"Table size optimums" Topic

Being contentious but in no way serious, what it the optimum table size, that is what size gives a playable game without making space demands that very few of us can fulfill.
To be fair I can only cover 2 scales properly and 1 scale with limited knowledge. These are 1/172 and 1/144 modern and 15mm ancients (no ideas what scale as the figures vary from 15mm to 18mm in the same army in my day).

Now we (in the UK) tend two work on two sizes 8 ft by 6ft and 6ft by 4ft and of course the specialist 2ft by 2ft for DBA which still has a large following in the UK despite the age of the rules.

Now for 1/72 really 8ft by 6ft is to me the minimum if you want to model something approaching a real terrain density (as a Simulation), Fantasy games with strange non linear range systems are well beyond my experience or interest. While you cam play urban Modern on a 6ft by 4ft with 15 to 20 houses the problem is vehicles are virtually useless the combat ranges are far to short, Vehicles in an urban area are usually at a massive disadvantage. even at 8ft by 6ft is a bit close for anything much beyond WW2 but bigger for us is certainly not practical and more compact ground scales starts to make the scene look a bit odd to say the least.

For 1/144 modern we have normally played on 8ft by 6ft and this is good but it does take up a lot of room. Going to the standard 6ft by 4ft is OK but to be honest its a bit narrow for 4 ft frontage but fine for depth, you can get measure for defense in depth. In addition it's unsuitable for want complex multi road type games with additional board edges.

We have been forced recently to play in my man cave which really can only easily accommodate 6ft by 6ft but we have been surprised how well it has worked the additional depth over a 4ft by 6ft standard has to us a tremendous advantage and really may be some sort of optimum. Is it that up to a certain limiting size square is better than rectangular?

Maybe DBA players on a square table have a great time because of the improved depth and DBA despite being very crude does have some scope to maneuver.

What are you optimums for yous scales and why? I have seen awesome modern games at 6mm on small tables but to me they seem fiddly but that may be me being unreasonable.

To play Napoleonics, one needs a table that covers 11 x 25 km.
In a scale of 1 cm = 100 m (6mm or smaller figures), it is 110 x 250 cm.
Then one can play Wagram 1809 or Trebbia 1799.

Years ago I had a 5x9 table tennis (ping pong) table that was my gaming surface. I found it to work out just fine for my WWII gaming of the time. Today living in a different home I have a 4x6 foot Game Topper which serves my needs very nicely. I can adjust ground scale as needed in most instances to cover my gaming needs.

I have an antique pool table in my basement game room. The surface area is roughly 4x8. I can use the whole area for games with my 40mm dark ages figures, or with ACW ironclads. I can also go the opposite route and set up two 3x3 mats for my normal skirmish gaming.
Hasn't been used for pool for over twenty years!

We live on a farm where we inherited a 14 X 5 foot 100 year old hardwood table – works well for big games; I am planning a grand tactical game in Napoleonics using 6mm figs with the idea being having the space to maneuver – keen to see how it works out

5x3 does me fine for 150 games per year x 50 years.

For me, ground scale is the critical consideration. In 28mm horse & musket, I play at about 1"=15 yards, and can fight a smallish division action on a 6' X 8' table. Those are "home" games.

My regular "away" games are usually on a 3'x3' table with microscale castings. 1"=150 yards for horse & musket permits a corps-size Napoleonic battle and 1" = 100 yards for WWII gives me a reinforced battalion in defense against a reinforced regiment in the attack. Troops, terrain and rules go in an old US Army chaplain's bag 12"x19"x14".

My "travel" forces are 2mm and at 1 mm=10 meters I can fight most SYW battles on a 2' x 2' board--placing troops, terrain rules and board in a courier bag, which is the objective.

I have 8 each 8 foot x 30 inch folding tables that fold in half (Cosco or Lowes), these are very versatile and store nicely. Can be used for other than wargaming also.

Shape. I think absent special circumstances--the Noche Triste, the retreat from Concord, "Hell's Highway," convoy ambushes--battles are more often roughly square than the 3:2 ratio of a 4x6 table, let alone the 5x9 ping-pong table. The problem is reaching the center of a table makes any depth over 6' questionable, which suggests an optimum table in the abstract around 6' square or possibly 6'x8' for a maximum. But that may not accommodate the battle at any ground scale the players will accept, and really can't handle more than six to eight players, with four to six being more comfortable.

Which is why scenario design is as much art as science, and frequently involves compromises.

Should note that--setting aside a card table for the 3'x3'--I have nine 2'x4' folding tables, which gives me the option of 6'x12', which I have used, or seriously oddly-shaped game tables for some of the stranger historical battles.

I have a 6x9 table setup in my game room. It's big enough for most things although sometimes I'm jealous of my brother and his 6.5' x 12' table.

I have two 6x8 foot tables. We usually on game on one unless we are doing a really be game then put them together for a 6x16 table.

I have a 4x6. If a particular game doesn't fit then I would play something else.

I think robert piepenbrink covered all the ground I care about. I can only add a couple points:

• In a game where players sit/stand side-by-side, they need 2'-3' spacing, so player commands should have approximately the same frontage.
  
