Game Depot

The best hobby shop in the valley for board gamers. The staff have always been super helpful. They have an excellent selection of board games and accessories, a good play space, and a good library of games to play. The prices are MSRP for the most part. Sure, you can get things cheaper on Amazon or MM, but the same can be said of any store.

Game Depot is my home away from home. The owners of the store make you feel like family when you walk in. They make a special effort to make you feel welcome and even remember your name and what games you like. I’ve never felt so strongly about supporting an independent business as I feel about Game Depot.
They have an amazing variety of games. They are constantly finding the newest and best games and they have a wide variety of special game days for different groups of gamers. I particularly like their Play More Games days on certain Saturdays. I’ve met so many cool people and tried so many new games this way.
My boyfriend and I have made long-​lasting friendships because of this store. I also like that they are very welcoming to girls, women, and kids, so you don’t feel like it’s a male dominated space. Game Depot for life!

We came to this store to do a bit of Christmas shopping. The store owner was unfriendly and didn’t seem to have good people skills. She wasn’t really interested in engaging in conversation about the games. The prices were also significantly higher than other retailers. I understand they are a locally owned business, which is one of the reasons we were going to purchase items from them, but we couldn’t justify the overspending. For example, one game was $ 20 more than the price on Amazon and another game was $ 12 more than the price at Barnes and Noble.
Granted, if you cannot wait for shipping and you absolutely need to pick up a game at the last minute, they do have an extensive selection including some hard-​to-​find expansions stores usually don’t keep in stock. Overall, as we were browsing we felt unwelcome in the store and, in the end, we left and bought our Christmas presents elsewhere and saved a lot of money doing so.

The nicest people and very knowledgable, this is the best game store I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to many.

This is a great game store. The owners are very knowledgable and will help you in selecting a game for your family. You can reserve items and they put them aside for you when they come in. I like to get gift certificates for my gamer husband.
They have space for game tables with a wide range of gaming events going on throughout the week.

I really like their store layout. They deal in a wide range of merchandise. Something for the casual gamer to the hard core gamer. Cards to board games.

Really nice people, they know games, are accomodating, put up with lots of dumb questions, have a large selection of Euro games/​board games, and lots of other gaming things. Right off the freeway so quick in/​out, experienced gamer highly recommends.

My husband has been going to the Game Depot for over 12 years, and he says that it is the best store for board games in Arizona.
Patti and Dave, owners, are always very helpful when customers ask about a game. There are always people playing games in the store and, when a customer asks about a game, Patti will usually find someone playing who knows the game and can answer the customers’ questions.
Approximately one-​third of the store’s square-​footage is devoted to tables for customers to meet-​up and play games or for one of the tournaments the store hosts. On any given day, you can find people playing board games, role-​playing games, miniatures, card games (e.g., Magic or Netrunner). There are no video games sold at Game Depot. My husband often brings our children, ages 10 and 7, to the store and they often find another child or two to play games with.
The store keeps a good variety of games in stock, but they can and will order just about anything you want. Several game designers and game distributors come through the store frequently, and they are happy to help Dave and Patti get copies of hard-​to-​find games.

This is a review for the gamer girls and girls who are married to gamers:
As I get more experience with this store my review could be even higher. The owners were really friendly and helpful. More importantly. .. and if you are reading this as a gamer’s wife you know what I’m talking about. .. the store doesn’t smell bad. At all. It’s clean and it’s fresh!
My wife is very picky about going into game stores because, let’s be honest, a lot of card gamers do not have the best personal hygiene. It’s not a factor here and the mrs. spent a lot of time in this store and was not rushing me to get what I wanted and get out. That is the biggest compliment I can give a place. We were looking around for a good 30 minutes, on separate sides of the store, and she didn’t even get hit on. That’s another huge plus for her.
This store has good prices, helpful and friendly employees, lots of nerd stuff, and it’s CLEAN. What more can you want in a gaming store?
Well, I could want better advertisement/​notice for what nights tend to be the big nights for certain games and the player support at that store for games. It’s really all I can think of.

This is my favorite game store in town. The owners are friendly and treat you like family. The stock is constantly changing and I enjoy always finding something new. :)

As a supporter of local businesses and as a board game family, I am happy to learn that Game Depot has lots of games in the store. Games you don’t find in Walmart or Target. For serious board gamers, this is the place to go. However, with the steep markup, I would expect to see what’s in the games. A store in Santa Fe has all the games opened for patrons to sit down and play before purchase. I am happy to pay more money than online stores to support local businesses but would love to be able to experience beyond just seeing the sealed game boxes.

Went here last year, good selection of games. Nicely organized and lots of games & expansions that we hadn’t seen before. Half of store filled with games, other half for gaming.

