Avatar’s Freshly-Spoiled Mana Doubler Mimics Top-Tier Simic Commander

Last updated on October 28, 2025

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy | Illustrated by Jason Rainville

It's time for spoiler season! It feels like half of Avatar: The Last Airbender has already been revealed, but it's officially go-time for the last Universes Beyond set of the year. The debut kicked off with a load of awesome spoilers, including all the characters you'd expect to see across multiple cards in the set.

But the strongest card previewed so far isn't even a legendary creature. Instead, it's a mere 2-drop badger mole with an innately busted ability.

Badger, Badger, Badger

Holy moley, look at this little guy! If you completely ignore the mana generation ability for a second, this is already a 2/2 and a 1/1 in one card, which is a nice starting rate. Earthbending turns a land you control into a creature, in this case a 0/0 with a single +1/+1 counter on it, but the land's somewhat insulated from removal since it comes back into play if it's destroyed or exiled (watch out for bounce spells though!). If you're running this out naturally on turn 2, the land you animate will probably already be tapped, so you're likely not using it that turn, so keep that in mind.

Now on to the second ability, which is sort of nuts to see on a 2-drop. It adds an extra whenever you tap a creature for mana, and would you know it, earthbending makes a creature that can tap for mana. So you're getting your standard 2/2 for 2, but also a super-charged Elvish Mystic that taps for . And speaking of Elvish Mystic, this badger mole makes them all twice as effective. A turn-1 Mystic into turn-2 Badger Mole lets you chain into another 2-drop that same turn (perhaps another mole to animate your other land?). An opening hand of Elvish Mystic, two lands, and two Badgermole Cubs generates 9 mana on turn 3, before you hit your third land drop. That's sort of Magical Christmas Landy, but also not totally absurd.

Remember Kinnan?

Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary | Illustration by Michael Sutfin

It's pretty absurd to see this sort of mana generation on a normal, non-legendary everyday 2-drop. It's not quite Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary levels of busted mana generation, but it can still lead to obscenely fast starts.

Compare to Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy from Ikoria. The Simic legend is insanely strong, and the second most popular Simic commander in Magic (the 62nd most popular overall). Its big claim to fame is being a 2-drop mana doubler that also provides a mana sink for its own mana generation, which is totally unreasonable and makes this a feared commander worthy of cEDH tables.

Of course, Kinnan's a few steps above the badgermole here. Kinnan keys off all nonland mana generation, which includes mana rocks, Treasure, etc., while the Cub only doubles mana from creatures. Badgermole also has no outlet for the mana generation, so in situations where you're topdecking or have no use for excess mana, it's just a wimpy 2/2 that brings along a little friend.

However, there are two points in Badgermole's favor. First off, it's not legendary, which means you can copy it without jumping through hoops to enhance your mana generation, and you can play multiples in Constructed formats (not that anyone's really running Kinnan in 60-card Magic). Second, it's a mono-colored card, which just means you can play it in more decks. Badgermole can go in any deck that could run Kinnan and many, many more that Kinnan can't go in. It'll see significantly more play as a result.

It's also Standard-legal, and might pull mono-green decks in a slightly different direction from the beatdown decks based on Tifa Lockhart. It promotes an all-in ramp strategy, which really comes down to what ramp targets you've got in Standard at the moment. Hey, maybe this will be Genesis Wave‘s time to shine? Or maybe Craterhoof Behemoth will finally make its presence known. The Badgermole not only ramps into the ‘Hoof super fast, but it also puts multiple bodies on board to make use of the beast‘s overrun effect.