The $8,500 Gaming Table You Want

Recently I stumbled upon The Sultan Gaming Table. With a price tag of over $8K, it would have to be awesome: but it has little compartments for the players and DM as well as a drop-down playing surface. If you find the pricetag daunting then you are a sane person, and might instead want to look at the Emissary which starts at a "mere" $1,500 and has many of the same features. Honestly I just love the idea of having my minis on a playing surface underneath the dinner table. I ought to be allowed to expense one of these. I also wish they had more pictures and fewer renderings on the site.

Comments

It's Just A Table

[Obyron]

Get some first hand experience with carpentry and build yourself one. It's not difficult. Borrow some tools from friends and family if you need to, or possibly neighbors. Tell your friend you have a sheet of MDF or something and that you need to make some cuts with a table saw, and would he mind if you came over and used it for 15 minutes. Treat it as an excuse to socialize. Borrow your father-in-law's miter saw and pay him back with a case of beer. You'll get a lot more than 8500 dollars worth of enjoyment out of the process, for a very small fraction of the price, and you'll still get your geek table. And you'll get a good story out of it. The thing may not turn out perfect. You might have a drawer that sticks or something, but big fucking deal. What's their target audience? Millionaire gamers? Good luck with that.

Re:It's Just A Table

[pedestrian crossing]

Heck, at that price, you could buy all of the tools as well as materials. Really, projects are just excuses to buy tools, right?

Re:It's Just A Table

[Chelloveck]

Get some first hand experience with carpentry and build yourself one.

But.. But... That won't be Heirloom Quality!

What's their target audience? Millionaire gamers? Good luck with that.

Have you checked the prices of games lately? Won't be long until millionaires are the only people who can afford to game...

"I say, Chauncy, don't roll your solid gold d12 there! You'll scratch my Sultan Table and Wooster will be hours buffing it out."

Re:It's Just A Table

[Rogerborg]

Every morning you wake up breathing is an excuse to buy tools.

Re:It's Just A Table

[idontgno]

I don't intend to need even that excuse.

Hmm... where have I heard the phrase "zombie carpenter" before?

Re:It's Just A Table

[eln]

Sure, I could build it, but I hate carpentry and I know from experience I would get no joy out of it. So, if I were the kind of person who was really obsessed with gaming and had $8500 to throw around (I'm not and I don't), I might buy this table. I would certainly not build it, because that would be a huge pain in the ass. Different people have different interests, and carpentry is not one of mine by any stretch of the imagination.

Obviously the market segment for this thing is limited, but the vast selection of furniture stores out there tells me there are plenty of people who would rather pay a premium for furniture to avoid having to build it themselves.

Re:It's Just A Table

[idontgno]

But.. But... That won't be Heirloom Quality!

This is Slashdot. How many regulars do you anticipate ever having heirs? (Unless someone perfects budding or full-organism mitosis)

Re:It's Just A Table

[geekoid]

In furniture, Heirloom Quality has a pretty specific meaning. It would take years of carpentry expreience to make a tqable like that at that quality level.

They define what they mean:
http://www.geekchichq.com/Theory_Conjecture/Heirloom_Quality/Heirloom_Quality.html

Seriously, you sound like a non geek making fun of USB 3.

Games are not that expensive.

Savage Worlds: 10 bucks for the main book.
DnD 4e retail 34.00 The first Players Handbook in 1978 was 20 bucks. Calculate inflation into that
In 1995, Computer games where 30/40 bucks.
Ticket to ride, 40 bucks: The is the price of equivalent quality board games in the 1980s.

Gaming is not becoming more expensive If anything, it's cheaper.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Mister Whirly]

Gaming is not becoming more expensive If anything, it's cheaper.

They make the games affordable, but then where they get you is the furniture. Sneaky bastards.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Chris Mattern]

Hmm... where have I heard the phrase "zombie carpenter" before?

Jesus is back, and he's here to eat your brains *and* swipe your power tools!

Re:It's Just A Table

[Mister Whirly]

Surgery on yourself is entirely possible, even to the untrained amateur. There is nothing stopping me (well, maybe common sense) from grabbing a knife and cutting into my body. Now successful surgery on yourself on the other hand...

Re:It's Just A Table

[Aranykai]

And he still rolls ones just like the rest of us.

Re:It's Just A Table

[Thud457]

Damn you slashdot! Cut that crap out!
http://crystalcaste.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=CC&Category_Code=XS
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/04/the_10_most_shameful_rpg_dice.php

Wouldn't meteorite, steel or iron be affected by magnetic fields? Or is it assumed anyone this obsessive is honest to a fault?

Re:It's Just A Table

[hey!]

Even easier. Start with a pool table, strip out the bits you don't want, and trim the table with whatever geegaws you want. That appears to be what this company did.

The big advantage over building from scratch: the boring generic "table" part is already done for you, and you can concentrate on the gaming part. In fact, if you made a kind of arrangement that sat in the pockets of the pool table, you could remove the whole thing and still play pool if you wanted to.

This is pretty much what it means to be a geek. To the average person, the "constructed" part of his environment, the things he lives with, that is something fixed. He can buy new stuff or throw old stuff away. If you are geek, no thing's form has to be regarded as fixed.

Practically everything I own has been modified in some way. When I got my Kindle, my first thought was that the metal back was too slippery. I considered covering it with rubberized paint, but settled instead by putting a couple of strips of two inch velcro loop tape to it which makes it easier to hold. I applied velcro hook tape to the slip cover so the two pieces could be handled as one unit. I have a leatherette (vinyl) zip portfolio that I carry paper, writing implements and my kindle in, and I slapped velcro loop on the inside to give the kindle (inside its slipcover) crush space. Since I had velcro hook left over I slapped that on the outside and now I can stand the portfolio with it's spine up and it is a reading stand.

