Gaming Table

[Shadoq]

Gents,
Well the time has come... I want to own my own table for WH40K gaming. I'm tired of playing on the floor, odd shaped tables, bed boards, etc...

I have had the luck to be able to play on some nicely done Citadel Realm of Battle boards so the question I ask:

Are they worth it to buy?

My requirements:
-Needs to be modular/expandable
-Needs to be able to withstand a good amount of punishment(car driving, moving every 3 yrs, kids, pets, etc...)
-Prefer to look good out of the box

What is everyone's experiences with them?

I like the tables but the price is ouch...(typical GW)

Are there any other alternatives?

[RocketRollRebel]

I've played on one a few times and it was pretty nice. From what I hear they are very high quaility, pretty durable and easy to transport. The only down side is you have the same two hill configurations constantly (big hill in middle or a little hill in each corner) and the steep price. A quality product for sure.

Alternatives. You could just build your own

[Herald of Nurgle]

Well, for the lazy or otherwise preoccupied it's a good price... but there's a store (called Gifts for Geeks lol) in Leicester (and online) which sells the same sized tiles for £20 each. Fairly decent in comparison
Then there's the 25% discount on minis lol.

[Gir]

I bought a Realm of Battle the day of release and I have not regretted it. It is easily the best thing I've ever bought from GW.

[Duke]

For the qualities you are looking for I would say get it... Particularly because you want it modular and expandable.

The one I know of has been broken on the corner, so you do still have to handle with some care (but they are fairly durable)

Duke

[Denzark]

I bought myself a table tennis table - 5' by 9'. I stick a 4' by 6' battlemat in the middle for normal games and cover the whole thing for apocalypse. It goes in the garage and folds up when not in use - I have had it in a single garage and still had room for the car.

[oni]

Yes, it's a bit pricey, but 100% worth it.

[The.Justinian]

edit: I realize that I missed your point about looking good out of the box. Pinkfoam+homebuilt table moves well in the Uhaul though, I can speak from experience. It does require work to make look good, as does the ROB. In fact, all terrain does. For alternatives at low costs, see the bottom. I'll leave this as I think it's a good point as to what's lacking from the ROB and why I wouldn't go there, nor recommend it.
----

I can't say emphatically enough that realm of battle is a waste, at upwards of two hundred dollars. Let me derascinate why:

1) looks the same every time in every color. Because its' hard plastic, there's not a whole lot of conversions, or other shapes that you can come up with for it. When you play a game and someone asks, "What Planet are we fighting over?" The answer will always be, "oh, the realm of battle one, the one with the skulls that are like, just under the grass." This planet gets fought over DAILY, and I for one would have thought the war(s) of this planet would be settled by now.

What I'm getting at is that any combination of boards/terrain with a little bit of effort and thought put into them add up to a unique place/planet...compared to the dirty reminder that no matter what color flock is on the ROB, it's still the same underneath. If you are a converter or have 1% of the converter spirit in you, ROB will get old. My house is Trashcanistan, an orange Orkish wasteland, ala' Gorkamorka. My friend Russ' house that I helped concieve and build, his table is Ravenloft, named for the flecks of halloween fog that shroud the necron tombs on high moorlands and brood over a stagnant ditch.

Modular, transportable terrain from pink foam, with enough latex+sand on it, is not only transportable but ORIGINAL. Wars fought at your house will take on some flavor-- It's worthwhile. And besides, every time pink foam breaks, all it takes is the latex and some time to reshape it into a new slope.. A broken ROB will be troubling you forever.

2) for some reason, the newtonian laws of gravity just don't work the same on these (ROBs) things. Because they're so light, if your mini is standing on any kind of slope, it will literally SLED down to the bottom each time the table is jarred, a child walks by, or even if someone's phone vibrates while set on or near the table. Because the surface of the ROB is so thin, it tends to take on some membranelike properties, and when jarred the minis will often move like plates on a tablecloth when someone is doing the jerk-the-tablecloth trick, ie, they will remain in place while the ROB moves on its own vector. Disaster can, and will, result at least occasionall. Traction is bad for anything heavy, because without a heavy coat of sand, defeating most of the detail on the ROB, any model with a fair amount of metal in it will tip or sled (from inadequate traction). Your old vindicator will be sliding ALL the way down the hill. I can't count how many times I've seen this happen at the GW store to me or another table.

