The Changing Face of Huntsville’s Local Game Store Scene

Within a clean and well-lit store, a group sits around a table, hunched over a map, moving miniature figures, and consulting books and sheets of paper, planning their next move. One of their fellow players, with a folding screen keeping their notes out of view of the others, looks to a specific player, carefully adopting a look of bemused, mysterious detachment, a real poker face.

“Are you sure?” they ask.

Summoning their courage, the player in question nods.

“Roll for it,” replies the mysterious player with the screen.

The rest of the table holds their breath as the die is cast, success or failure hinging on the outcome.

Elsewhere, at another table, a pair is engrossed in a duel of their own, their strategies enacted by trading cards, their decks painstakingly-crafted to encompass complex layers of synergy. The game has been a close stalemate for a while now, and the decks are running thin. As a player draws a card, they look to see if it’s the one that will kick off the combo they need to finally win the game.

These are the sort of scenes that one can find at your local game store.

Before we begin, I must make a disclosure, dear reader; I am, in fact, a nerd. A nerd of tremendous proportions. So, when our editor floated the idea of exploring the entertainment options here in the Huntsville area, well, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to discuss my tabletop gaming addictions, and the many fine businesses that cater to them.

These hobbies have never been more popular, or more accessible, than they are today. The days of tabletop gaming facing a stigma of being the sole purview of antisocial basement dwellers are over.

Certified hunk and literal Superman, Henry Cavill, gushes over his love of the militaristic sci-fi wargame Warhammer 40K, while Joe Mangienello and Vin Diesel regularly appear at conventions to play sessions of Dungeons and Dragons. Critical Role, the YouTube D&D show helmed by Matt Mercer and his band of cheerful reprobate voice actors, hovers around two million subscribers, and their swords and sorcery antics have led to an animated show on Amazon Prime, The Legend of Vox Machina, which itself has been a hit.

The kids on Netflix’s Stranger Things are no strangers to rolling dice, and the show’s plot is inextricably intertwined with the mythos of Wizards of the Coast’s venerable roleplaying game. I just about tripped when I heard my own mother, of all people, mention Vecna, a malignant deity in the Dungeons and Dragons pantheon.

When Covid-19 hit, the combination of widespread video conferencing apps and the urge to escape the socially-distant isolation of the quarantine days led to an explosion in the popularity of tabletop gaming. Now, with the pandemic (hopefully) abating, local game stores, which suffered during quarantine, are making a comeback, and in a big way, making changes to ac- commodate the social needs of the gaming community.

Local Game Stores have been sites for gaming events and tournaments for decades. Now, however, many are making a concentrated effort to enhance the social aspects of the hobby, aspects that just aren’t possible from online retailers.

Huntsville’s Lucky Dice Cafe, located at the Village Center on Memorial Parkway, not only offers the traditional shopping for the accouterments of tabletop gaming - rulebooks, dice, trading cards, miniatures, and other accessories - but also, as the name suggests, a full-on restaurant in the store. Their menu includes pizza, chili, wings, and craft beer,

By: Marie Johnson /

but their specialty is in sandwiches. One can take their “Jean Grey” sandwich and turn it to a “Phoenix” by dint of spicy Buffalo sauce.

Stone Valley Games, located on, well, Stone Valley Drive, has been so successful with their winter sale that, for their upcoming spring sale in March, they’re once again entering curbside pickup customers into a giveaway sweepstakes, in order to keep the foot traffic in their shop to a manageable level.

Madison’s Raging Gazebo - yes, I know, I’ll get to the name in a moment - is actually owned and operated by local married couple Denim and Shanna Keezer. They are the proud parents of a little “nerdling” of their own, and as such, their store is geared towards accommodating customers with children. They have a dedicated play area for kids in their store, and other family-friendly events, like a group Saturday Morning Cartoon binge session.

Their store’s unusual name references a humorous story that made the rounds online a few years back. In the story, a beleaguered Dungeon Master - the player who ‘sets the stage’ for the other players in a game of Dungeons and Dragons - narrated a description of an aristocrat’s garden. They made mention of a gazebo, only for one of the players, who didn’t know what a gazebo was, to prepare for an epic battle against it. All attempts to explain it failed, and the DM, shrugging, opted to roll with it and have the party attacked by “a raging gazebo.”

