The saddest table

[Belligerentparrot]

I'd certainly feel cheated if I'd paid to play there!

Still, in a weird way the pic makes me happy. Some of the most fun wargames I've ever played were on tables (or actually, a kitchen floor) with books for hills etc when just getting into the hobby!

[FramFramson]

The tables are depressing, it's true, but also funny.

I keep laughing when I see the image because you know that someone, somewhere in charge looked this over and said "Yeah... Right, that'll do."

[FramFramson]

Here's an interesting question.

We've got some partial information: £40 per person per event is £80 per table and maybe... I don't know... let's say 3 events throughout the day? So £240 per table per day. No idea if they ran the event for multiple days, which would add more to the take. Could be more, could be less, but at a minimum (2 events) they'd have taken in £160 per table.

Of course, as most of us know, these events don't make vast amounts of profit (well, maybe this one did ) and most of the funds would be used in renting the hall, paying staff, providing prizes, etc.

So, let's say you're running a tournament like this. It's far too huge to hand-make terrain or use club terrain - this means something industrial, okay fair go. But what could you put together with even a fraction of the proceeds? It looks like they've got some half-decent mats there, but I have no way of knowing if they had them already or bought them, so let's just lump that in with the costs we don't know about.

So without knowing the residuals for terrain and assuming you have the mats, I'll just throw out some figures: What could you actually buy in terms of mass cheap premade stuff if you had, say, £10 per table? What about £20? £50?

[beefcake]

Go to a nearby stream and pick out a bunch of big rocks spend the money on a mallet to smash them up to nice chunks.

[Mad Doc Morris]

I've seen and played on equally ugly tables, yet not at a public event. To be fair, though, there were other tables with much better terrain (i.e. recognisable as such).
Also, LAF is perhaps the wrong place to discuss tournament gamers' attitude to wargaming. There seems to be little – if any – overlap and thus for the organisers understandably little reason to provide 'immersive' terrain to players who simply don't care anyway (cf. top right):



We just shouldn't bother.

[beefcake]

A bunch of things from TTcombat would suffice
https://ttcombat.com/collections/sci-fi-gothic
Fairly cheap as far as MDF terrain goes and all they need is some spray to be half decent (which is 200 times more decent than that... at least)

[Andrew Rae]

I’m with Mad Doc Morris on this one. A quick glance at twitter also suggests there are unhappy attendees, apologetic organisers and... painted terrain under the tables.*




*That the players can choose to use but might not satisfy the tournament rules or something. Who knows. But it looks like an acknowledged fuck up.

[Belgian]

So without knowing the residuals for terrain and assuming you have the mats, I'll just throw out some figures: What could you actually buy in terms of mass cheap premade stuff if you had, say, £10 per table? What about £20? £50?

While the budget looking at your estimated calculation doesn't look high, I might imagine the cost of scenery spread over multiple events. I don't know much about tournaments but guess these are held several times per year. So your scenery budget of £10 comes (say four events per year) at £40 per year and as scenery is kept, you can add more and more each year. Just a thought though.

[Momotaro]

Well, normally I don't have much time for the self-appointed hanging judges of the hobby, those with the annoying tendency to say "If you don't do the hobby how I do the hobby then you are doing the hobby wrong!", because if people are having fun that's all that matters.

But even I think that is a bit sad.

You can have it both ways.  That is a shit-looking event setup, but the "judges" are still an excrescence of narrow-minded, puffed-up cock cheese.

Is there a mirror in that photo, or do those tables really stretch out to infinity?

Adieu mes braves, FB and blogs serve me better these days.

[Rich H]

from the same event Necromunda Table

[Plynkes]

I can't really speak to conventions, I gave up on them a long time ago, after being bashed just one too many times by a heavy backpack being worn by a bad smell.

I think it is important that public shows show off the best of the hobby, but tournaments are an unknown world to me. I think those are probably more for the players, and if they are happy that's all that matters.

Personally speaking, I'm perfectly happy to play on a lovingly-handcrafted table with miniature works of art (such as some of the ones done by LAFers that I have been privileged to get a game on), but then again I'm equally fine with playing with my best mate who cares nothing for aesthetics and often fields unpainted figures fighting on an old dining table cloth. I like spending time with my friends and I'm not going to snub them because their idea of what gaming is about differs to mine. Having fun is what matters to me.

[Norm]

Each table is symmetrical with 5 identical pieces per side in mirror positions.
Each table is identical to the first one
and there are a lot of tables.

So perhaps this thread is being overly harsh (I don't know).

I have no idea whether there is a 'historical' significance to the set-up, but clearly there has been a need to produce the terrain on a sort of industrial scale, ensuring measurements and look etc for each table are exactly the same. If one divides effort by time, then even what we see will have taken an age to build, room to store and an effort transport (both ways?).

I think the end result here alone must have been an exacting job, making a more detailed or exciting or aesthetic lay-out would clearly have had build implications.

I would think that once people get set up and get into the game and those of a competitive streak having other concerns to think about, the terrain probably becomes a less of an issue.

I know nothing of tournaments or of this game system or of the administrative burdens to get something like this up and running, to be able to know whether to call these bad tables, but am left wondering whether this thread is unduly harsh, not that I care, my own tables are not works of art.

[Derek H]

We've got some partial information: £40 per person per event is £80 per table and maybe... I don't know... let's say 3 events throughout the day? So £240 per table per day. No idea if they ran the event for multiple days, which would add more to the take. Could be more, could be less, but at a minimum (2 events) they'd have taken in £160 per table.

It's £10 to get in to the tournament, then £40 per event.  Most of the events involve at least five games spread over two days, so it's not quite as lucrative as you're suggesting.  But you'd still think they could afford some decent scenery at that price.

The price of some of the  seminars is just ridiculous, £30 for a one hour class on airbrushing, just you and 19 other people.  https://www.lgtpresents.co.uk/lillegend

[Von Trinkenessen]

Oh the Horror,the Horror: this takes me back at least 30years-No never again you can't make me play on such a table!!!

[Captain Blood]

You can have it both ways.  That is a shit-looking event setup, but the "judges" are still an excrescence of narrow-minded, puffed-up cock cheese.

Adieu mes braves, FB and blogs serve me better these days.

Not sure I understand this...
So you too think it looks shit - but all the other people who previously said they think it looks shit, are ‘an excrescence of narrow minded, puffed up cock cheese’?

Is your farewell to LAF final then? (Don’t forget to drop a PM to the admins if you would like your account deleted).