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MTG’s Avatar crossover set won’t hit the general market until later this week, however due to early access events over the last few days, an affordable green creature saw a sharp rise in price.

Even during previews, this small creature attracted significant interest. This two-power, two-toughness priced at one green and one colorless mana, it features the Earthbend 1 ability (possibly the best within the four bending abilities in the set). The major perk with this card lies in its second ability: If you tap a creature for mana, it provides bonus green mana.

Initially, the card was available at around $27. Post-prerelease, though, its value escalated to nearly $50 and one seller offering for sale at $60.00. What explains premium pricing for this cute lil guy? Mostly due to the incredible mana acceleration it enables.

When it arrives the battlefield, Badgermole Cub transforms a terrain card so it becomes a creature that has earthbending. And with that second ability, if it stays in play, each affected land yields two mana instead of one — plus mana-producing creatures in your control that generate mana.

The obvious go-to for maximum effect would be this one-mana elf, a low-cost creature that produces a green resource. But there are plenty of creatures that make mana in the game. This particular druid is a more expensive alternative a 1/3 creature at a two-mana value as an alternative.

Using land cards, dorks that generate resources, alongside this card, it's simple to summon a very big high-cost threat on the board within a few turns. And things just keep spiraling rapidly by maintaining dominance from there.

If you dip into an additional hue in this strategy, examples including Fuel Tank Feaster, Ilysian Caryatid, and Paradise Druid work perfectly which produce any color of mana. And something like a useful enchantment creature enables playing another terrain each turn AND turns all of your lands providing all land types. It's also worth trying something like the enchantment A Realm Reborn, which for six mana provides each permanent you control the power to be tapped for a mana of any type — which covers all creatures you have on the board.

This card might seem overpowered when it comes to boosting mana production, yet what closes out the game for a deck like this? An often-seen solution has been this legendary creature. Power and toughness are both equal to the number of lands you control, plus it turns all of your nontoken creatures to be Forests along with other subtypes. This means, every single creature on your board is able to produce double green when tapped.

This additional option is a costly, large threat which gains from a high land count (as with the previous card, P/T are based on your land total).

Nissa, Who Shakes the World works perfectly as a go-to Planeswalker. One of her abilities makes Forest lands tap for one more G. (Combined with earthbend, this results in those lands generate three green mana.) One loyalty ability acts as a form of land animation, adding counters to a noncreature land, handy but does not overlap with the cub's ability. Her ultimate, however, makes all of your lands indestructible and lets you search for every Forest left in your deck. Should you manage to use this power, it’s pretty much you win.

This card is pretty much essential for any kind of green Avatar deck focusing on Earthbending. If you dip into Gruul colors, there’s Bumi. This card features level 4 earthbending, and if it hits a player in combat, all land creatures untap and can attack again. While that version has emerged as a popular Commander choice, this small creature is definitely going to remain among the top, possibly the popular pick in the Avatar set.