Opal Grove Games

Opal Grove Games is a community-minded game store at 880 W McNichols Rd in Detroit, down the street from the University of Detroit Mercy, next door to Menjo's and just south of Palmer Park. The store is built around tabletop play more than singles: board games, role-playing campaigns and a quarterly Magic: The Gathering league sit at the center, with a rental library and a private room for groups. It suits newcomers who want a table of friendly strangers, families, and Magic players who prefer a laid-back format to a competitive grind.

What's on the shelves

The catalog runs through board games (two-player, cooperative, family strategy and party games), RPGs, paints, puzzles, accessories, dice, home goods and stickers, plus card games, with preorders, a Ding & Dent section and clearance. A Michigan Made shelf carries locally produced items, among them house dice priced at $2.00 and a Detroit dice tray at $111.00.

Used games and puzzles are taken on consignment. Sellers receive store credit for 70% of the asking price of the item. A rental library lets customers try games without buying them.

Events and play

Community Game Night runs Thursdays and costs $5 to play all day with the rental library. Children ages 8 and under play free. Queer Game Night is held the third Friday of each month at 6 PM on a pay-what-you-can basis, and the group usually splits a pizza order partway through the evening, which works out to about $2 per half slice.

Big Board Game Day and Craft Club also run, and the store hosts birthday parties and team celebrations.

Casual Magic League

The Magic offering is a quarterly, persistent league for players who like a relaxed pace. Players build decks when they join and keep refining or rebuilding them through the season, earning points through weekly, monthly and quarterly achievements and winning prizes for hitting point thresholds or ranking.

Entry is $75 and includes 10 booster packs, a storage box and a standard set of sleeves. Players can instead pay $50 for the initial six packs plus accessories, or $110 up front for a discount on all 17 packs. From Week 6, additional packs can be bought at a rate of one per week for use in the league.

In Week 1 each player picks six booster packs from the allowed sets and builds a deck of at least 40 cards with basic lands. Each week a player may open one more pack, and the minimum deck size grows by five cards until it reaches 60. Decks and storage boxes stay in the store between games and cannot be removed until the end-of-season tournament. Trading is allowed and encouraged inside the league, but no outside cards are permitted other than basic lands, and trades are final unless both players agree to trade back.

Each season lasts three months, so there are four a year, and every quarter ends with a tournament open to all players. Each player gets one free mulligan per match, and an opening hand with 0, 1, 6 or 7 lands earns an additional mulligan. Allowed sets include Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, Innistrad: Crimson Vow, Zendikar Rising, Streets of New Capenna, Dominaria United, Murders at Karlov Manor, Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Bloomburrow, Aetherdrift, Tarkir Dragonstorm, Edge of Eternities and Lorwyn Eclipsed, subject to availability. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Marvel Spider-Man and Marvel Super Heroes packs are allowed in the fourth quarter only.

Role-playing campaigns

Each season the store hosts twelve-week RPG campaigns with local professional game masters, and the approach is beginner-friendly: no books or accessories are needed to start. Players are matched with a group based on availability, experience and goals. Systems on offer include Dungeons & Dragons, Daggerheart, Monster of the Week and Orbital Blues, and some campaigns run online.

Each session is $35 across 12 sessions. Paying $350 up front covers two free sessions, or the cost can be split into three payments of $140. The fee includes use of the private gaming area, access to the core rulebook for reference, printed materials such as character sheets, borrowable dice and other accessories, storage between sessions and a snack at each session. The current season runs October through January with a two-week break for the winter holidays.

Hours and getting there

The store is on the ground level, with one designated accessible parking space immediately to the left of the main entrance. Entry is through manual glass doors, and the right-hand door sticks a little. A step of about four inches leads up to the Ding & Dent and rental library areas. The back of the store has a single-occupancy restroom with two grab bars, and shelves are spaced so wheelchairs and other mobility devices can pass. Seating in the main play area is mostly plastic chairs, with four wider high-capacity chairs and one plush armchair, and the private room has six wooden chairs, two with arms.

The store keeps late hours on weekends, staying open until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

History

The store recently moved to its current McNichols Road location.

The local scene

Game Headz in Highland Park is the closest other store, about 0.8 miles away, with Gamesville USA and Detroit Gamer Zone in Detroit and Gift Card Max in Hamtramck a little farther out. For shows, the Wednesday Sports Card Show is about 4.8 miles away, with dates on November 4, 11 and 18. The Sports Card, Comic & Pokemon Show, about 15.4 miles away, starts November 9, and The Syndicate Trade Show-Detroit, about 19.3 miles away, starts November 7.