For me, a validation of my love of the board game hobby is having our own gaming table to play all of our games on. To prevent a massive a cabin-fever effect from happening during the “2020 Great Pandemic” shutdown, as a family project we had built our first gaming table. The play area is 4’x6’ and with the arm rests it measures just under 5’x7’. The table is the one you see above. As my father would say, “we over-engineered” it because we wanted to make sure it was something strong, durable, and “safe” for our daughter to play on. Our next table of that size will be done a bit different but will be just as “fancy” to play on.
We, especially our daughter, loves that table not only for the gaming experiences we have by using the table for what it is meant for but because of how it brought our whole family together united in purpose during a time where everyone’s sense of self was being taken over by a world-wide virus attack. Each member of the family had a say in how the table was built and/or how it looked. With our big table my wife and I initially decided that it was not going to have lights but then my mother looked at the progress and said that the table would look really cool if we had lights on it. The rest of us looked at each other and then said “okay,” so I ordered the lights and we made it work. When we finished the table, all of us stood around it and beamed with pride knowing that we, as a family, had created something wonderful.
Since the title of this entry is Game TABLES and not Game Table, let me be the first to tell you that as I am writing this entry, we are in progress of building our second game table for our home. This one is not a giant one like the first but is a smaller one for our upstairs living area (a 3’x 3’ play area) that when not in use, we can move it out of the way and store it. At first, we were not planning on having a second table for our home but due to certain events that have happened over the past six months in our home, having a table in our upstairs where we spend most of our time works out best for our family. My wife and I typically play our games in the evening after we put our daughter down for bed (sometimes during the day if she takes a nap) and we got tired of having to play some elaborate games on the floor leaning over, reaching, and bending for things such as cards and meeples have become troublesome on our tired bodies.
This new table (I will share pictures when it is 100% completed) is designed for us to sit on the floor and have a raised play area so we are not putting extra wear-and-tear on our bodies. Due to the limited space we have in our living room we took measurements and determined that a 3’x 3’ table would be perfect for what we needed… until we played a new game that my wife now loves and decided that we needed to add an extra feature to the new table that would make this game playable on the new table. Again, this table has become a family affair in which each person has had a say in the design of it.
Not only do I stress that board games can bring families together but also gaming accessories do the same as well. The bottom line is that you should go out and find things that will help you strengthen your family bonds. In our family, gaming has done that and we are a much closer family now than we were decades ago.
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