Gaming Table of DOOM
I will never, ever be rich enough to buy one of the amazing hardwood gaming tables from Geek Chic. I'm told their prices are pretty competitive for custom-made hardwood furniture, but $3000+ is still way more money than I've ever had available at any given moment of my life.
But a girl can dream, can't she? So last night I put on my game face, and settled down for some serious power window shopping. Hours later, somewhere around 1:30 in the am, I knew exactly which model and options to get...as soon as I win the lottery or something.
My table has to accommodate both roleplaying games and miniatures wargaming. The latter means interior dimensions of at least 4' by 6', which is the regulation tournament size for both Warhammer 40,000 and Flames of War. And as current players of 40K know, the "size creep" the game has suffered over the years, in terms of both miniature scale and army size, means the 6' width is getting a little cramped, so 4' x 8' would be even better.
A related issue with the width is that, if the lip of the game vault is too wide, it can become difficult to reach miniatures in the center of the table. Geek Chic's "command stick" is supposed to be a solution for that, but I don't think it would work. For one thing, miniatures wargames are played on textured terrain, not smooth acrylic, and for another, I think it would be hard to get the stick into the tight-packed large mobs that you sometimes get in a 40K game. Trying to move a gaggle of 30+ ork boys, or a platoon of Imperial Guardsmen, all standing base-to-base, I think the stick would do more harm that good.
I must get one anyway, though, if only so I can reenact that one scene from Tank Vixens. "Girls mit pointy sticks!"
But anyway, the point is I need to rule out the tables with wide lips around the game vault, such as the Sultan. Not that I wouldn't rule out the Sultan anyway, on the grounds that it costs more than I make in a year. I know I'm fantasizing here, but I feel a need to keep my dreams at least somewhat plausible.
For roleplaying games, I would like to be able to accommodate up to a maximum of eight players, plus the GM. So again, bigger is good, except this time there's a catch: the bigger the table, the further away the players are from each other. If it's too big, the sense of a shared group space might be lost, and players might feel too isolated and separate from each other. Also, players at the far end of the table might have trouble hearing the GM--especially a quiet soft-spoken GM like me.
Ruling out models that aren't available in 4' x 8' sizes, don't have too wide a lip around the game vault, and aren't insanely out of my reach, price-wise, I'm left with one choice, the Spartan. This model is ideal for wargaming--that's what it's designed for--but for roleplaying games it runs into a couple problems. The storage cabinet underneath the table might not leave enough leg room on the sides, and it definitely doesn't have any on the ends. This can be mitigated by using the optional rail extensions, but that exacerbates the other problem with this table--it runs into that "players are too far apart" problem I mentioned above. With rail desks at both ends, the players on the far end will be somewhere around ten feet away from the GM.
Although now that I think of it, an 8' long table might be able to accommodate four players on each side; nobody would need to be seated at the far end. And firmly in the plus column, it has the narrowest lip of any of their models.
For options, I added a rail-mounted shelf desk to serve as the GM's station, along with a rail-mounted dice tower (Geek Chic calls them "entropy engines", which goes to show that they really are geeks). A second dice tower for wargaming, along with two rail-mounted desks (without shelves, this time) to give each player a place to put things like army lists and reference cards. And cup holders for everybody, of course.
All Geek Chic tables come with a clear acrylic overlay for the bottom of the game vault. You can put maps underneath it, and it doubles as a whiteboard. Their Printing Library can also produce additional overlays with square or hex grids, as well as printing maps. I opted for two grid overlays, one with 1" squares for D&D, and one with 1.5" hexes for Star Fleet Battles, BattleTech, Renegade Legion, and OGRE.
The final list:
As long as I'm dreaming, how about throwing in another $5548.50 for nine of their "8 hour seating" ergonomic chairs?
But a girl can dream, can't she? So last night I put on my game face, and settled down for some serious power window shopping. Hours later, somewhere around 1:30 in the am, I knew exactly which model and options to get...as soon as I win the lottery or something.
My table has to accommodate both roleplaying games and miniatures wargaming. The latter means interior dimensions of at least 4' by 6', which is the regulation tournament size for both Warhammer 40,000 and Flames of War. And as current players of 40K know, the "size creep" the game has suffered over the years, in terms of both miniature scale and army size, means the 6' width is getting a little cramped, so 4' x 8' would be even better.
A related issue with the width is that, if the lip of the game vault is too wide, it can become difficult to reach miniatures in the center of the table. Geek Chic's "command stick" is supposed to be a solution for that, but I don't think it would work. For one thing, miniatures wargames are played on textured terrain, not smooth acrylic, and for another, I think it would be hard to get the stick into the tight-packed large mobs that you sometimes get in a 40K game. Trying to move a gaggle of 30+ ork boys, or a platoon of Imperial Guardsmen, all standing base-to-base, I think the stick would do more harm that good.
I must get one anyway, though, if only so I can reenact that one scene from Tank Vixens. "Girls mit pointy sticks!"
But anyway, the point is I need to rule out the tables with wide lips around the game vault, such as the Sultan. Not that I wouldn't rule out the Sultan anyway, on the grounds that it costs more than I make in a year. I know I'm fantasizing here, but I feel a need to keep my dreams at least somewhat plausible.
For roleplaying games, I would like to be able to accommodate up to a maximum of eight players, plus the GM. So again, bigger is good, except this time there's a catch: the bigger the table, the further away the players are from each other. If it's too big, the sense of a shared group space might be lost, and players might feel too isolated and separate from each other. Also, players at the far end of the table might have trouble hearing the GM--especially a quiet soft-spoken GM like me.
Ruling out models that aren't available in 4' x 8' sizes, don't have too wide a lip around the game vault, and aren't insanely out of my reach, price-wise, I'm left with one choice, the Spartan. This model is ideal for wargaming--that's what it's designed for--but for roleplaying games it runs into a couple problems. The storage cabinet underneath the table might not leave enough leg room on the sides, and it definitely doesn't have any on the ends. This can be mitigated by using the optional rail extensions, but that exacerbates the other problem with this table--it runs into that "players are too far apart" problem I mentioned above. With rail desks at both ends, the players on the far end will be somewhere around ten feet away from the GM.
Although now that I think of it, an 8' long table might be able to accommodate four players on each side; nobody would need to be seated at the far end. And firmly in the plus column, it has the narrowest lip of any of their models.
For options, I added a rail-mounted shelf desk to serve as the GM's station, along with a rail-mounted dice tower (Geek Chic calls them "entropy engines", which goes to show that they really are geeks). A second dice tower for wargaming, along with two rail-mounted desks (without shelves, this time) to give each player a place to put things like army lists and reference cards. And cup holders for everybody, of course.
All Geek Chic tables come with a clear acrylic overlay for the bottom of the game vault. You can put maps underneath it, and it doubles as a whiteboard. Their Printing Library can also produce additional overlays with square or hex grids, as well as printing maps. I opted for two grid overlays, one with 1" squares for D&D, and one with 1.5" hexes for Star Fleet Battles, BattleTech, Renegade Legion, and OGRE.
The final list:
- 1x 4' x 8' Spartan Fellowship, $4125.00
- 1x 24" Locking Shelf Desk, $140.00
- 2x 18" Locking Desk, $160.00
- 2x Entropy Engine, $170.00
- 9x Locking Cup Holder, $315.00
- 1x 1.5" Hex Clear Acetate Overlay, $169.00
- 1x 1" Grid Clear Acetate Overlay, $169.00
- Home Delivery (estimate), $1000.00
As long as I'm dreaming, how about throwing in another $5548.50 for nine of their "8 hour seating" ergonomic chairs?