Upper Deck has announced its 2004 plans for its category-leading Yu-Gi-Oh! collectible card game, plans that include newly established weekly tournaments at major retail and hobby stores, new regional tournaments, and a number of new Expansion sets for the popular game.  Starting in February, Upper Deck Entertainment is teaming up with major retail outlets such as Toys R' Us, Wal-Mart, Hastings, Books-A-Million and the Meijer stores to host weekly Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist Leagues.  While such weekly tournaments are commonplace at game stores and hobby shops, Upper Deck is definitely pushing the envelope by interesting major retail chains in hosting and supervising tournament play.  Upper Deck has also recently launched a series of Regional Tournament Weekend events.  Each Regional Tournament Weekend event will offer a total of four invitations to the U.S. Yu-Gi-Oh! National Championships, which will be held in Columbus, Ohio at the Origins International Game Expo on Saturday June 26.

Invasion of Chaos Boosters (March)

Upper Deck has a number of new Yu-Gi-Oh! products on tap for 2004.  The Evolution Starter Decks, which appear this month, will be followed by the Invasion of Chaos Boosters in March. The Invasion of Chaos expansion delves into the relationship between Spell Cards and Trap Cards.  Duelists will be able to take advantage of these sophisticated new cards to generate powerful new effects.

Ancient Sanctuary Boosters (July)

This highly anticipated expansion will even out the playing field in the Yu-Gi-Oh! collectible card game just in time to spice up the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championships.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Collectible Tins (October)

The tins will be back in October with all new tin artwork and some great variant cards. The Yu-Gi-Oh! tins, which offer a combination of various booster packs and variant cards, have been a very strong holiday product for the past two years.