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It’s Monday, February 11, 2008, and Phantom Darkness has already sold out! It’s pretty shocking: despite launching to retailers just last week, sources close to Upper Deck Entertainment have stated that Phantom Darkness is completely sold out on the production level. Retailers with Upper Deck direct accounts won’t be able to order any more Phantom Darkness unless the set is reprinted, and regional-level distributors now have limited supplies. A quick check at a few online sites revealed that prices for sealed boxes of the new set are already rising.

So what does that mean for us as players and collectors? Well, it’s good news for the future of the game, yet another indicator that the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG isn’t on its way out. I can’t remember the last time a set sold out this quickly, and combined with strong sales from the new Duelist Pack—Jaden 3 and Duelist Pack—Jesse Anderson boosters, UDE’s really starting 2008 with a bang. For those of you who’ve collected a Secret Rare or two over the past couple weeks, expect their values to hold at a relatively consistent level—while demand is increasing the supply can’t keep up.

Phantom Darkness should still be available on store shelves in your area, but that might not be the case very soon! If you’ve been on the fence about buying a box or two, you should do it while you still can. Phantom Darkness Special Edition is still a ways off, and with the huge increase in box-buyers this set, I wouldn’t be surprised if many retailers ran out of regular Phantom Darkness boosters.

More good Phantom Darkness news this week, as a brand new Regional Mat arrived to Premier Tournament Organizers in the latest round of Regional Championship kits. In a nod to the competitive players who frequent such events, this new mat features the competitively popular Armageddon Knight instead of a pack-front monster like Rainbow Dragon:

There are nearly a hundred upcoming Regionals in the Regional Locator right now, so finding one in your neck of the woods shouldn’t be hard. New Regionals are being scheduled and added all the time, so if one isn’t listed that’s within driving distance of you right now, just keep checking back.

The first Shonen Jump Championship of the post–Phantom Darkness era is almost upon us. As the event draws closer, speculation about the competitive field is heating up. New versions of Macro Cosmos fueled by Allure of Darkness and Cyber Valley seems like a strong bet, but the deck everyone’s talking about is most certainly Dark Armed Dragon. Van’Dalgyon the Dark Dragon Lord will be legal, as will Hand Destruction and Hero’s Rule 2 from the new Duelist Packs, so it’s a huge tossup as to what kind of metagame we’ll see, and it’s almost impossible to guess about specific decks. Houston’s going to function as an important trendsetting event before the 50th Shonen Jump Championship in Costa Mesa, so be sure to join us on February 23 and 24 for live coverage here on Metagame.com!

If you want to head out to Houston next weekend to throw down, there’s still time to make your travel plans. Check out the official event listing over on Upper Deck’s Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG site for info on start times, venue location, and contact information for the Premier Tournament Organizer to get started.

Today on Metagame.com, I kick things off with a look at yet another of my favorites from Phantom Darkness. A lot of stuff in this set has seen heavy discussion and praise in dueling communities, but several great cards seem to have fallen by the wayside. Today, I want to look at one of the best: Drastic Drop Off. An updated version of the classic trap card Drop Off, Drastic is a completely different type of effect altogether, and I’ll explain why it’s such an amazing pick for the average metagame.

On Tuesday, Jerome will show you one of the new First-Turn K.O. decks made possible by Phantom Darkness. Gigaplant received a lot of hype heading into the release of the set, but new possibilities really started opening up when players saw the world debut card Lonefire Blossom. Plants can now special summon a 2400 ATK Il Blud from their deck for free, and the result is a highly aggressive beatdown or even an FTK. Tomorrow, Jerome will show you how it works.

Speaking of Lonefire Blossom, Curtis is going to look at both the Blossom and Prime Material Dragon on Wednesday, as he starts a new series of rulings articles in his Duelist Academy column. How does Prime Material Dragon work when Lava Golem is on the field? Can you abuse Super Rejuvenation with its effect? Curtis is going to answer those questions and more this week.

Earth Rush decks got a handy little addition in Gladiator’s Assault in the form of Release from Stone, but it didn’t make much of a competitive impact. Despite a few strong tournament showings from Earth Rush in the closing months of last year, the deck’s success was overshadowed by the more common strategies seeing play today. Well, this week in The Apotheosis Matt Murphy’s going to give the deck its due, pulling out all the tricks (even Fossil Tusker) to get this strategy off the ground. The finished product is well worth a look!

Bryan Camareno’s article last week on reading the body language of your opponents got some great feedback, and this week he’s back with more! This time, Bryan’s going to talk about tells you can watch for that involve the arms and eyes of your soon-to-be-defeated rivals. If you feel your gameplay is tight but you have trouble reading other duelists (or your opponents always seem to read you), then this article is a must-read.

Jordan Nasser played in two feature matches in Shonen Jump Championship Orlando, and despite losing both of them, he made it to Day 2 and the Top 8. Nasser took a well-tuned Gadget build to stunning success, and this Saturday Matt Peddle’s going to dissect Nasser’s build to show you why it did so well.

Finally, Ryan Murphy builds a Demise OTK deck for the Traditional Format in what I think is one of the most entertaining articles we’ve run this year. Ryan’s done some awesome work lately, and you’d really be remiss to skip over this one. Why would you give up Chaos monsters or Magical Scientist for a transposed Advanced Format deck? Ryan’s going to use some pretty awesome math to show you why, and the results are pretty impressive.

That’s it for this week. Phantom Darkness and the new Duelist Packs are on store shelves, two historic Shonen Jump Championships are on the horizon, and there are new Regional mats to boot—it’s a great time to be a duelist! Check back in another seven days for more news and article previews.