Game Goblins

Six thousand square feet of Magic, Pokemon and Warhammer on Bowman Road, plus a 100-title free-play library at the back of the Little Rock store.

Six thousand square feet is a lot of room for cardboard, and Game Goblins uses most of it. The Bowman Road store splits roughly in half: retail shelving up front stacked with sealed Magic, Pokemon, Lorcana and One Piece product, and a tournament floor at the back with long tables that regularly fill for organized play. Owner Josh Wilhelmi opened the original 2,000-square-foot shop on April 20, 2012 and tripled the footprint with the 2015 move to the current west Little Rock address.

Singles are handled differently here than at most shops. Instead of parking everything behind a single glass case, Game Goblins runs card lookup stations so you can search inventory yourself, and maintains a standing buylist alongside TCGplayer Pro storefronts for both the Little Rock and Conway locations. Bulk gets bought at a published rate. If you are hunting Pokemon cards Little Rock collectors have already picked over, this is usually the deepest well in town.

The miniatures side is genuinely serious rather than an afterthought. Games Workshop 40K, Age of Sigmar, Horus Heresy and The Old World share space with Reaper, WizKids, BattleTech and Star Wars: Legion, and the paint wall carries Citadel, Army Painter, Monument Pro Acryl, Two Thin Coats and Turbo Dork. Multiple reviewers show up specifically for the paint selection. Roleplayers get a full rack of D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun and Starfinder books.

Game Goblins carries Wizards Play Network Premium status, a designation that required several thousand dollars in store upgrades, and the shop claims the three largest sanctioned Magic events ever run in Arkansas. A second Conway location opened at the end of 2022. Between the two stores the operation runs around fifteen employees.

Hours are unusually generous for a Little Rock card shop: 11AM to 9PM every day Monday through Saturday, with a shorter noon to 7PM Sunday. Weeknight evenings after 6PM skew toward event traffic, so if you want counter time to work a buylist or dig singles, come mid-afternoon. The free-play library of more than 100 board games is open to anyone who wants to try a title before buying it, which makes this a workable stop even when nobody in your group plays cards. Event schedules change seasonally and post to the store calendar, so call 501-224-4263 before driving out for a specific tournament.