People see that and say, "isn't that clever." But it's not. Once you realize you can turn any surface you aren't otherwise using into a reading stand by slapping some velcro tape on it, it's obvious.

Re:It's Just A Table

[fm6]

Another "everybody's exactly like me" post. I took carpentry in Junior High, but I sucked at it, and have only a single (really ugly) bookcase to show for my training. Maybe you can throw together something like this without a lot of effort. I never could hope to attempt something like this, and I suspect most people are in the same category.

Don't get me wrong, I admire (and envy) people who are good with their hands. And even though my own experience was less than positive, I bemoan that fact that most kids don't get a chance to take shop anymore. But dude, people have different strengths and weaknesses.

And, not incidentally, $8K is not that much to pay for this kind of furniture, if it's well made. Whether it's worth it to an individual is a personal call. But if you're a really serious gamer (I'm certainly not) it strikes me as a decent investment.

Re:It's Just A Table

[nuckfuts]

Good god - what utter conceit! You look at a large and intricate piece of hardwood furniture, with all kinds of drawers, sliding parts, and recesses, put together with numerous dovetail joints no less, and you think anyone with access to a table saw and a miter saw could build one.

The sheer arrogance of this assumption leads me to believe you've never built anything like this before. If you had, you'd know that even building a single drawer using dovetails is not a trivial endeavour. Add to that the challenge of making many drawers, selecting and mounting hardware that aligns them nicely and lets them slide in and out smoothly. And after you have it all built, there's the significant task of applying a nice finish to the wood.

There is a huge difference between knowing basic carpentry and knowing how to make hardwood furniture. You clearly have no grasp of how much time and skill a project like this requires. It involves hours and hours of planning, measuring, cutting, machining, fitting, gluing, clamping, sanding, and finishing. It requires a sizable workshop with an extensive array of tools, and the quality of the results is directly proportional to the quality of the tools you employ. Don't kid yourself that you could easily build such a thing.

Re:It's Just A Table

[SpeedBump0619]

Yes, but he rolls ones FROM SPACE.

Make it cooler

[Tisha_AH]

What would really be cool is if the table surface was a touch LCD display that you could put digitized maps up on.

The Sultan on PVP

[Mr_Blank]

The Sultan was recently featured in a PvP comic classic.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Re:News?

[Nadaka]

If the thing is made from the materials and quality of work that they claim? The price is not that unreasonable. A standard hand crafted cabinet or table made from those materials with old fashioned proper construction will cost thousands of dollars.

Okay, have had one of these in action.

[Chas]

Had one of these on loan from the GeekChic guys in our booth at GenCon last year.

VERY
NICE
GAME
TABLE

If I had space and the spare cash to front for one, I'd buy one.

I've seen people ragging about not being able to sit around one. This is what the fold-down desks are for.

I've seen people complaining that the drawers would get in the way. They don't. PERIOD. You don't leave them open during play. The drawers are for storage.

I've seen people ragging on the price. Look at the cost of nice hardwood furniture. And I said NICE. My mother's a friggin' oak fanatic. So I know how pricey this stuff gets.

Their prices are only outrageous when viewed in a vacuum. People are talking about being able to buy the materials and tools for less. Sure. If your labor is worthless and you have already figured out all the joinery and other neat tricks that they've incorporated into one of these tables.

Very likely though, you have not. As such, you're paying a skilled craftsman for labor.

Sure, you can buy a pool table or a folding table for a lot less. But the utility for gaming is also a lot less.

Re:Okay, have had one of these in action.

[infinite9]

I've seen people ragging on the price. Look at the cost of nice hardwood furniture. And I said NICE. My mother's a friggin' oak fanatic. So I know how pricey this stuff gets.

Their prices are only outrageous when viewed in a vacuum. People are talking about being able to buy the materials and tools for less. Sure. If your labor is worthless and you have already figured out all the joinery and other neat tricks that they've incorporated into one of these tables.

Very likely though, you have not. As such, you're paying a skilled craftsman for labor.

I'm a computer programmer and play a lot of RPGs. I'm also a woodworking fanatic. I've spent the last 10 years collecting power tools, and I don't mean hand drills and jigsaws. I have a complete woodworking shop in my 3-car garage. I had to put in a separate 100amp subpanel just for the shop. I have probably $30,000 in tools. I've made maybe half a dozen pieces of furniture so far. I would have made more, but my time is limited.

I could probably make a decent attempt at this table and do fairly well. I'm sure mine wouldn't be as good. It takes skill to do this stuff, even with good tools. And the tools can be expensive. The dovetails for example take years of practice to be able to make them look perfect when doing them by hand. I can make perfect dovetails, but I use a $500 jig and two $200 routers. Even the router bits can be $5 to $40 a piece. And the hardwoods their using aren't cheap either. Things like oak, walnut, cherry, and maple can go from $2 to $8 a board-foot (144 cubic inches of wood), more (possibly 10x more) for figured wood. Then there's the finish. Getting it right is hard and takes hours of surface preparation. I still suck at this.

I'm amused by people's attitudes toward good furniture. People walk through furniture stores and ooh and ahh over the furniture. We have antique furniture now because it was made right in the past. The stuff you see today, most of it will fall apart in a few years. When I walk through furniture stores now, all I see are the shortcuts, finishing mistakes, and how that piece will fail.

People think that because you can buy a piece of crap particle board or MDF table at walmart for $50, that this table is outrageously priced. What's really happened is that your incomes have dropped so low that the real quality that we used to be able to afford is now beyond reach. I can't afford $8000 for a table. But I can certainly make nice ones now that my grandchildren will have in their houses.