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Magic: The Gathering’s collaboration with Avatar isn't set to become widely available until later this week, yet due to prerelease weekends over the last few days, one cheap green card experienced a surge in value.

Throughout the spoiler season, this small creature drew widespread focus. A creature with stats 2/2 requiring one green and one colorless mana, it includes Earthbending 1 (perhaps the best of the four bending abilities in the set). The real boon in its design lies in its second ability: Each time you tap a creature for mana, add an additional green mana.

At its cheapest, this card could be purchased at around $27. Post-prerelease, however, its value jumped to $49.66 including listings as high as $60. Why are we seeing such high costs for this little creature? Mostly because of the incredible mana acceleration it enables.

Upon entering the board, the cub turns a terrain card to a creature land granting it earthbend. And with that second ability, while it remains on the board, those lands generates double mana — along with any creatures on your side which tap for mana.

The obvious go-to to combine with includes the classic Llanowar Elves, a cheap 1/1 that taps to generate a green resource. However there are plenty of alternative mana dorks in the game. Druid of the Cowl is a more expensive alternative with stats 1/3 for two mana instead.

Deploying terrain, dorks that generate resources, alongside this card, it's simple to summon an enormous and very expensive creature on the board early in the game. And things just keep spiraling exponentially if you keep the pressure on from there.

By incorporating a secondary color with this approach, examples including versatile mana producers are all great options that can make any mana color. Additionally, this powerful dryad lets you play an additional land per turn AND transforms every land you control into every basic land type. Another possibility is for example this six-mana enchantment, costing six mana gives each permanent you control the capacity to be tapped for any color mana — which covers each creature in play.

This card might seem overpowered in terms of boosting mana production, yet what’s the endgame finisher with this archetype? One obvious and popular answer has been this legendary creature. Power and toughness match the number of lands you control, and it makes each creature you own to be Forests in addition to other subtypes. Essentially, each creature on your board may generate two green mana when tapped.

Harmonious Grovestrider provides a high-cost, powerful body that thrives with many terrain cards (similar to Ashaya, P/T are equal to how many lands you have).

This Planeswalker is an excellent fit as a go-to Planeswalker. Her static effect allows Forest lands generate an additional green mana. (If you have the cub, so all earthbend forests generate three green mana.) Her main ability functions like a proto-earthbend, placing counters on a land, a useful effect but does not overlap with earthbend. Her -8 ability, on the other hand, makes each land you control immune to destruction and allows you to search for your remaining Forests in the deck. Once you trigger this power, it’s pretty much game over.

Badgermole Cub is nearly mandatory for all green Avatar deck built around Earthbending. If you dip into red and green, there’s Bumi. This card features earthbend 4, and when it hits a player to an opponent, all land creatures become untapped for another attack. While that version has emerged as a popular Commander choice, this small creature will surely stay one of the most, maybe the desired card from this expansion.