P6T Deluxe Discontinued & Shoppers Nightmare

I settled on my part list and have been patiently hunting for my first build for weeks. Walked into Frys for my weekly walk about and the P6T Deluxe was marked down from $259 to $188. I was in shock since I had been there just a few days ago and of course they were sold out. Nothing in the ads, was an in store sale. Checked several Frys and all sold out. They said that ASUS had discontinued the board type

This board has been pretty uniformly well reviewed, but I see posts about high failure rates in this forum.

When a board style is suddenly discontinued is that something to stay away from or is that normal for MB's ? It just seems like a board that is popular would tend to stick around unless there was something wrong.

Even though you can still buy online, would you tend to stay away from P6T Deluxe at this point?

Any suggestions for my Plan B for an under $300 i7 mb?