I absolutely love this place! The owners are amazing and helped me get everything I needed to start my first dnd game. They’re always incredibly nice and happy to help me out with anything in their large collection of games and goodies.

Game stores come and go usually run by gamers who are extending their lifestyle into their business life
Game depot may have started that way back in the day (I have been going for 20 years) but they are the definition of a well run store
Dave and Patty are friendly, helpful, and very professional in assisting in your gaming needs.
Mine have ranged from fantasy, sci fi, historical, to family board and card games, and without exception they have what I need or found a way to fulfill it.
Very few game stores in the past have I been willing to take my children to for various reasons. Game depot is the exception that proves the rule.
Many well behaved children are common
I highly recommend anyone, hard core gamer or casual-​looking-​for-​a-​board game crowd, to go and check it out.

The staff here is incredibly unprofessional and unapproachable. I will never return to this store.

An outstanding game store! The best in the area, so look no further! Great selection of a variety of games, new and old. Friendly staff. Very clean. Most games are $ 5 – 10 more than what you’d find online, but i consider that minimal and often buy here anyway for the convenience and satisfaction of getting the game now! It’s also pretty awesome to be able to support a FLGS.

I love this game store. I focus on board games over miniatures, role playing, and CCGs. I used to go to their once a month board game Saturday and plan on going again at some point. They seem to have events every Saturday.
I chat with Patty the owner about game recommendations since we are quite similar. I also ask for recommendations because by that point I have wandered up down the two board game aisle several times. I usually want to buy more than I can afford so stay longer. Everyone has been nice and informative with me.

There are some people who play magic the gathering (and similar games) who also maintain normal social lives, have girlfriends, and even shower regularly. You won’t find any of this type of player among the staff of this shop.
It’s hard for new players to get started in magic because there is a stigma about MTG players being rude, unfriendly, not sociable, and generally smelly. Such is my experience from the staff at the shop. And no wonder people don’t want to try playing this game.
So let me tell you my story. I’ve played magic for a long long time (since around urza’s saga), but just recently decided to get back into it heavily. A friend of mine and I went to this store to pick up some boosters and whatever, and just check it out because we’ve heard good things. He is also a brand new player.
I think because I was wearing a collared shirt and was freshly shaven, the staff considered me some kind of menace or outsider, and avoided eye contact, no matter how long I stood at the counter ready to buy something, until I finally asked someone directly to help ring me up. I felt like a guy in a ski mask trying to buy cigarettes.
We came on a thursday, which was draft night, a format my friend and I were not familiar with at the time. HO-​BOY was I sorry I asked for information about how draft works. It was such an effort for the guy at the counter (I think he was the owner) to explain it to me. Like I was asking him to do my taxes. He and his unwashed friends or employees (I couldn’t tell who actually worked there) also made a couple snarky comments and giggled at my ignorance.
So how the shit are people supposed to learn to play? Don’t these people want new opponents? Why must they try and alienate new players? Please, I would like to know.
If you work here, keep this in mind. There are people like me who, unlike you, haven’t entirely given up on the opposite sex. That doesn’t mean I’m not just as much of a nerd on the inside. Just like you, I’m going to go home after this and play 6 – 8 hours of video games. I’m going to order pizza because I’m too lazy to cook. I’m going to correct others about Star Wars trivia and wish that Firefly never ended. I’m going to explain to reluctant ears what I think Tom Bombadill represents and how I’m also sad he wasn’t in the movies. I’m going to stay up all night writing code.
So can I play magic too? Holy shit. What a bunch of assholes.

my favorite AZ store to play magic at back in 08.
The owners are great and everytime I talked to the staff they where very helpfull with picking out games.
oh and I found a cool pick n google of the store

Ah yes, The Game Depot. Whenever I walk into a gaming store it brings be back to the good old days when I was a kid playing Dungeons and Dragons. No, not d20 or version 3.5 or all that newfangled stuff. I mean the OLD Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with those hard cover books written by Gygax. Yeah, Greyhawk! White Plume Mountain! The Vault of the Drow! You just killed the gelatinous cube and found 5 platinum pieces!
If I continue like this, you are going to have to make a saving throw vs. nostalgia at –2 on the die.. .The days of first edition D&D are long gone, but you can find a lot of the modern D&D here in all its glory, along with many other games using boards, tiles, cards, etc. There’s also dice, metal miniatures, and a HUGE gaming area where up to a few dozen people can sit and play any kind of game they desire. Plus, they’ve got enough plastic building and ground models to accommodate ANY kind of history, fantasy, or strategy play.
AWESOME gaming store. While they don’t carry the books and modules to make this aging fuddy duddy happy, at least they’ve got the space to sit down and get rollin’