The vision at The Hidden Lair has always been about providing a safe and fun place for people of all ages to share in the love of games. That is why we keep buying games and adding them to the free demo shelf. We do run a large amount of card game tournaments like Friday Night Magic, but the store also carries a large variety of board games for people of all ages. One of my very favorite games right now is Splendor, a very quick paced game using cards and chips. Set in the Renaissance time, players, (who are the merchants), try to buy gem mines in order to acquire points to win the game. It is very simple, easy to learn, and loads of fun! We have many customers come in to check out our games and among those have been a few teachers. They communicated to us how much they love using games as a learning manipulative for their students. This got us to thinking, and we have come up with Vote for Your Favorite Teacher Contest. The teacher with the most votes will win some cash to spend in the store and add some games to their classroom! No purchase necessary, just come into the store located on 121 in Mt Zion and cast your vote.

The Hidden Lair has donated funds to some really great local organizations. Northeast Community Fund is one of those groups that really does a great job in our community. For the Month of December, we plan to donate some games to this amazing organization. Board games have provided many amazing memories for my family and I wish to pass that along to others.

One of my favorite formats for Magic The Gathering is Commander. The rules are pretty simple, you construct a 100 card deck and are only allowed one of each non-basic land card. You have a commander, a legendary creature, that you can summon from your general zone. Each time that commander, or general, dies he costs an additional two colorless mana. He also does count as 1 of your 100 cards.

Commander is normally a format played outside of Friday Night Magic, however, it can be played for FNM, or like our store it is played after the events ends. The Hidden Lair does have a Commander League that plays over a series of weeks having a total prize payout at the end.

Last year’s Commander Decks were such a hit that Wizards of the Coast has produced its third year of Commander Decks. Unlike last year, these decks are Mono-Color and they have planeswalkers as Commanders! Yup, Planeswalkers! The Five decks are Guided by Nature, Forged in Stone, Sworn to Darkness, Built from Scratch, and Peer Through Time. You can read all about these decks at The Hidden Lair’s blog where Joshua W. Garrett has been writing about each of these amazing Commander Decks!