Where does the 6'4' table come from?

[Silent Invader]

Tbh I don't think I've ever played a 6x4 board (I haven't been a GW or tournament player as I wasn't particularly aware of that scene).

I prefer for boards to fit the scenario rather than the scenario to fit the boards. It can also save on a lot of unnecessary terrain. I'm putting together a Medieval / Fantasy board at the mo, it'll have 12 tiles and be playable as a 2x2, 3x2, 3x3, 4x3, 4x4, 5x2, 6x2. Long thin boards for 'chase' and/or ambush games can be quite tense with the lack of width forcing players to focus on the scenario and not get distracted by wandering into wider spaces.

[OSHIROmodels]

I always remember it being 8x4 from my early days (25 odd years ago). Even WFB 3rd had a small section in it on how to make an 8x4 table with battens and a wall hinge.

My old club always played on 8x4 as no-one could be bothered to cut one down to a smaller size 

cheers

James

[dadlamassu]

I think it dates way back to the early days of wargaming and the Don Featherstone books.  He recommended starting out using a dining room table with terrain made from books covered by a cloth, moving on to a board of 6x4 which was the standard hardboard panel and then on to a purpose built sand table.  Back in those days most families sat round the table to eat so almost every house had a dining table.  Large Club games were often played on a table tennis table which is 9x5. 

Also back then the "standard" figures were either 20mm wargames figures or 54mm toy soldier size. 

It strikes me as odd that with 28mm figures that are usually nearly 35-40mm tall that the tables played on are so small 2x2 and 4x4 being common.  But then when I started out my 20mm Airfix soldiers fought in companies of 25 men.  Later I was very proud of my Airfix Roman Legion of 9 cohorts of 25 Legionaries and one of 37 (led by Primus Pilum), a unit of 32 slingers (converted from Robin Hood figures), 22 cavalry (converted from US Cavalry), 22 auxiliary Arab Cavalry (from Bedouins), converted Britains baby elephants and scratch built artillery facing off a huge army Ancient Britons with chariots and converted cavalry.  This lot just fitted my 6x4 table but not much room for manoeuvre!

[mcfonz]

Interesting.

For some games it depends upon 'points' or size of force as to how large an area you will need.

When I started playing GW games, it was defenitely 4'x4' to start with, as per the size of the tables in the store - NOT 6'x4'. The original Necromunda rule book says 4'x4' for example as did the 2nd ed 40k rule book. But again, that's to start you off.

As for 3x3 - it suits many things. I have played Necromunda, Frostgrave, Of Gods and Mortals, some post apocalyptic rules I can't remember the name of etc on a 3x3 table with no issues at all. It's perfect for small skirmish games that last 1hr - 1hr and a half. It's also good for smaller scale stuff.

I currently have a dining table as my gaming table, it is a 3x3 that folds out to 6x3. I am contemplating making it bigger as I have the space, but as of yet, I have had no reason to make it bigger. WHFB is dead in the water and IMHO had long surpassed the skirmish game it was, same as 40k. However a recent purchase of the old 40k rulebook with the kill team rules in it has changed that so I can go back to small 40k themed skirmish games.

I also plan to run some rogue trader themed games, either Inquisimunda or ITEN.

[has.been]

When I started in the 1960s the advice was get the largest table area you could. I was an 11 year old but had wonderful parents. My father got two 4.5 foot square display boards (that were being thrown out at his works). They have seen lots of war-games use over the intervening half a century, but due to the trend away from massive 25mm battles, & towards 28mm skirmish games I have just moved them to the garage and am now using a smaller board.
The biggest 'table' I ever played over was at the War-games holiday centre. This was when Peter Guilder ran it, he said the limiting factor was not how many toys you could fit onto the table, but how many players you could comfortably fit around the table. He was right. I have played in rooms where the table was large, but if someone wanted to go to the toilet several other people had to leave the room so they could get out.

[mcfonz]

I think it's both.

There really is nothing uglier on the eye than 40k Apocalypse . . . . really, so much stuff crammed into an unrealistic space . . . like a couple of armies decided to go on parade, on the same planet, on the same parade ground and then it all kicked off after one said something nasty about the other's mother or something . . . .

[black hat miniatures]

6 x 4 was the size of the piece of hardboard I got in the 70s for my railway layout and subsequently wargaming....

Mike

[warlord frod]

decided to take a look at this from a history teachers perspective and research some of the books in my gaming library . Taking a look at H G Wells book "Little Wars' (1913) the first official rules for playing miniature war games with 54mm soldiers. He recommended playing in the largest "country" possible. That translates into the back yard Garden or the largest floor space inside your home. The cannon they used fired a real projectile 4 to 6 feet (its true I have several of them  ) so a table was unrealistic. Bob Bard in his book "Making and Collecting Military Miniatures" (1957) wrote " Battle fields may be laid out in a variety of ways, very simply or very elaborately. They may be set up outside on the ground, inside on the floor or on a table and of course on sand tables or other special platforms which may be constructed for the purpose. There is no set amount of space required but, naturally, the more space available, the greater the field of play which allows for more interesting maneuvers." As was mentioned above the great  Donald Featherstone (1950 and 60's) most of the time was suggesting using the dinning room table and was using 20mm figs. He also recommended using the largest playing space available so as to allow for your armies to maneuver. Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren who gave us one of the first modern war game rule sets "Chainmail" wrote in their 1975 Introduction "The playing area that the battles are fought out upon should be a table rather then the floor. It can be from a minimum of 4' to a maximum of 7' wide, and it should be at least 8' in length. These sizes will assure ample room to maneuver.".