3) you don't actually get a table for your $200. Most dining rooms, beds, floors, and so on aren't actually four feet across. An ROB, or anything else, will end up perched atop them. Better to get a table that's dedicated to gaming that you can shove out of sight for wifey/inlaws' sake, and pull out when you want to claim gamer space. This can be done for under $100. All you get for ROB's $200 is six lousy 2x2 sections that will balance on a small table. Better to download plans for (or engineer yourself) a table from 2x4s, plywood, and the stock (available at hardware stores or from any beat up folding table) table legs, drilled into the bottom. The 2x4s create a trough that pinkfoam terrain rests in, or (see point #4) the ROB, if you do decide on that.

Edit: Because it can fold up and stow, it satisfies your modularity req.

4) how much do you value your time vs. your money? If you play 40k, you probably enjoy investing time into getting value out of the hard-earned money spent on models. the $200 for ROB can be cut in half with the home setup described above, and the other $100 spent on more models, more abundant terrain options, or more men, or (forbid) your girlfriend. After paying $200 for ROB, the only choices are which color flock, and whether you want to fill in the stupid skull farms in the middle of the board with putty...a lot less choice than a Codex Astartes player has, even. Contrast this to the world of choice and originality (see point #1) that you get out of your own project.

5) I am dead sick of having ROB driven down my throat by GW. every piece of GW photography takes place on it. The canned nature of ROBs and GW terrain means that the redshirt pool can be even less creative and even more disposable. Every GW store has ROBs for play surface. GW has figured that ROB can be marketed to newbs and veterans, and sells well to moms that want the army men to stay off the kitchen table. Well, terrain is one thing that isn't protected by GW IP lawyers, nor are we obliged to play on GW terrain as we are forbidden to use non-citadel minis. This is the place to save money by not paying the GW 'man in this hobby. Take advantage, and buy more army with the surplus.

---
As a side note, the shape and character of the ROB hills are especially good for balanced games of WHFB, and some of their contour and charcter should be echoed in home terrain...but again, DIY for 1/2 to 1/3 the price
===
So, looking good with low labor input. Well........Wood and pinkfoam with some tutorial youtube videos won't go awry, but if you really need something that's premodelled, try picking up a model railroad layout that's getting trashed (those guys flush out their terrain with some reqularity) and splice it onto modular 2-2 plywood sections...of course this will take its own labor, in the form of networking with the railroad dudes.

There's really no easy way to make good terrain, but it's also not that hard. One day and a plan will make a whole board and change. If that's not too long, go DIY--this is, after all, a DIY hobby. Ask yourself why you'd like to be playing a game at home rather than at the FLGS, GW, or a buddy's house or club, and you'll quickly realize that it's an investment in building your own gaming microcosm/lodge. Your game talble will ultimately be your gaming home, where your army sits to be photographed for forum posts, and likely where your kids will be rolling their first dice or (at the least) seeing daddy's army men march. Making something to be proud of is worth the eight hours.

If you're intimidated...simply look to the tutorial videos; I learned how to do this stuff from scratch.. As a community member, maybe I should be doing more of them...whoa...citizen moment.

[EmperorEternalXIX]

My recommendation is to spend the 30 or so dollars it would cost you for glue, flock, and two 2x8 pink foam boards from home depot, and make your own. Use the remaining 160-some-odd bucks to buy some nice terrain pieces from your LGS.

The realm of battle board doesn't seem bad, but I can't really justify 200 dollars for it. Especially when you can make your own for such short money.

[Morgrim]

My major issue with the board are those slopes. My friends have a standing arrangement to use tokens for certain metal models when they're on parts of the board, and if we need TOS to one it'll get held in place while the laser pointer is shone and then removed to flat ground again.

The bonus of the RoB board is that it does not require power tools, which pretty much every homemade table does.

