December's FNM promo will be Anticipate! As a reminder, October's promo is Ultimate Price, and November's promo is Roast.

For this week's Budget Magic, Saffron brews up a tribal combo deck built around Rally the Ancestors and Return to the Ranks!Read more

This weekend marked the official start of Battle for Zendikar and news has trickled out of the multitude of prerelease events held across the globe. While putting too much stock in data reported by anonymous individuals on Reddit is dangerous, early reports are that Zendikar Expeditions are showing up more often that expected — somewhere around once every four boxes rather than once every six. If this is true, the EV of a BFZ box increases significantly and the "lotto" problem is minimized. However, at this point we really can't say anything for certain; it is possible that Wizards seeded prerelease product so Expeditions would show up more often to generate more excitement and sell more product, or, more likely, our sample size is too small. We should know a lot more next weekend when dealers and vendors start cracking their cases. I'll post an update when I learn more.

As for individual cards, Bring to Light is the biggest winner of the week, increasing 179 percent to $7.70 on the back of LSV posting a Modern Gifts Ungiven / Bring to Light list on the mothership. While I was trying to break Bring to Light before it was cool, I'm happy to see the power of the card being recognized by the community. If you bought in on spec while these were just-above-bulk, I'd look at moving them ASAP because Bring to Light will need to immediately break into Modern or have a strong Pro Tour showing to maintain its current price.

Speaking of selling cards during presales, someone asked me this week about shorting Magic cards and as far as I can tell the easiest (and maybe the only) way of doing this is during spoiler season. In theory you can order a card from a vendor (for example, Bring to Light at $0.99), sell the card as a "presale" on eBay after it spikes (like Bring to Light at $7.70), wait until you get the cards in the mail, then immediately send them out to the buyer. Basically, short selling is the definition of presales, since no one can access the cards until the release date. While there is risk in this plan (what happens if the vendor cancels your preorders?), it is fairly minimal assuming you use reliable vendors.

Naked shorting, on the other hand, involves selling copies of Bring to Light now for $7.70 even though you didn't place any preorders back when it was $0.99. In this instance you are betting the price will drop enough over the next week that you'll be able to buy copies for $4 to fill your sales commitments. Naked shorting has a double risk — not only is it possible you won't be able to get the cards in time to fulfill your orders, but what happens if Bring to Light keeps increasing in price? You could be forced to buy copies for $15 and ship them to the buyer that paid $7. Personally I'm not a fan of naked shorting. When you are selling on eBay or TCG your reputation is extremely important, so even though the odds of something going wrong with a naked short are slim, the risk is still relatively high compared to the reward. In summary, shorting seems to be widely accepted as part of the presales process, but naked shorting typically is not — in either case you are increasing your risk, so proceed with caution.

How much value can you expect from a box of Battle for Zendikar? How do full art basics and Expeditions shift the numbers? Let's see!Read more

The five most viewed cards on MTGGoldfish this past week were:

1. Jace Vryns Prodigy (Magic Origins)
2. Hangarback Walker (Magic Origins)
3. Scalding Tarn (Zendikar Expeditions)
4. Bring to Light (Battle for Zendikar)
5. Knight of the Reliquary (Conflux)

Need full art lands? How about 80? With 80 full art lands, the Battle for Zendikar Fat Pack is a great deal. It also comes with 9 boosters, a spindown, two deck boxes and the fat pack box itself. Great value for $40! Pre-order Battle for Zendikar Fat Packs on eBay today!