How to find, buy and play the best board, card and role-playing games around Baltimore

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in board games, strategy card games, miniatures and role-playing games, with the global market for board games valued from $11 billion to $13.4 billion, according to The Washington Post. The astonishing success of the award-winning board game Wingspan — in which players compete to lure birds to wildlife preserves — has garnered prominent coverage about its creator, Maryland native Elizabeth Hargrave, everywhere from The New York Times to the journal Nature.

Even Baltimore’s favorite birds, the Orioles, have succumbed to board game fever, playing the classic Settlers of Catan during spring training, as noted recently by The Banner’s Paul Mancano, with outfielder Colton Cowser sharing his favorite Catan strategies on X.

Role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, once considered the inscrutably weird pastime of ostracized, asocial nerds, got a mainstream boost with exposure on Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and the wildly popular YouTube series “Critical Role.” And celebrities who play D&D include everyone from actors Vin Diesel and Joe Manganiello to Stephen Colbert and Baltimore’s own author and activist (and Woodlawn High graduate) Ta-Nehisi Coates.

If you’re already hooked on gaming, or if you haven’t touched a board game since Monopoly or Clue but want to join the fun, here are the best places to buy — and play — tabletop games around Baltimore.

And if you want to jump right into the action, drop by the free GameFace Con happening this weekend, March 9-10, at Peabody Heights Brewery.

Canton Games

2101 Essex St., Baltimore

When Canton Games owner “Legend” Dan Hoffman met Games Club of Maryland’s founder and president, Keith Levy, and was introduced to board games like Settlers of Catan, it changed his perception. “That was the first time I realized that games could be more than just roll a die and move around the board. And it was awesome. I’ve stuck with it since.” Hoffman has been running the small but deeply stocked game store for about 15 years.

“I focus very heavily on making the fun, welcoming community,” Hoffman says. “We just want everyone to come in and have a good time.”

Canton Games also stocks and purchases vintage video game consoles and cartridges.

Game nights: Magic: The Gathering on Friday nights is “always huge,” Hoffman says. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights are for Dungeons & Dragons, and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. are open board game sessions.

Wanna play? See the events page or join the Discord server.

Game space: Several tables in the back of the store.

Best games for beginners: “The best game to get started in is something that is interesting to you,” Hoffman says. He recommends the blockbuster hit Wingspan and Ticket to Ride, a railroad-building game that meets the “mom rule” — three rules or fewer, and you can teach it to your mom. “Specifically, you can teach it to my mom. I taught her Ticket to Ride, and she loves it, and now she owns every single version.”

Best new game: Apiary. “Yeah, you’re playing as bees in space,” Hoffman says about the worker-placement hive-building game.

Best party game: Werewolf, in particular Hoffman’s own variant, Ultimate Werewolf: Inquisition.

Gamers-Corps

8167 Main St., Ellicott City

Gamers-Corps, on Ellicott City’s historic Main Street, was founded by two Marine Corps veterans, Julio Alegria and Tim McManus. “We wanted to open the store to cater to everyone, have an abundance of a variety of things to do, events,” Alegria says. “We wanted to specifically be a family store that catered to the beginner to learn these genres because it’s very hard to get into them.”

Alegria sees many people’s financial belt-tightening fueling interest in tabletop gaming. “What you see when the country is facing higher gas prices, higher grocery prices, is that folks want to do things that are costing less money.”

Hot games: Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40,000, BattleTech, Pokemon

Wanna play? See the events page.

Game space: Lots of tables.

Best games for beginners: Ticket to Ride, Pokemon

Best new game: Wingspan

Best party game: Dice Throne, a tactical dice and card game. “Because you can play with two to four players,” Alegria says.

No Land Beyond

2125 Maryland Ave., Baltimore

A place to play games with a fully stocked bar and pizza (including vegan options)? What’s not to like?

No Land Beyond owners Mark Brown and Michael Cohn were playing Magic: The Gathering and board games in local coffee shops and bars when they decided to create their own space. The Maryland Avenue gaming site boasts a full bar (with fantasy-themed cocktails), a retail room and shelves containing over 450 games. They also host events, including drag shows.

“Any type of game you can imagine, you can play it here, and any type of event you can imagine, we’re probably putting it on,” Cohn says. “So we really have something for everybody and we have something going on all the time.”

Brown and Cohn are proud of the safe and inclusive community they’ve created. “There’s like this really awesome Venn diagram that starts to happen where like the Magic [The Gathering] kids are hanging out with the RPG [role-playing game] kids, who are hanging out with the board game kids, who are hanging out with the weird theater nerds, who are hanging out with the … burlesque performers and the drag performers,” Cohn says.

Hot games: Weekly, multiple Magic: The Gathering events, Sorcery: Contested Realm, role-playing game nights (including the beginner-friendly Flagons and Dragons), Never Board (weekly board game night).

Wanna play? See the events page and join the Discord channel.

Game space: Plenty of tables and space at the bar.

Best game for beginners: “If you’re especially shy, just check our website,” Cohn says. “Many of our events are extremely beginner friendly and are specifically made and geared towards folks to come out and, like, feel safe, feel comfortable, meet some new friends and learn to play the game.”

Best new games: Sorcery: Contested Realm, an old-school fantasy card game, and Apiary.

Games and Stuff

7736 Ritchie Highway, Glen Burnie

If you want to get an idea of how games have become a multibillion-dollar industry, drop by Games and Stuff in Glen Burnie, which bills itself as the largest game store on the East Coast and the second largest in the U.S. Its showroom, at over 14,000 square feet, can feel a bit overwhelming, with aisle after aisle of games and … well, stuff.

“We are what I call a mainline or full-line game store, tabletop game store,” owner Paul Butler says. “So the four kind of pillars of what we do are board games, role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, trading card games like Magic [The Gathering] or Disney Lorcana or Pokemon, miniatures games like Warhammer [40,000] … and then from there, we have, you know, LEGO and gifts and books and calendars and a lot of other stuff.”

The store’s massive game room can seat over 120 people, and new private rooms, with mounted dragon heads on the walls and premium gaming tables seating up to eight players, can be rented. Games and Stuff also has several open games on display throughout the store, and its sales team will gladly demonstrate how they’re played.

Hot games: “There’s a spiritual sequel to Wingspan called Wyrmspan, which is dragons instead of birds,” Butler says. He also recommends the trading card game Altered, coming in June. Director of Retail Operations Jeff Hall recommends Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West.

Wanna play? See the events calendar.

Game space: Huge open gaming room and two rentable private rooms.

Best game for beginners: Kabuto Sumo. “It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” Butler says. “As soon as you put it on the table, people are like, ‘What is that’? And it’s basically, it’s like a sumo match between beetles.” Butler also recommends anything from the store’s “Game Night Favorites” section, which he says are accessible and proven fun for newcomers.

Best party game: Wavelength

Special mention:

Alternate Worlds

10854 York Rd., Cockeysville

Billed as “Maryland’s oldest toy, comic and game shop,” Alternate Worlds has been a go-to stop for fans of comics and games for decades.

Titan Games and Hobbies

1924-C Greenspring Dr., Lutherville

If Warhammer 40,000 is your jam, grab some space marines and wage interstellar war at Titan Games and Hobbies, a miniatures and card game-focused store tucked in an industrial park off York Road in Lutherville. It also has regular Magic: The Gathering events.

This story has been updated to correct the square footage of Games and Stuff.

Michael Hughes

michael.hughes@thebaltimorebanner.com

Michael Hughes is copy editor for The Baltimore Banner. If you see a typo, it's his fault.

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