I’m sure we’ve all seen, or heard of the ‘gaming tables’ online. Either they are the type of table you can buy in some stores designed for ‘traditional games (cards, billiards) or they are one shot tables made by serious gamers who have passion, but who have no desire to make more.
It seemed that true gaming tables for the serious gaming geeks would be a niche item that no-one would be willing to really invest time and money into.
At this years’ Emerald City Comic-Con, I was proven wrong.
My wife and I were attending the convention with the 501’st for the charity photo shoot. It’s long, and tiring, and I often needed to stretch my legs. One of the times I was wandering the booths of comic stores, toy stores and artists, I found an unusual booth by the name of ‘Geek Chic’. Geek Chic hand makes custom furniture, for geeks.
They first appeared that GenCon ’08 with a table they call the Sultan. This is a massive, glorious table for the gamer in all of us. But it is big. Five and a half feet wide, and 9 feet long, it is too big for most rooms. As well, It is an obvious gamers table. Each player has their own desk, drawers, cup holder, dice tower and so on. It also costs as much as a small new car. Nice? Ohhh yes. Practical? Not really.
At ECCC, they introduced their second table. The Emissary. This is the table my wife and I just took delivery of on June 4th.
Geek Chic’s motto is “Emerge Ex Hypogaeo’ or ‘Come out of the Basement’. And they follow this with Gusto.
This is the table. We had it made out of Cherry wood (They also make it in Maple and Walnut). It is quite solid, and beautiful. And Big.
It is 33” tall, 6’8” long, and 4’7” wide. They do make smaller sizes, but I wanted this size for reasons I will mention shortly. It is solid wood, and very heavy. This is a table Geek Spouses would be happy to have in the dining room. A classic (if larger than normal) traditional country table.
But the top comes off…
The top of the table breaks apart into 5 solid leaves revealing the actual play surface. It is 2” deep, well enough to play most games, and miniatures, where the leaves can be placed back for dinner without disturbing the game.
The play area is 4’ x 6’, which is the tournament legal size for most Warhammer and miniature wargames. A must since I do play Warhammer.
Geek Chic calls the play surface the “Layer Cake”. The bottom is a white board for a background, and the top is a thick sheet of acrylic that can be used as a wet/dry erase board. In the middle, my wife and I elected for the 1” square grid printed on a clear lexan. This way you can place other maps under the grid, creating an instant map of anything you wish. Geek Chic includes a nice suction cup to pull up the acrylic sheet so you can swap anything you wish.
They also prototyped, and created for us ‘leaf supports’. When playing RPG’s, people like a nice surface to place their sheets, and dice, and goodies. This allows you to place one of the leaves back onto the table, upside down to create a nice desk surface area that you also won’t lose dice, and minis under.
We also picked up a ‘command stick’ to help move things around on the play surface. All I need now are some toy tanks, and a cry that I will take over the world!
Some of the options you can have on this table include a number of drawers and desks. There is ne at each end, and up to two on the sides of the table. We decided on only drawers on the ends, due to the limited space in our dining room. We included a pair of GM drawers. Players can use the leaf supports for a surface, but the GM cannot in this table. So Geek Chic created a drawer that opens up, and flips out creating a private area for his papers and supplies.
When the table was being made for us, they were also prototyping a new table, called the ‘Spartan’. This would be a table for gamers who like to game standing up. Mainly for Miniature wargaming, they built a ‘rail’ system for it, that would allow people to place different items to the table without the need for drawers. They made desks, a dice tower that clips on, and cup holders. We bought four cup holders.
And this is the new table. We haven’t actually used it yet, since we just received it, but we can’t wait. Turns out, we’re also the first local customers for Geek Chic, since they are based here in the Seattle area! They warned us that they may use us as ‘test subjects’ for some of their ideas. Not a problem, but I fear they’re going to drain my pocket book..
Their website is ‘
www.GeekChicHQ.com'. Tell them Darth Vader sent you..
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