Where does the 6'4' table come from?

[syrinx0]

Our first club table (built before I joined) was 12x12 with 4x4 pillars and filled with sand. We mostly used micro armor and played RGP games then. The third time the table had to be rebuilt we were far more involved in painting our own armies and miniatures and had enough of the sand.  One of our members (sadly passed on now) built two fantastic 8x4 tables on wheels with a one foot lip around it for books and staging troops (and beer).  Two foot panels are used to join the two tables for larger WWII or Apocalypse battles.  The really big battles we use a garage (one a ballroom) for.

Our tables were absolutely due to the size of the wood panels.

[A Lot of Gaul]

The earliest use of 'standard' 6' x 4'  wargaming tables that I can remember was with WRG and 15 mm Ancients tournament gaming.

Cheers,
Scott

[SteveBurt]

Featherstone recommended an 8'x5' table.
That's certainly the size my brother and I built back in 1970 when we constructed our first (folding) wargame table.
Charles Grant used 9'x7', but 7' is really too wide to reach the centre easily.
I find 8'x6' is big enough for pretty much anything

[Elbows]

I use a 6'x5' made out of two nice fold-out tables (meaning I can carry this table stacked up in my Volkswagen easily)...I think the draw to 6'x4' and 8'x4' is quite easy to explain.

Simple fact is you can always play smaller, but you can't play bigger.  So when possible you'll build a larger table and then play whatever you want on it.  I wouldn't be opposed to buying some nice 4'x4' game mats for smaller games, but I'd still be using the same table.  You can run most games on a 6'x4' short of huge 28mm games or massive battalion games.  The size lets me build good dungeons and has enough depth to be played in both directions depending on the games.

My buddy's game-room has perhaps a 8'x5'...but a good two feet of it is always covered in rulebooks, models and snacks...so the gaming surface is again around 6'x5' and we often game on smaller 3'x3' mats/sub-tables when needed.  At the same time we can set up the whole table if needed for a bigger game.  It's about versatility.

[Legion1963]

Indeed. So .... make up your own mind and enjoy. ;-)