• Some kinds of documentation-heavy games really benefit from unterrained table edges, to keep the paper (and dice, rulers, markers, etc.) off the field of battle.
  

That's all I got. Rounds complete.

When I lived in an apartment I used a ping pong table and I took the hinge out of the center so I could use it as two tables or 1/2 small table at a time. Sometimes run a bridge between the tables for river crossings.

When I lived in a house in the suburbs I had a 7 X 16 foot long table with a parallel 3 X 14 foot table for off board air fields or for river crossings.

After I retired I got a custom built house with a walk out basement. Two parallel 40 foot X 7 foot wide tables with four small side tables for off board artillery or airfields.

Tables are 40 inches tall, kitchen counter height, and have shelving underneath for storage.

I use mostly HO scale Roco and 1/72nd scale plastic figures.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

I can set-up 8' x 5' but TBH I'd need something more like 12' – 14' x 6' for 25/28mm games. Not sure I'll ever get that sort of space but I continue to dream.

robert piepenbrink, interesting with 600m (6") or less between hedgerows on the lage side, bocarge about 11/2 Inch as a minimum they must be really small casings to not look strange.

Well, they are small castings, UshCha: as I wrote, 6mm and 2mm. But I was never interested in fighting through the bocage. The Ardennes and Lorraine are more my style. (And it is really your understanding that bocage is 150 meters thick? Remember my terrain as well as my troops are micro- and nano-scale.)

If it were assigned to me as a problem--"set up a game for Normandy hedgerow country"--I think I'd go down a level and have battalions attacking companies in defense, switching to "stand=squad" and "tank=tank," or else go to skirmish with larger castings. And yes, either way I'd probably want larger boards.

But that's sort of the point. For me, the "away" table can't be bigger than 3' square due to my opponent's eye troubles. (He can't rapidly shift focal distance.) So I have to begin the calculations with that: "what sort of tactically interesting miniature wargames can I play on a 3' x 3' table?" is the first question. Different first questions produce different answers--not necessarily wrong: just different.

I have 5 folding tables that are 6 ft x 2.5 ft so setting up 4 tables gives me a 5 ft x 12 ft table or set the other 6 ft x 10 ft. With a 5th table it bev9mes 6 ft x 12.5 ft….gaming heaven!!
😎

Brooding. Let me rephrase for clarity.

I don't think there is an optimum table in the abstract. Tables should allow, as Yellow Admiral says, 2-3 feet per player, probably with a maximum of 4-5, and no one should have to reach much over three feet. Most battlefields are roughly square, but that's an observation, not a prescription. Beyond that, a game table has to fit in the room (and possibly the car) be accessible to the players at all points, accommodate all the players, and reflect the historical or hypothetical battle through the lens of the rules. These requirements sometimes--perhaps usually--conflict, and one mark of good game design is that the necessary compromises still produce a satisfying game.

There was for a time a "Market-Garden" game at the big HMGS-East conventions--a relatively narrow "C" shaped board on three or four walls of the biggest room available, covering everything from XXX Corps' jumping-off line to Arnhem. I don't think any one of us, told to design the perfect wargame table, would say "four or five feet wide, fifty or sixty feet long and C-shaped." But it was a good board, given troops, rules, the tactical situation and the available rooms.

We don't need a perfect table. We want the table which is best for our situation--which may be different next week.

robert piepenbrink, this is interesting. It would never have occoured to me the table limit due to people. Multiplayer games are not the norm in the UK. Its supprising that only 2 to 3 ft per person is needed. Our "optimum" of 6ft by 6ft is for a 2 player game. I cant imagine 4 folk round it. But there again I can't imagine wanting to play it with 4 folk.

Like you say it's in part the fidelity of the terrain to the real world that controls the optimum. That in part, at least for me, is controlled by the figure scale. Figures too far out of ground scale; further than 5 to say 8 times too big, gives me problems visulaising the issues, probavly less so before the enclosures act i.e before the ground was rtightly fenced in.

I play a lot of multi player games, but prefer smaller tables. These days, 4x4 tops, for remote games, 3x3. Depending on ground scale, you can fit huge battles into that space. I did the whole of Operation Goodwood in 6mm on a 2x3 (including the Canadians) with 1cm = 500m ground scale and eight players.

Well, whatever turns your crank, UshCha. In my experience, the level of distortion you want means either skirmishes rather than battles or "bathtubbed" battles with battalions taking the place of brigades. (The distortion of ground scale is still there, but people try not to mention it.)

Number of players. Mostly one on one myself these days, but a lot of former opponents are dead or don't travel much. In the glory days of the Midwest Napoleonic Wargaming Confederation, we might see 20 players for a formal game, and, checking out old maps, we would have been about 3' of table per player. You still see a lot of players in single games at some of the conventions, and they are sometimes uncomfortably crowded. I'd say the maximum frontage per player is higher as the players are younger. As we get older, the enthusiasm for running back and forth in order to play tends to diminish. See how it works for you and yours.

If you've got the room, use the floor as your table… ;-)

Not the room, Zephyr, the knees.

