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MTG’s special Avatar expansion won’t hit the general market until later this week, yet following pre-releases over the last few days, one cheap green card has already exploded in market worth.

From the initial reveals, this small creature garnered widespread focus. This two-power, two-toughness that costs one green and one colorless mana, the card includes the Earthbend 1 ability (perhaps the strongest within the elemental mechanics available). The major perk in its design comes from an additional effect: Each time mana is generated by tapping a creature, you gain one extra green mana.

At its cheapest, this card sold for $26.98. Following the early events, however, the market price jumped to nearly $50 including listings for sale at $60.00. The reason for Vivi prices for this little creature? Primarily because of the explosive mana ramping it enables.

Upon entering the board, this creature converts one land to a creature land that has earthbending. Combined with its other power, while it is not removed, each affected land yields two mana instead of one — in addition to mana-producing creatures on your side that generate mana.

An ideal partner for synergy would be Llanowar Elves, a cheap 1/1 that taps to generate one green mana. However many alternative mana dorks out there. Another option is a more expensive alternative a 1/3 creature for two mana as an alternative.

By playing lands, creatures that tap for mana, plus the cub, you may quickly play a very big and very expensive creature into play by round three or four. And things just keep spiraling exponentially by maintaining dominance from that point.

When adding a secondary color using this method, examples including versatile mana producers are all great options that can make any mana color. Another card, a useful enchantment creature lets you play one extra land every round plus transforms every land you control providing all land types. You can also consider such as this six-mana enchantment, which for six mana provides every card you own the capacity to tap and generate one mana of any color — even any creature under your control.

Badgermole Cub might seem overpowered in terms of accelerating your resources, however how do you win for a deck like this? A common and powerful choice is this legendary creature. Power and toughness match the number of lands you control, and it makes your non-token creatures Forests as well as their other types. This means, each creature you control is able to produce double green by tapping.

Harmonious Grovestrider is another expensive, beefy creature which gains from lots of lands (like Ashaya, its power and toughness are equal to the number of lands you control).

Nissa, Who Shakes the World works perfectly as a go-to Planeswalker. Her passive ability causes all Forests generate an additional green mana. (Combined with earthbend, so all earthbend forests yield three G.) Her plus ability acts as a proto-earthbend, adding counters to a noncreature land, a useful effect but it isn't redundant with earthbending. Her -8 ability, though, grants each land you control immune to destruction and lets you search for every Forest left in your deck. Once you trigger that ability, this typically means the game ends.

The cub is nearly mandatory for any kind of green-based Avatar strategies focusing on the earthbend mechanic. When branching into Gruul colors, there’s this legendary card. He has earthbend 4, plus if damage is dealt in combat, land creatures become untapped and can attack again. Even though Bumi is a fan favorite Commander, the cub is definitely going to remain one of the most, maybe the desired card in the Avatar set.