It should be easy to see how we settled on a 4'x6' standard until smaller scaled figures and skirmish level gaming came into vogue.

[tin shed gamer]

It's a chicken and egg question,But I wouldn't discount  GW's historical input,not because they invented it as a standard size,I think its more of a logistic influence than a gaming guru.
Way way back before the buy out of Workshop the stores were supplied with table tennis tables,and sheets of styrene the old white crumbling stuff which used to get edged with tape(stored in 2'x4'sheets with out killing the stock room.which led to a trade off with leaving room on the edge of a table to keep figures rules etc with out clogging up the store and the fact the average reach of most people is round 3'- 4'(before you start leaning on stuff with your body) which is a home gaming size/with,then you apply that to a store table and 4' x4' looks small where as 4'x6' ticks all the boxes,
1 it fits the table top with the room to keep stuff on the edge,
2 it looks,more impresive,
3(and most important for a retailer)a 6' table edge requires a lot more figures to fill it!
It may seem a little dark to point to a retail origin for the 'standard' table ,But I think wether your a GW fan or not its hard to discount the subtle influence of a major player for over thirty years with in the hobby/industry.coupled with the issues of storage and the limitations of the average arm reach.
The rise of clubs and display games has influenced table sizes as well .
Personally I feel its an organic process which has cycles,You start off wanting big and pretty tables ,and at some point it dawns on you that most of the time all the action ends up taking place in a lost smaller space than a big table and a 4'x4' seems the most likely size you can get away with,without the Mrs objecting(even when you've got more than one)
Mark,
(Forgive the spelling its dodgy eyes and a phone keyboard)

[jon_1066]

I've always played smaller games even for 40k using smaller force sizes because the sheer amount of terrain as well as storing the board is pretty prohibitive. As far as I know several games including 40k recommend a 4'x6' table but in GW's case that may just be because their realm of battle boards in total come to around 4'x6', and as always with the company, profit overrules playability!
Thanks
Blofeld

You've got that the wrong way around.  Their realm of battle boards were designed to fit on a 6 by 4 table rather than them pushing a 6 by 4.

Other posters have the nub of it.  The standard wood sheet comes in 8 by 4.  For most houses 8 feet is too long but 6 feet is manageable so the "standard" size becomes 6 by 4.  This allows armies to deploy but not be too close together and gives flanks to have maneuvering.  Why would you buy a piece of plywood then cut 6" off it?  Likewise you aren't going to try and bolt 6" on the side of it for that little more depth.  Cutting the sheet to get a deeper table (eg 5 feet) will be incredibly wasteful in wood and we all know wargamers are notorious skinflints when it comes to that kind of thing.  ergo 6 by 4 (much like in the world of Hornby railways) becomes the default.

[YPU]

6 x 4 was the size of the piece of hardboard I got in the 70s for my railway layout and subsequently wargaming....

Yea I was wondering if railway layouts figured into it some way. If a particular type of hardboard became the standard for rail displays it would be easily copied by wargamers later on.

[Silent Invader]

All this talk of Featherstone promoted me to dig out my 1968 copy of War Games, which is the book I have owned the longest, having been gifted to me second-hand in about 1978.

In How To Layout A Battlefield he talks about table size, though he doesn't actually specify 6x4 (pp. 36-38).

His angle is that gamers want bigger and bigger tables for wide, sweeping flanking moves and he hopes to add a sense of proportion.

His conclusion:

"Experience has shown that these measurements ideally are as follows - length can be anything between 8 feet and 12 feet, width not more than 6 feet, as this appears to be about the maximum width that will enable the player to lean over comfortably and handle his forces when they are fighting grimly right in the middle of the table!"

He then goes on to add:

"The writer's own ...(middle hinged table)... is 8 feet by 5 feet when opened out, or 5 feet by 4 feet when packed away - this means that in each case it takes up much the same amount of room as a table-tennis table."

[SteveBurt]

Where did the idea that 6x4 is a big table come from?
6x4 is about the smallest size for a big battle with figures 15mm or larger.
It's really too small for large 28mm games (say with 300+ figures a side).
6x4 is the smallest size I use. For a big engagement I use 8x6. 6x6 is also useful for naval games.

For skirmish games, sure, 4x3 is big enough for most games. But the 6x4 standard is for big battles, not skirmishes.

[Sunjester]

Using a 6x4 table as a "standard" certainly pre-dates GW, who are a comparative "newcomer" to tabletop wargaming. I'd been wargaming for over a decade before Warhammer 1st edition was published and had been accustomed to 6x4 feet being the normal sized table.

I think WRG adopted that size in the 1970s as the basic table size for 25mm scale 1000 point (and therefor competition) sized games. It is certainly mentioned in the 5th Edition Ancient rules, published in 1976, I'm not sure about earlier editions.

[Silent Invader]

So given that Featherstone is specifically talking about a size other than 6x4 in his 1968 reprint, that gives a window of 1968-1976?