Last updated on November 26, 2025
Badgermole Cub | Illustration Filip Burburan
Avatar: The Last Airbender has only been out for a few days, but Badgermole Cub is already looking like the best card in the latest Magic set. A two-mana ramp creature that turns your lands into immortal mana dorks and then doubles the mana from every creature you tap? This cub's already a multi-format powerhouse that can quickly take over a match.
If you go by the numbers, it's one of the biggest bombs in TLA drafts. It has also been immediately adopted by Simic Ouroboroid (which was already one of Standard's strongest decks), slots cleanly into Pioneer‘s Mono-Green Devotion, sees play in Modern Yawgmoth lists, shows up in cEDH with Rograkh + Thrasios or Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy in the command zone, and it has even had some showings in Legacy.
The current question now is: Is it too powerful for Standard?
How Badgermole Cub Works
Ouroboroid – Illustration by Samuel Perin
Badgermole Cub is a green 2/2 which costs , and comes with two triggered abilities.
First, it earthbends one of your lands, turning it into a 1/1 creature with haste and that, if killed or exiled, will return to the battlefield.
Then, whenever you tap any creature for mana, you add an additional .
And that's just with Standard creatures and lands!
Badgermole Cub: Multi-Format Powerhouse
Standard – Simic Ouroboroid and Friends
In Standard, Badgermole Cub is one of the biggest threads in Simic Ouroboroid Aggro.
The shell is basically:
- 1-drops: Llanowar Elves, Spyglass Siren, Pawpatch Recruit, and Gene Pollinator
- 2-drops: Badgermole Cub, and Jackal, Genius Geneticist
- Ouroboroid as top end, usually with a couple copies of Tyvar, the Pummeler.
Badgermole Cub is the main engine: It doubles your mana output and allows you to go wide early, and slam your top-end as soon as turn 3.
Pioneer – Mono-Green Devotion
Pioneer Mono-Green Devotion doesn’t need help making mana, but it’s still happily registering four copies of Badgermole Cub. A recent MTGO Challenge list ran the full playset alongside Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, Old-Growth Troll, and Cavalier of Thorns. The Cub functions as yet another devotion body and, like in Standard, a mana-doubler for all your dorks.
Modern and cEDH
Making waves in Standard is one thing, but rocking Modern's boat? That's something very few cards from each set can do. But Badgermole Cub has already helped a Golgari Yawgmoth deck finish second in a 110-player SCG CON LCQ in Las Vegas.
And our cute Cub has also made its way into cEDH. Badgermole Cub usually shows up with either Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy or Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh & Thrasios, Triton Hero in the command zone, but has also gotten good results with Lumra, Bellow of the Woods and Aang, at the Crossroads
Is Badgermole Cub Too Powerful For Standard?
Simic Ouroboroid Aggro, which is where Badgermole Cub shines in Magic's Standard format, is a creature-heavy ramp deck that happens to kill you like an aggro deck.
Badgermole Cub is one of the key pieces that allow Simic Ouroboid to go really wide in just the first two turns, then provides a ton of mana for an explosive third or fourth turn.
And by “explosive”, we're talking about early-game boards like this:
Or like this:
Source: Reddit
Pioneer players are calling it broken, Standard players are calling it insane, and even Modern players are wondering if the Cub was properly tested.
At least right now, Badgermole Cub is, without a doubt, a multi-format powerhouse.
Wrap Up
Llanowar Elves – Illustration by Chris Rahn
Badgermole Cub is indeed the kind of card that gets Magic players talking: It's objectively good, and it can create some really silly boards from time to time.
Avatar has been out for less than a week, though, so it's of course perfectly possible that, in two weeks, somebody at the Magic World Championship will show up with a Badgermole Cub deck that is truly broken and that can claim half or more of the Top 8 spots.
But, by current results, our cute Cub hasn't gone from “excellent” to “really broken”… ore at least not yet!
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