For over two months, speed has dominated premier competitions. While a handful of duelists like Paul Levitin and Anthony Alvarado made breakthroughs with decks that defied convention, the sheer volume of OTK, FTK, and Dark Armed Return players created a pace of play that ran many strategies straight out of competitive play. Today was to be the final tournament of this era, with Light of Destruction bringing a new metagame to the Shonen Jump circuit later this month.

But all that changed on Wednesday.

A surprise announcement from Upper Deck Entertainment earlier this week changed the current Advanced format, Semi-Limiting Allure of Darkness, Limiting Return from the Different Dimension, and removing Dimension Fusion entirely. The result is an all-new environment that’s more different than it looks, and seeing the decks carried here today by top players, the change seems to have accomplished a great deal. While most Dark Armed duelists have opted to tweak their Dark Armed Return builds, Zombies, Macro Cosmos, and other slightly slower strategies will definitely see play here today in experienced hands.

The timing of the changes has caused some chaos. Duelists have had little time to adjust to the new format, creating an environment where experienced duelists and those with regular testing groups may have a distinct advantage. At the same time, some of the dueling world’s top players were caught unawares: “My laptop was down this week,” moaned Erin Diaz, of Ohm OTK fame. “I didn’t even know about the changes until yesterday!” Diaz’s story here this weekend might actually be one of the most interesting — after going head-to-head with Jerry Wang in the Finals of Columbus, the two have now teamed up to create a top-secret new deck and a brand new team. More on that later today in the returning Metagame Blog.