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Fallen Phoenix brings gaming to Fountain Hills

Posted 8/25/15

From Monopoly to Dungeons and Dragons, board games to Magic, miniatures, accessories and more, Skyler and Lindsey Kidwell want their new Fountain Hills shop, Fallen Phoenix Games, to become the …

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Fallen Phoenix brings gaming to Fountain Hills

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From Monopoly to Dungeons and Dragons, board games to Magic, miniatures, accessories and more, Skyler and Lindsey Kidwell want their new Fountain Hills shop, Fallen Phoenix Games, to become the town’s one-stop shop for fun at the tabletop.

When many folks think of tabletop games, classics like Clue, Sorry and Life typically jump to mind. The hobby has done quite a bit of growing over the past couple of decades, however, and now encom-passes a wide array of ti-tles that offer an equally diverse variety of play styles.

Whether you’re inter-ested in clever strategy, rolling dice, flipping cards, helping out your teammates or outmaneu-vering your opponents, tabletop gaming has you covered.

Those types of games are the main draw of Fallen Phoenix Games, located at 16748 E. Parkview, suite 4.

According to the Kid-wells, though, this “ad-venture hobby store” aims to offer a little something for everyone. Along with the games, you’ll find plushies (stuffed animals), action figures, tote bags, Pop Vinyl statues and more.

Lindsey, Skyler and their daughters, Chloe and Rindy, moved away from Fountain Hills last December, but they said that their goal quickly be-came to get back to the town that they love.

“While we lived out here, the only thing we could do was drive into Mesa or Phoenix to buy and play games,” Skyler said.

“We always felt there was a definite need here, especially to give kids something to do. We’re just rolling the dice and hoping the community will embrace us and help make this place a suc-cess.”

According to Lindsey, owning and operating a game store has been a dream of the family’s for a long time.

“The funny thing is, we were actually looking for studio space when we came to check out this property,” she added.

“Opening a game shop has been in our heads for a few years, but that’s not what we were looking for at the moment. But when we walked in the door, it was an instantaneous, ‘Oh my gosh, this is our game shop.’”

Fallen Phoenix Games had its soft opening in mid-August and plans to have its grand opening and ribbon cutting some-time this fall, when the weather has cooled off a bit.

At present, though, the store is in full swing. The shelves are stacked with tabletop titles, the display cases are full of collectable card games like Magic, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and My Little Pony, and there’s plenty of table space for people to drop by, play games and make new friends.

The Kidwells said they wanted their store to be bright, colorful and invit-ing; perfect for families to visit or kids to hang out after school and play their favorite games.

“We want to be a good, central hub for Fountain Hills families to come and grow together,” Lindsey said.

“We want them to play games together, beat ob-jectives together and make those connections.”

According to Skyler, he and Lindsey will be taking note of what the Fountain Hills community wants out of their gaming store and evolving it to cater to those needs. If a certain type of game or event becomes popular, they plan to support it.

Speaking of events, they hope to give local gamers plenty of reasons to stop by Fallen Phoenix on a regular basis. Com-petitive play for card games will be kicking off soon, along with regular events for games like Dungeons and Dragons and tournaments revolv-ing around other popular titles.

They plan to teach games, too, encouraging folks to drop by whenever they have time or for spe-cial “Learn to Play” events.

“We work with a fan-tastic distributor, so if people want something in particular, we can get it for them,” Skylar added.

“If there’s something new coming out that you’re interested in, we can have it out here on re-lease. Hey, if there’s de-mand for it, we’ll be open at midnight for big re-leases for Magic and stuff like that.

“We just really want to spark interest in this town for how great these games can be. I think a lot of people overlook them because they only know about the games they grew up with.

This industry is huge now, and while we cer-tainly carry Monopoly and Risk and things like that, we have games at that next level, too, and want people to see what mod-ern board games have to offer.”

Overall, the Kidwells said Fallen Phoenix Games has been a labor of love, and one they hope will bring a lot of families together in Fountain Hills.

“This is something we really enjoy,” Skyler said.

“We wanted to give kids something fun to do here in town and gaming is perfect for adults, too. There’s something about sitting down at a table, seeing that person across from you and having that dialogue while you play…It’s just a great ex-perience.”

Location:

Fallen Phoenix Games is located at 16748 E. Parkview, suite 4. The shop is in the retail strip behind Jiffy Lube, but the Kidwells recommend ac-cessing the store from the parking lot entrance off of Palisades, near the Stern-fels and White law office building on Palisades.

Reach Fallen Phoenix Games by phone at (480) 255-7897. They can also be found on Facebook at “Fallen Phoenix Games,” where they’ll post store and game updates, sched-ule events and more.