add an additional green mana.

Initially, this card could be purchased below $30. After the pre-release weekend, though, the market price escalated to $49.66 including listings priced at sixty dollars. What explains premium pricing for this cute lil guy? Mainly because of the rapid resource generation it can produce.

When it arrives the battlefield, Badgermole Cub converts a terrain card to a creature land granting it earthbend. Combined with its other power, while it stays in play, each affected land yields two mana instead of one — along with any creatures on your side that produce resources.

An ideal partner for synergy includes this one-mana elf, a cheap 1/1 that taps to generate a green resource. However numerous creatures that make mana out there. Another option is a more expensive alternative that’s a 1/3 at a two-mana value instead.

Using land cards, mana-producing creatures, alongside this card, you can easily get a very big and very expensive monster on the board early in the game. The situation escalates rapidly if you keep the pressure on from there.

When adding another color with this approach, examples including these mana-fixing creatures are excellent picks that can make any mana color. Another card, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove enables playing another terrain each turn as well as turns all of your lands so they count as all basics. It's also worth trying something like a card called A Realm Reborn, at a six-mana investment provides each permanent you control the capacity to tap and generate a mana of any type — including all creatures under your control.

Badgermole Cub might seem overpowered in terms of ramping up your mana generation, but what closes out the game for a deck like this? One obvious and popular answer is this legendary creature. Power and toughness are both equal to how many lands you have, and it makes all of your nontoken creatures to be Forests as well as their other types. In other words, every single creature in play may tap for two G by tapping.

Another creature provides a high-cost, powerful body which gains from a high land count (similar to Ashaya, its power and toughness match the number of lands you control).

Nissa, Who Shakes the World is an excellent fit as a go-to Planeswalker. Her passive ability makes Forest lands tap for one more G. (Combined with earthbend, this results in those lands generate three green mana.) One loyalty ability functions like a proto-earthbend, placing counters on a land, handy but does not overlap with earthbending. The minus ability, though, makes your entire land base indestructible and lets you draw out all the remaining forests in the deck. If you can actually activate that ability, it’s pretty much the game ends.

The cub is a must-have for all decks using green and Avatar built around the earthbend mechanic. By including Gruul colors, there’s this legendary card. This card features earthbend 4, and when damage is dealt to an opponent, land creatures become untapped for another attack. Although this card has emerged as a fan favorite Commander, the cub is set to be one of the most, maybe the sought-after card in the Avatar set.