[Gir]

I found after flocking my RoB that models didn't slide off it unless they where paticularly unbalanced to begin with.

If you get sick of the same terrain over and over, making new sections is easy 9-10mm mdf painted and cut to 2x2 squares is really easy and cheap to do. The MAJOR downside to this is that mdf sections are very heavy, and are much harder to transort and store. That said, this is the table my friends and I built for apocalypse:

http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs202.snc1/6924_167675719917_531124917_3671887_8082754_n.jpg

Whole thing cost $600 AU ($450 for the rob). This is where the RoB is really great, as it allows you to move the hills to make some great features on an apoc table.


Because the surface of the ROB is so thin, it tends to take on some membranelike properties, and when jarred the minis will often move like plates on a tablecloth when someone is doing the jerk-the-tablecloth trick, ie, they will remain in place while the ROB moves on its own vector.

Maybe you should actually use one before making up your mind. They are rather thick and don't do any of that.


3) you don't actually get a table for your $200. Most dining rooms, beds, floors, and so on aren't actually four feet across. An ROB, or anything else, will end up perched atop them. Better to get a table that's dedicated to gaming that you can shove out of sight for wifey/inlaws' sake, and pull out when you want to claim gamer space. This can be done for under $100. All you get for ROB's $200 is six lousy 2x2 sections that will balance on a small table. Better to download plans for (or engineer yourself) a table from 2x4s, plywood, and the stock (available at hardware stores or from any beat up folding table) table legs, drilled into the bottom. The 2x4s create a trough that pinkfoam terrain rests in, or (see point #4) the ROB, if you do decide on that.

Awesome, so what if you're one of the billions of people in the world that has absolutly no ability when working with wood? Also, what happens if you just don't have th time? When I bought my RoB I was working over 60 hours a week. Buying a RoB meant I had one I could use straight away, and I could very eaisly take to friends places and store.

[plasticaddict]

I have one of these monstrosites on my closet. My FLGS got a deal on some so I picked it up for much less than retail and I still didn't get my monies worth. It was painted and flocked by a good friend of mine and we used it at the FLGS for a while to help demonstrate it and sell the others that were in stock. Bump the table models go everwhere. Place a model on a slope and it falls. It's large and cumbersome in the bag. A pain to put together and breakdown. Boring to play on. It works better for WFB than 40K (I don't play much WFB though). The only reason I haven't sold it is that nobody localy is dumb enough to buy it and I haven't tried to figure out how much it would cost to ship so I can Ebay it.

Spend your money wisely, I have another portable surface that I made to play on: 2"x2" pieces of 1/8" Masonite, painted white (snow) one one side and brown (desert) on the other, with packing tape used as hinges, cover it with an old army blanket and boom instant green field. Styrofoam hills and a GW Imperial sector provide the main terrain, with a bag of GW craters and some diorama trees picked up after the holidays from the local chain store to provide flavor.(all prices are USD) $12 for the Masonite, $90 for the Imperial Sector, $10 for the craters, $20 for the glue, flock and sheet of styrofoam to make hills, $10 dollars for the blanket from the surplus store, about $10 for the trees, a little labor and some free time that I would have used to game with anyway. Half the price and I have a table and terrain that takes up about the same volume as the GW table.

I know that all of the local stores have one and I don't see anyone playing on them except during tournaments(when you don't get a choice).

[Lord Azaghul]

I know that all of the local stores have one and I don't see anyone playing on them except during tournaments(when you don't get a choice).


I know my local store has there's sitting around for unsold for months, (the table is actually like 270$ USD)
The store just could not sell them. Finally using the black friday sale they marked them down to 175$. still nothing, the week after 100$ finally someone actually bought the dang thing. To me it just looks like an overpriced piece of plastic (and the skulls are stupid)

[Morgrim]

They aren't a product I would buy, but I'm a little surprised at the hatred. They are certainly one that I play on often. Even when the flat table is available (although said table is usually set up for the newbie 40k games anyway).