Knees, back, neck, wrists, ankles, shoulders…

I stopped being comfortable playing on the floor around age 40. Now I simply can't.

3'x3' or 3'x4' are optimal for 28mm.

Nobody has mentioned the scope of the engagement in terms of people, objectives, etc. We play a lot of small unit and asymmetric games. So while a contested facility may be acres (or hundreds of acres), the battle proper is confined to a small portion of that before someone either wins or bails.

We also haven't mentioned time. On a 1m square board we can play a satisfying engagement in a couple of hours, reset, swap sides and play again.

Au contraire, robert piepenbrink mentioned scale of engagement a lot, and I implicitly agreed that was a critical variable in determining what is "optimum". But I think that just means we're all on the same page here. What is optimum for one scale/type of engagement may be all wrong for another.

I think there are a few variables that determine the optimum:

• Human ergonomics. The space has to be reachable but also not too small or crowded for the players.
  
• Scale. The relationships between ground scale, unit scale, figure scale, and level of command matters a lot.
  
• Type of scenario. A maneuver battle, encounter battle, developing battle between coalescing armies, assault on a static defense, stern chase, and campaign-on-a-table all have different parameters, and different optimum table shapes. The way I play aerial combat I also need to worry about table height and 3D space above the table (for telesoping rods). Some historical refights need extremely specific table parameters.
  
• Hobby crap. I find that a lot of my games really need table edges outside the terrained battlefield to hold all the papers, markers, dice, measuring sticks, casualties, etc. I paid a lot of money for my nice terrain mats, it's a shame to cover them in paper and detritus.

You can't really determine the "optimum" table until you nail down most of these.

My favorite games are usually on 5-6' x 8-12' tables, but that's because I deliberately choose games that fit such a space. Tactica and DBA fight exactly the same scale of battle, but with totally different optimum table sizes. A small group of us are ramping up ancient galley battles, and so far they work best on 6'x4' tables. I want to refight Jutland in 1/6000 scale, which might need a 6'x20' table (with scrolling sea mat).

Many games, many optima.

- Ix

The table in the wargames shed is 20 x 8. I like big games but have also played smaller games on it. We have a small stool to reach the middle,

Tally Ho!

Depends on the range of weapons and how much sight blocking terrain. I wouldn't enjoy a ww2 game where a single position could cover the entire table length.

My table is 6x8 and with 12mm, I usually keep the accurate range of weapons to about 3' max. You can shoot farther but with poor chances.

I also use enough terrain that there are at least 3 different lanes to attack which need to be defended separately. This way the defender is forced to consider the distribution of troops.

Gauntlet, I have never seen the need for that. In Western Europe battle ranges are 1500 to 500m max and often less.

Dropping the ground scale below 1mm represents 10m using 1/144 (about 12mm) means real fields look a bit daft, real field are out of scale even a 1/1000 groundscale. Now there are two options simplyfy the terrain by habving the wrong hedge spacing but that destroys the ability of infanyr to poerforen as they do in the real world.

So which compromise daft looking fields or Infantry not able to function correctly. To me both are unacceptable the latter of the two doubely so.

The other oiption is to go down to 6mm. We have tried this but to us the very, small vital vehicles, like Jeeps are too fiddley and so make the game (to us) impractical. I agree on an 8 by 6 board or there abouts but with careful selection of terrain and bearing in mind the maximum practical 1500 to 500m for armoured vehicels and well below that for infantry I see no need for the massive compromises of smaller groundscale. However I am not a "board Gamer. So massively out of scale games where frontages of units is unrepresentative id not my scen. the 6 by 6 seems a resonable compromise, 8 by 6 is better but not to us as much as we thought.

It really does depend on what you want out of a wargame and that is very personal.

A very insightful thread, as I am contemplating a purpose-made table. The main consideration is the room space and walk-around clearance, and of course its intended combatants: 6mm for divisional scale WWII and modern, and 15mm for F&F and AoE. At the moment, the math looks like 5x9 feet, maybe a whisker more either way.

Thanks again for the many very helpful comments above.

Fred, actually storage space is potentially an issue depending on figure scale and if you are playing fantasy or real world. Before even we started to write Manoeuvre Group, so more than 15 years ago we realised most wargames do a really bad job on terrain, they never have even remotely enough terrain to be vaguely realistic. We did a small game some years ago on an attack on a village adjacent to a WW2 airfield at a goundscale of 1" represents 10 yds (using 1/72 figures). We put it on for a talking point at a show. We were staggered by some of the responses. On guy told us it was stupid and nowhere would look like that. We then told him it was real and then came "well no one would fight over that" and then we showed him the real map, he stormed off. That table used 90ft of hedge on an 8 by 6ft table and actually we were a bit short of hedges. Now this may be argued as a bit extreme but it illustrates the point.

You need to look at some real maps at the scale you intend and work out if you will ever have enough terrain to be vaguely realistic if it's a big table. It may need almost more storage than the table and laying terrain at a plausible density could soon be a major chore.

Again it's about what you see as your perfect wargame; most certainly the answer is very personal.