Metagame: A Staple named Badgermole Cub

Avatar: The Last Airbender has barely arrived in tournaments, and we already have the best card of the set for competitive formats.

Badgermole Cub took only a few days to become the most influential new addition to competitive formats, boosting a deck to potentially the best in Standard, bringing back archetypes that were struggling in Pioneer and Modern, and even having four copies in a deck that went 10-0 in a Legacy Challenge in the first week of the set on Magic Online, attesting to the potential that generating extra mana has in the game's rules, especially when the deckbuilding concessions to extract value from it are notoriously low.

But what exactly made this card so strong in the competitive environment?

The combination of cost, efficient body, and potential to generate two-for-one trades by transforming a land into a creature and adding extra mana are the main reasons it was the standout of the last week, but we can go a little further.

Looking back, one of the first cards banned from Pioneer was Leyline of Abundance, an enchantment that basically had the same line of text as Badgermole Cub and propelled Mono Green Devotion to the top of the Metagame—at the time, it's worth noting, Leyline had the advantage of generating for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx for free, which made a considerable difference when casting a Walking Ballista or using Karn, the Great Creator.

But the other bonus of the enchantment was that each mana dork generated when tapped: this allowed, for example, casting Karn on the second turn or even playing a Nissa, Who Shakes the World on the third, untapping a land to generate more , creating considerable pressure on the board that was only countered by faster and more disruptive decks, such as the Mono Black Aggro with Smuggler’s Copter and Thoughtseize.

Badgermole Cub brought this "skipping turns for mana" bonus to basically any archetype willing to use between four and ten mana dorks. From these, any second-turn sequence with the creature is enough to change the pace of the game and make your deck more explosive.

Take the Simic Aggro deck as an example, the main highlight of this weekend in Standard: the archetype runs Gene Pollinator and Llanowar Elves as mana dorks and manages to quickly streamline its mana while extracting, from the second turn, some advantage from Badgermole Cub — with one of them on the first turn, adding or at the same time as casting Cub is a common play, and its list is composed of taking advantage of this extra mana at any stage.

For many of these archetypes in Standard, the primary goal is to get to your bomb early: Ouroboroid on the third turn in sequence along with other creatures already does enough damage to put the opponent far ahead in the game, and the same is true for any other recent Payoff in Standard — with the advantage, in the format, of being able to use all available extra mana to transform Nature’s Rhythm into a potential toolbox of answers and threats.

The same applies to almost all other archetypes with Badgermole Cub in other formats: the mere fact that it accelerates your power plays while possessing other inherent qualities is enough to put it in the competitive spotlight where, perhaps, it will take a while to leave.

Standard

Simic Aggro aiming to accelerate Ouroboroid is the main archetype of Badgermole Cub, but several other strategies have bet on the combination of eight dorks + efficient payoff of other colors.

For example, a Selesnya version relied on Virtue of Loyalty as extra copies of Ouroboroid while also using Enduring Innocence for card advantage. The deck also has a small toolbox with Brightglass Gearhulk in the sideboard, which can also be ramped with Gene Pollinator and the new card.

On the other hand, lists also featured a black and green variant with Overlord of the Balemurk, and even a Sacrifice variant running Scavenger’s Talent and Beifong’s Bounty Hunters was one of the highlights of the early part of the Second week of Challenges for Standard.

The new Airbending Combo also plays the card with eight dorks to accelerate the combination of Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius with Appa, Steadfast Guardian and Aang, Swift Savior, allowing you to cast the exiled creatures with Airbending for free and create an army of 1/1 Allies with the looping between these cards.

Simic Landfall also included copies of Badgermole Cub along with Llanowar Elves and Earthbender Ascension to accelerate Icetill Explorer, whose ability to reuse "fetch lands" grants multiple instances of Landfall very early.

Pioneer

Mono Green Nykthos was the only archetype in the first week to use the new card to achieve relevant results, including Top 8 finishes in two Challenges after a long absence.

The traditional Ramp version may have included the card simply to replicate Leyline of Abundance with eight mana dorks, but there are some potential advantages to transforming a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx into a creature if the right trade-offs are found.

A more aggressive version was the one that gave the card the most prominence throughout the week. In this deck, several mana dorks are used alongside Fiend Artisan and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to search for key creatures for the list, with the main payoff being Craterhoof Behemoth to finish the game, while Tribute to the World Tree maintains the amount of resources, and Warden of the Grove increases board pressure with each creature that enters the battlefield.

Modern

Although some other lists have used the card, the highlight for Badgermole Cub in Modern was with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician — an archetype that easily includes several dorks since these also serve as sacrifice fuel later on.

Cub also has the advantage, in the list above, of putting a "creature" with a +1/+1 counter onto the battlefield, transforming it into extra copies of Yawgmoth or Walking Ballista if used with Agatha's Soul Cauldron.

Legacy

The player El-Bebbos closed a Legacy Challenge with a ruthless 10-0 result on a list running six copies of mana dorks, plus a full set of Badgermole Cub and a copy of Quirion Ranger, which allows creatures to untap—an important combination between Earthbending and Gaea's Cradle.

Not unlike the versions above, this list leverages Cub to accelerate the casting of its most powerful bombs: Natural Order for Atraxa, Grand Unifier can put its controller far ahead in the game if the opponent fails to interact with the "combo," while Craterhoof Behemoth benefits from the archetype's more go-wide side with Springheart Nantuko.

It's still too early to say that Badgermole Cub is a troublesome card, but it follows the pattern of generating free mana with few deckbuilding concessions for an easily addable cost for various strategies in different formats.

The first week is always a great laboratory, and now that the card is on the radar, it will be up to players to discover the best ways to deal with the potential new multi-format staple—whether playing faster in Standard or respecting Cub's explosive potential to the point where it's worth spending a Force of Will on it.

Thank you for reading!