Welcome to Aurora Games and Hobbies. This company was started by my wife, Kaila, and me, Warin. I am an avid board/card/video gamer, however Kaila has only recently begun her collectible card game journey with One Piece the Trading Card Game. I've always wanted to have my own game store so we decided to open a webstore. We may be small now but as we start getting our bearings right while navigating this new venture, the amount of inventory and the variety of games we will carry will grow right with us.
I figure as the first blog post, it would be a little customary to talk a little about myself. I am a born again collectible card game enthusiast located in Minnesota. My first foray into collectible card games was Decipher's Star Wars CCG back in elementary school. I was big into Star Wars back then and so was my one of my brother's. One of our friends introduced us to it. Our other brother was more into Star Trek, so we got some Star Trek CCG cards to play with him as well. In middle school I tried Magic the Gathering for the first time. I wasn't as big into the fantasy genre back then as I am today though so I only ever had enough cards to make a simple deck.
From there my brothers and I collected Pokémon cards. We still have some Star Wars and Pokémon cards from our childhood. I stopped collecting card games sometime in high school as video games took up most of my time. I know I'm dating myself by saying I was an early adopter of Xbox when it came out in my junior or senior year of high school. After college is when I started to get into board games as a way to hang out with my friends more often. While looking for new board games, I came across a card game by Fantasy Flight games, one that was based on a fantasy book series. I had never heard of it before as it wasn't really my genre but the game sounded fun so I went out and got it.
That's when I got into Game of Thrones LCG. I remember playing it with my friends then deciding I should read the books to get some kind of reference for these characters. I was hooked and I remember telling some of my friends that the book would make a great TV series. Turns out a couple weeks later HBO announced the Game of Thrones series. It only boosted my excitement to play the game. I joined my first and only local tournament as of now and my friend, Tony, who I introduced to the game ended up winning and making it to regionals while I went 1 - 2 in duels and lost all my melee matches but had fun anyways.
Game of Thrones LCG was the last card game I collected. Queue montage: I eventually spent 4 years in Japan teaching English were I met Kaila and we have been married for the last 4 years. She isn't into the board games as I am, but she is a big anime/manga fan. She introduced me to the wonders of One Piece. I was always put off by the art style as it wasn't what I deemed as "traditional" anime style that I enjoyed. I was hooked. Fast forward to a couple months ago and my friend Tony from earlier asked me if I heard of the One Piece Trading Card Game. Funnily enough, the year before while visiting my family in Thailand, I saw the card game for sale and was debating buying a few packs just to collect them, but I didn't because my rationale was I didn't have anyone to play it with.
To make an already long story somewhat shorter, I bit the bullet and got Kaila to try it. We both enjoyed it a lot because it was simple enough for her to get started and it was a series we both really enjoy. I plan on refreshing myself on the rules of Magic and Pokémon so I can introduce those to her as well at some point. We decided to start this site because we wanted to share our enjoyment with everyone.
That's enough about me for now. Thanks for reading out first blog post and don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube!
