When I got back into the board game hobby in 2020, a lot of things had changed. Not only was there far more choice and variety when it came to what to play, but also everything connected with it. Heck, even the way you bought games was different, with crowdfunding forming a massive part of what we, as hobby gamers, see as an avenue to buy a new game.
Accessories, too, had undergone a transformation. 3D printing became mainstream, which meant that every man and his pewter dog had a fancy dice tower and token trays. Gorgeous, weighted poker chips aimed at board gamers instead of poker players became a thing. Game-specific neoprene playmats were starting to become expected for some games, not just a crazy one-off custom print job. Even tables, the very thing we depend on for tabletop games, had seen an upsurge in options.
Companies making custom gaming tables existed before then, for sure, but there’s been a groundswell in selling fancy tables to folk with lots of disposable income, or at the very least a long-term payment plan. Geeknson popped up around 2015, and a few years later, Natural 20 Tables did the same thing. Allplay were around 2014, Wyrmwood a couple of years before, and these are just the first that sprang to mind for me.
Yes, for just the price of a second-hand car, you too can own a fancy table to play your games on. Pretty tempting, right? No?
But we - and I’m including myself in that ‘we’ - want them from time to time. If you’ve played on them, you’ll understand why. It’s a plush experience, it feels great, and it adds a weird kind of holiness to our hobby.
Come, worship at the cardboard altar in all its glory.
The timber temptress
Have you ever run your fingers along the sleek lines of a gaming table? Have you dropped dice onto the perfectly fitted neoprene vault floor and marvelled at their muffled dance? Has someone handed you a card holder or a drinks holder that fits perfectly into the table’s rails?
Nice, isn’t it? Tempting? Sexy?
I’ve experienced all of those things myself, and lordy, did it make me want one myself. Even now, when a new crowdfunding campaign comes along my head is turned. Or when I go to a big convention like UKGE and see them in person and get tempted by their payment plans.
In an ideal world, I’d have one. I’d have a gaming table and I’d love it.
But this, for me at least, isn’t an ideal world, and I can’t just drop a few thousand quid on an extravagance like a gaming table. Woe is me, right?
No! I have so many things I use to remind myself that I don’t need a special table to enjoy my games. So if you find yourself in a situation like mine, where you feel tempted, but it’s a big decision, take some of this on board and see if it helps.
Where did it happen?
Think back to the best, most memorable games you’ve played. Where did it happen?
For me I tend to automatically think of two places. Conventions and my local group. I’ve had so much fun at conventions. A recent game of El Grande at a local convention sticks in my mind, and a couple of years ago at Airecon where I jumped into a game of The Great Wall on a whim. I’ve had so much fun at my usual Wednesday night group like the time we played The Gallerist, and another time when I took along a prototype of Luthier.
What do all of these have in common? I played them on tables never intended to be used as games tables. Think about when you play at a convention. It’s usually row upon row of relatively cheap folding tables. When you play with your local group, do you play in a pub? A village hall? A social club? What kind of tables do they have? Dinner tables? kitchen tables? More folding tables? I’m willing to bet they don’t have vaulted, LED-lit tables with built-in USB ports for you to charge your phone at the same time.
The truth of it is that it doesn’t matter what kind of table you play on. As long as it’s stable, flat, and your game fits on it, it’s a good board game table.
I think of myself as a sort of case study for this mantra. When I got back into board games during lockdown I used to play in my living room on a small, low coffee table. It kinda worked, but it was tight. Take a look at me trying to play Terraforming Mars solo:
I wanted to keep playing in the living room, and I liked having a low coffee table as I had (at the time) a seven-year-old child who liked to use it for playing and drawing on. I didn’t want to spend silly money on a table, so instead I built one from a wooden pallet. I still have it, I still use it, and if you want to know how I did it, I wrote a full guide which you can read here. It worked. Look here, Nemo’s War 2e with room to spare:
Other than on this table, I tend to play games on my kitchen table. Now I’ll grant you, there are some quality-of-life improvements that a big custom table brings. Your dice can’t roll off the table when the table is in a dropped vault. It’s easier to pick your cards up from a soft surface. You can pop the leaves on top and leave your game where it is while you eat dinner from the table as a family.
I can’t help with the latter, but a nice dice tower or dice tray sorts the first issue, while having a nice surface is as difficult as buying a nice mat for your table. Even if you spend a few pounds extra on a custom-printed, custom-size mat, you’re still talking about something under £100 instead of measuring the cost in thousands.
What kind of table do you use?
I have a confession to make. Despite all my talk of ‘whatever table you use is the best table’, while I was writing this and doing a little bit of research, I found myself eyeing up tables again. I’m not immune to their allure. We wants the wooden precious. But even now I still can’t bring myself to get anything close to committing to one.
Now I’m not an expert in tables by any stretch of the imagination, despite the number of hours I spend sat at one, but I still feel like I can give some advice. If money is no object, then sure, go nuts. Treat yourself. Invest in a games table you’ll love and cherish for years to come. For the rest of us though, there are really only two options.
Option A: Just buy a decent kitchen table. Get an extendable table if space is an issue or you want to get a lot of people around it from time to time, but get something with a decent size on top and spend the money on a nice mat instead. You still get that premium neoprene feeling, but you can roll it up and put it away when the family wants to eat dinner.
Option B: Make your own. I’ve seen plenty of posts on Facebook and the BGG forums where people have adapted an existing table to turn it into a gaming table. The most common way seems to be getting hold of a farmhouse style table with the boards underneath, supporting the tabletop. By removing that, adding a new base board, and adding whatever you want to make it feel and look nice, you can have the vaulted surface and still replace the tabletop to use it as a normal table.
I’m no carpenter, but it still seems like an achievable job to me, especially since I made that coffee table.
What about you? What kind of table do you play on? Have you invested in a gaming table? If you did, are you glad you did? Let me know.