Incidentally, I do believe the gazebo won that fight.

That’s the sort of off-the-wall experience that one can really only get from tabletop role-playing games. Films and shows are entirely passive experiences; video games offer player agency, but to a limited degree, as even the best-programmed video game can only account for so many actions and outcomes. But TTRPGs are collaborative experiences, and while the rules of each system provide structure to the game, the power of human imagination still remains unrivaled.

It isn’t just fantasy settings, incidentally; those who were introduced to the futuristic corporate dystopia of Cyberpunk 2077, and its anime tie in, Edgerunners, can continue to explore that world in its original tabletop form in Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk 2020, or the latest iteration of the game, Cyberpunk Red.

Those looking for a focus on tactics can deploy mass armies of power-armored space marines in Warhammer 40k, with its distinctive arrays of detailed miniature figures. Battletech plays like a season of Game of Thrones, if the likes of the Starks and the Lannisters hashed out their differences via giant stompy robot of doom.

Whatever your aesthetic, there is a game out there that will appeal to it.

Then there are the trading card games. While less freely-creative than tabletop role-playing games, the appeal of this sort of game comes from the intricate strategies and counters that players can build into their decks.

While there are “starter decks” for new players, which are pre-built with set cards, the trading card format depends on the addition of cards that players can acquire through “booster packs,” which feature random cards in a set.

Local Game Stores not only sell decks and booster packs, but many will buy unwanted cards from players and sell them individually for those looking for specific cards for their deck. These cards can sometimes be worth thousands of dollars, due to their potency in the game, the rarity of their art, or both.

Magic: The Gathering has been a staple of the TCG scene for decades, and in that time, entire new formats, such as “Commander” - a four-way battle royale - have arisen, which call for all-new cards and strategies to deal with the new parameters.

The Pokemon trading card game has, of course, been just as popular as its video game counterpart, with many of the game’s first generation of players passing down their old card collection to their children. Other popular card games include Yu-Gi-Oh, and games based off of popular IP’s like the Marvel superheroes or various anime and manga series.

Magnolia Gaming Huntsville, on Memorial Drive Southwest, is a newly-opened store that heavily features trading card games and boasts a large, open and spacious floor with many tables for gaming.

The Deep Comics and Games is a Huntsville institution, and while they may rue the new construction that has hidden their building from sight on Memorial Drive, they are still there, ready to buy and sell. While they largely deal in comics and toys, they also deal in trading cards, and host tournaments in their store as well. Moreover, their inventory is extensive, with rows upon rows of cool stuff for sale.

JC’s House of Cards in Madison, as the name might suggest, largely focuses on trading cards, and they regularly host a great many tournaments and other events. They also boast a wide selection of accessories for trading card games, such as deck boxes, playmats, and sleeves to protect individual cards.

High Ground Hobbies and Cafe, also in Madison, adopts a similar approach to the Lucky Dice Cafe, in that they serve food and drink for the enjoyment of their patrons. Their Magic: The Gathering tournaments offer prizes, not only for the victor and runner-up, but also to those who fulfill specific challenges during the tournament, such as being the first player eliminated, countering two spells in a single turn, or taking control of three or more of an enemy’s cards in a single turn.

Also, their trophies for the tournament winner each week is usually pretty sweet. This week, it was a bust of Master Splinter, from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That isn’t necessarily relevant, I just thought it was neat.

Yes, with its vast ratio of geeksper-capita, Huntsville and its surrounding suburbs are rife with local gaming stores. With these places investing in the customer experience with sales, events, accommodations, and even refreshments, there has never been a better time to patronize these establishments.

If you’re bored with watching superheroes brawl their way across endless reboots and crossovers in the movie theater, if you’re frustrated with glitchy, unfinished video games charging you premium prices for beta testing their work for them, if you’re looking for a truly immersive and social experience, then try dipping your toe in the world of tabletop gaming.

There’s bound to be at least one local game store, and likely several, nearby. w