[galahad]

I traded a FW warhound and a a minotaur (the 2 barrel basilisk) for 2 sets of ROB boards. We use them at the church hall when we play (monthly games)

It too another $50 of prime, paint and sealant to get them ready to use (and essentially 1.5 days of my vacation) but we now have very nice boards that store nicely and are ready to go in about 10 miutes of setup.

The convenience of have someone else do the construction work was well worth the cost. If the ROB boards were not available we would never have goe through the work of tile prep, etc.

[Doomgrin]

Here is what I use for the boards:

$24 Home Depot sells 2' x 4" boards, obvious get three (about $8 per)

$5-10 1 can of white primer and bag of sand

$9-12 1 can of black spray, 1 medium color, 1 highlight color per board

prime and then spray each board, the size of each is easy enough to transport around. For terrain/structures, use whatever works for you, though I am a nut about making things from polystyrene and foamcore.

I find that for the cost of just the RoB board I can make the full board and nice terrain to go with it. And honestly, the hobby of making the terrain is a nice diversion from working on models all the time, plus you can make boards to fit you own army's theme giving it a home-field feel.

[Duke]

Just get the board. like a putter in golf! For some reason there are a lot of haters when it comes to the ROB board...


Duke

[Duke]

Double post...sorry

[EmperorEternalXIX]

What kind of power tools, besides a hit glue gun?

We just build the surface, and place it on either another table or a series of smaller tables at the corners (a local store sells retractable coffee tables in 4 packs). You have to be a little careful, of course, but you'd be surprised at how durable it can be.

[TheBitzBarn]

I do not think it is hating just not worth the price and I would confer with that a nice table does not require woodworking skills just knowledge of how a YTape Measure and Saw works and some nails/Screw and you are set for WAY less cas and a lil amount of time

[Shadoq]

Wow,
My intention was not to start a flame storm but I am very thankful for all of the different opinions and ideas expressed.

I do have to agree with the sled syndrome expressed by multiple people. And god help the person who knocks/bumps into the table with my Valks on it. They have almost cartwheeled more times than I can count.

While I like and can work with foam, I am not sure it is durable enough for a table itself. Maybe a remedy for the weakness of table edges would be to put a "skirt" around the edges, made of MDF, wood, or masonite to give the table some extra strength. Then drill holes into the skirt for attachment points to other pieces.

Forgive my ignorance but when referring to latex, are you talking about paint or some type of foam sealant?

What paint works best on foam and doesn't melt it?

I like the idea of making a double sided table as well. Would be nice to have a couple different setups possible.

Thanks for all the opinions and keep em coming gents!

[plasticaddict]

The way I was shown is to put a thin layer of PVA glue (Elmers or equivelant or wood glue or the high dollar PVA glue that's marketed to modelers, it's all the same) over the foam and then you paint over that, it works. Just get a cheap paint brush and cover the entire surface with glue. You then wait for it to dry and paint away. That's also how I apply glue to flock terrain.

[Subject Keyword]

I don't like to play on them at all. Too... Slanty and unoriginal.
Making a custom board can be a really rewarding experience. My Necron Tomb world never gets old.

[TheBitzBarn]

You can use any Latex House paint for the the foam and not have to worry about it metling only have to worry about that with traditional Spray cans. They do make Sprays for Plastics but VERY expensive and coverage is poor. I have made over 20 tables and found that I water down Carpenter's glue and add sand or any mixture of texture and paint eh glue and cover in texture and then let it dry for a day and then shack off extra texture and them paint away.

Cheap way to get paint is to hit Lowe's or Home Depot and check out the OOPS paint as they have Gallons for 5.00 or quarts for 2 dollars good way to get cheap terrain paint

[Bedroom General]

Make your own table. My 2c Aus.

[Gir]

So from what everyone has basically said is that if you can afford on, go for it, if not, don't bother.

[therealjohnny5]

i built my 4X8 table modular and solid for under $60. It's plywood i had cut for me, put in some bolt latches and hook\ eyehooks to hold it together, covered it in that out door green grass carpet also from lowes, and viola...awesomeness...also i plan to change the connection method and city fight the other side....