🔗 Share this article

the popular card game’s Avatar crossover set won’t become widely available until later this week, however after pre-releases over the last few days, an affordable green creature saw a sharp rise in price.

Throughout the spoiler season, Badgermole Cub drew significant interest. A 2/2 priced at one green and one colorless mana, the card includes level 1 earthbending (perhaps the most effective within the four bending abilities in the set). The major perk with this card comes from another power: Whenever you tap a creature for mana, you gain one extra green mana.

When first listed, this card could be purchased for $26.98. Post-prerelease, however, the market price escalated to $49.66 and one seller offering as high as $60. The reason for premium pricing for this cute lil guy? Mostly because of the explosive mana ramping it can produce.

When it arrives play, Badgermole Cub converts one land to a creature land with earthbend. Alongside its mana-doubling effect, if it is not removed, every earthbent land produces twice the mana — along with mana-producing creatures you have that generate mana.

The obvious go-to to combine with includes the classic Llanowar Elves, a cheap 1/1 that produces one green mana. However there are plenty of alternative mana dorks out there. This particular druid is a more expensive alternative a 1/3 creature for two mana as an alternative.

Using land cards, mana-producing creatures, and Badgermole Cub, you can easily get a very big and very expensive monster into play early in the game. Momentum builds out of control by maintaining dominance after that.

By incorporating another color using this method, cards like versatile mana producers are excellent picks that can make any color of mana. Additionally, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove allows you to put one extra land per turn plus transforms all of your lands so they count as all basics. You can also consider such as this six-mana enchantment, costing six mana gives every card you own the capacity to produce a mana of any type — including each creature you have on the board.

The cub may be OP when it comes to boosting mana production, however how do you win with this archetype? An often-seen solution is this legendary creature. Its stats are set by how many lands you have, and it makes all of your nontoken creatures into Forests in addition to other subtypes. In other words, every single creature you control may produce double green when tapped.

This additional option provides a high-cost, powerful body that thrives with many terrain cards (as with the previous card, P/T are equal to how many lands you have).

Nissa fits really well in this deck. Her static effect allows Forest lands generate an additional green mana. (Combined with earthbend, that means those lands yield three G.) Her plus ability functions like an early earthbend, putting +1/+1 counters to a noncreature land, which is great but it isn't redundant with the cub's ability. Her -8 ability, on the other hand, makes all of your lands indestructible enabling you to search for your remaining Forests in the deck. Once you trigger this power, it almost certainly game over.

Badgermole Cub is pretty much essential in any decks using green and Avatar focusing on earthbend. By including red-green, you can use Bumi Unleashed. It possesses earthbend 4, and when he deals combat damage to a player, land creatures become untapped and may attack once more. Even though Bumi has become a fan favorite Commander, the cub is definitely going to remain one of, if not the most popular pick in the Avatar set.