Hobby Badger Games returns to provide a place to play
Finding tabletop game stores in Yolo County featuring role-playing staples such as Warhammer 40,000 or Dungeons & Dragons can be pretty challenging.
While a big city like Sacramento will have its fair share of places, it can sometimes be a bit of a journey to make the trip, play a game or, check out a store and then trek yourself all the way back home.
Luckily for Yolo County residents, specifically West Sacramento residents, Hobby Badger Games, which recently moved over three doors to its new location at 1255 Markley Ave. in West Sacramento in November, will be here for all their unique needs.
“We essentially sell all of the tabletop-type games,” said the shop's owner Anthony Villa. “Primarily Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigma and a lot of Dungeons & Dragons stuff. We also carry a wide variety of hobby supplies due to having to build and paint many models for the games. Pretty much the whole gamut. We also have a lot of other little board games and all that fun stuff.”
While the store is currently open in a limited capacity and hours, the second move in as many years almost never happened following a heart-wrenching robbery in late July that had Villa questioning if he wanted to continue with the store.
“It was just bad,” Villa recalled. “That robbery really hurt. The collection we had was turning into our bread and butter and we budgeted off that. We were going to close down after the robbery and pursue new things. We sold all of our remaining inventory and were getting ready to sell the business to another store in the Bay Area. The sale didn't go through, so we ended up trying to reconfigure it one more time.”
Luckily for Villa, community members and some of their biggest customers stepped up to provide an infusion of investment, revitalizing the store and allowing them to open back up as soon as possible.
“Me and Doug (co-owner) were just burned out with it just being the two of us,” Villa said. “But our main gaming clientele didn't want us to go, so we worked out a new deal. Three people stepped up and now five of us are running a rebuilt Badger.
According to Villa, the store should be back to being fully operational sometime in February, following a few more weeks of revamps. The current hours are listed on the store's Google page.
Villa has hopes to move to a premium location in the future as well as opening up a store in Roseville. But for now, he'll focus on getting the West Sacramento store back on stable ground and holding fun events, as well as supplementing his income with his commission painting.
“We are still here for our main group,” Villa reassured. “I'm also still doing commission paintings as well for anyone interested.”
After serving in the military, Villa, who moved to West Sacramento in 2012, opened the original Hobby Badger Games store during the COVID-19 pandemic after a life realization.
Villa previously worked as an EMS, hoping to pursue a nursing degree or get into firefighting. However, after finishing his training in March 2020, Villa decided those routes weren't for him.
“That whole time (pandemic) made me think about things differently,” Villa recounted. “I think COVID changed a lot about the way people were thinking of directions they wanted to go in their careers. I had always been into tabletop games and hobbies, so I thought I'm just going to open up a store.”
Villa filled an LLC on Oct. 6, 2020, which just so happened to be National Badger Day. With inspiration in the air, Villa made that the name of his store.