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Magic: The Gathering’s collaboration with Avatar won’t become widely available before the end of the week, yet after pre-releases this past weekend, one cheap green card saw a sharp rise in value.

Throughout the spoiler season, the earthbending cub attracted widespread focus. A 2/2 priced at one green and one colorless mana, it features the Earthbend 1 ability (possibly the most effective of the four bending abilities in the set). The real boon here is its second ability: Each time mana is generated by tapping a creature, it provides bonus green mana.

At its cheapest, this card sold at around $27. Post-prerelease, yet, the market price jumped above $45 including listings for sale at $60.00. The reason for such high costs for this little creature? Mainly due to the incredible mana acceleration it can produce.

When it arrives the battlefield, the cub converts a land so it becomes a creature granting it earthbend. Alongside its mana-doubling effect, if it stays in play, each affected land produces twice the mana — plus any creatures in your control that produce resources.

An ideal partner for synergy includes this one-mana elf, a cheap 1/1 that produces a green resource. But many other mana generation creatures available. Another option costs a bit more with stats 1/3 costing two mana instead.

By playing lands, dorks that generate resources, plus the cub, it's simple to summon an enormous and very expensive monster into play by round three or four. The situation escalates exponentially if you keep the pressure on from there.

By incorporating an additional hue in this strategy, options such as versatile mana producers are excellent picks that generate any mana color. Another card, a useful enchantment creature lets you play an additional land per turn as well as turns your entire land base so they count as all basics. Another possibility is something like this six-mana enchantment, at a six-mana investment grants each permanent you control the ability to produce one mana of any color — which covers all creatures you have on the board.

This card may be OP in terms of boosting mana production, yet what closes out the game in such a strategy? One obvious and popular answer has been Ashaya, Soul of the Wild. Power and toughness are both equal to how many lands you have, plus it turns all of your nontoken creatures into Forests along with other subtypes. In other words, all your creatures in play may tap for two G if used for mana.

Another creature is a costly, large threat which gains from lots of lands (similar to Ashaya, its power and toughness are based on how many lands you have).

Nissa fits really well as a go-to Planeswalker. One of her abilities allows all Forests tap for one more G. (With a Badgermole Cub, so each one generate three green mana.) Her plus ability functions like an early earthbend, placing counters on a land, a useful effect though it doesn't stack with earthbending. The minus ability, though, grants your entire land base immune to destruction and lets you search for every Forest left in the deck. Once you trigger this power, this typically means game over.

This card is a must-have in any green-based Avatar strategies built around Earthbending. When branching into red and green, you can use this legendary card. It possesses earthbend 4, plus if he deals combat damage to a player, land creatures become untapped for another attack. While that version is a beloved leader, the cub is set to be one of the most, maybe the sought-after card from this expansion.