I am going to start a new boardgame table topic because I think ultimately this discussion is kinda disruptive to the main Boardgaming in 2019 topic. Maybe @stusser or @tomchick can merge those posts there into this topic. And sorry to derail the normal boardgame talk there.
So, I’ve been looking around, especially with the advice to check our poker tables, and the data has led me to a conclusion.
An 8’x4’ table from boardgametables.com with few frills is over $7k. Yet I can find something like this:
for $2600.
The dedicated enthusiast custom boardgame table market has a huge built-in margin.
It’s an 1100 post thread, we would need to go through and skim the whole thing, marking and moving posts about tables by hand. So… probably not, sorry.
I was able to move over all the Rebel Galaxy Outlaw posts because essentially every post after January 2017 was about the new game, making it very easy.
Does anyone have any experience with buying board game tables? (Or is there a thread I should move that to?) I went to this www.boardgametables.com because I heard about it on the Heavy Cardboard podcast, and put together a table I wanted from their “choose your own adventure” system of size, add-ones, etc. and the hit the “Build” button and boom it told me that would be twelve thousand dollars. ???
I dumped a bunch of $$ into a Kickstarter for the Game Anywhere Table from Transforming Designs. In retrospect, that was obviously really dumb, even if they could deliver on what they were selling. But I was sold on the table edges, felt facing, magnetic top and accessories, and its portability. And now it seems it was a scam, and I expect to get nothing for it. The company took a few hundred thousand dollars and has produced nothing and stopped communicating. Efforts to seek redress through Kickstarter (hah!) and the FTC have so far proved fruitless. This was the biggest straw for me that made me swear off KS forever. If I need a gaming table, I’ll go down to Walmart and pick up a folding table for $25.
So one of the people from the local X-wing group has a dedicated gaming table. It was indeed very nice, and worked well for Twilight Imperium.
Not sure how much it cost, or which brand it was, but I can definitely ask on Wednesday. It also has a tabletop that can be removed and reveal a recessed cavity. So you could set up a game under there, and leave it set up without rendering the table unusable.
I believe your best bet for a quality piece that is not going to cost insane custom Kickstarter dollars, is to buy a purpose build poker table, preferably slightly used or from a major manufacturer.
My friend has a nice wooden poker table, with a 3’ hexagonal playing surface, and a rim that has recesses for drinks and chips (these work extremely well for various bits and pieces) that cost him around $200 used. I believe a new-ish one of these can be acquired in the $500 to to $1,000 range depending on brand and options.
The super-custom Kickstarter “board game specialist” tables are nice but my impression of the cost is that they are c-c-c-c-c-crazy.
A bit of quick googling found these options for $750 new at target. You can probably find numerous alternatives.
Seriously, the poker table idea is interesting, thanks for it. The only limitation is that I was hoping to get a pretty big table because let’s face it, I’m not going to be playing Quacks of Quedlinborkugh or Too Many Bones—I’m going to be playing The Dark Valley or Thunder in the East. So I need a long, wide table. And one that looks good, because we are having a designer do the rest of the house. So I can’t get a cheap table or my wife will not allow it to be set up.
I will investigate the poker table thing further. A nice one seems much more reasonable than the boardgame table stuff.
A gaming table’s on my list as a future woodworking project. Sure, the high-end lumber won’t be cheap, and the woodshop tools definitely won’t be cheap, but at the end of it, I’ll have a woodshop.
They do make 6’ and even 7’ length poker tables (oval shaped, usually 30" to 36" wide), but the cost goes up proportionately. A bit of quick googling did find several 72" to 90" poker tables in the $1,500 to $2,000 range that looked pretty nice.
