Ah, where better to exist than in that glorious place where board gaming meets furniture? There is, in our community, a bit of an obsession with the idea of the gaming table. Companies seem to spring up, producing overpriced tables aimed at games and making absolute bank. Why sell a hastily made table for a couple hundred quid when you can sell it to gamers for a grand or two? I got the smarts, son!
I do actually really like a lot of these products, but they can be a bit ridiculous, price-wise. I also enjoy the posts that people make on Reddit with their homemade efforts. It would be cool to do something like that myself. You know, if I were a real man with actual DIY/woodworking skills. Imagine that!
Perhaps this is not the most generous lead-in to this Kickstarter campaign, which promises to deliver an affordable gaming table at a £399 price point:
Project Ironside is actually a more interesting campaign than I had originally expected. I reckoned it was just going to be a cheap table. I mean that both in terms of cost and quality. Ultimately, it might still be a cheap table, as it’s hard to really judge a piece of furniture and its quality without some hands-on experience with it. What’s interesting though, is how this is being put together.
The table is, as standard, pretty functional. It’s a decent size, with the obligatory sunken playing area and topper which allows the table to be used whilst maintaining an in-progress game underneath. Here are the given measurements for the table, as standard:
Yeah, that’s fine. Decent size. Not bad, not bad.
The modularity is what makes this more interesting. The name, ‘Ironside’ comes from the metal rail running around the outside, defining the edges of the table. It’s designed in a way that you can take your tables apart and then combine multiple tables to create a larger play area more suitable to any specific needs you may have.
The project creators give a couple of examples of this modularity. Pictures on the campaign page show two tables that have been combined into either a longer one or a wider one:
Both of these options are really good, but for quite different purposes. I think the long table is, for board games, a wee bit less practical. It’s well-suited to RPGs, though. I’d definitely consider combining my tables into a longer one to service an RPG group.
The wider table is probably more widely (hah!) useful. This gives you a 6′ by 5′ playing surface that is perfect for miniature wargames. Warhammer would fit on here really comfortably. It’s also a better shape for those bigger board games that take up loads of space. Hello, Twilight Imperium!
In terms of looks, the table is fine. It’s clean and simple, and that’s good. There are three colours available:
The playing surface, by the way, is neoprene. That’s good. I prefer neoprene to the more common felt. Neoprene has, in the past few years, become the standard for playing mats, both as board game accessories, and wargaming mats. I’ve got a gorgeous Neoprene mat sitting next to me just now, actually. I’ll have to set up a board and get some photos…
There’s also a selection of modular accessories that you can add to your pledge, but I can’t say I much care. The selling point for this product, as put forward by the creators, is the price point. You can get higher quality products than this, but they’ll cost you. Adding a ton of extra bits until you hit a much higher price seems a bit pointless. I could have spent that money on something more impressive in the first place.
All in all, the project looks cool. If the build quality is decent and these tables are suitably sturdy, then this could be a good deal. The thing is, it’s not quite as simple as the price on the label. For UK backers, we’re looking at 20% VAT on top of the listed price, bringing a 2-table bundle up from $795 to $954. There’s also shipping, which is looking to be $159. That is the listed cost for UK shipping for a table. The FAQ confirms that this is the cost per table, meaning that your 2-table pledge will incur shipping costs of $318. I’m not saying this is ridiculous, as shipping is a complex and expensive process for some projects, but we do have to be clear that this inflates the price at which we buy into a campaign like this. It’s particularly relevant when the campaign’s big promise is affordability. That’s us at $1,272 without any of the accessories.
I wonder when we get to the point where the affordable table starts to lose appeal in the face of a ‘premium’ option that isn’t that much more expensive.
You should take a look at the Kickstarter campaign page for Project Ironside and see what you make of it.
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