Geek Chic Experience Part 3: Using it

Spoilers:  I got a Geek Chic Table recently.  Here's my experiences of getting one.  In this post, we'll cover the first times we've used it and what that was like.


Jessie was the first person to sit down at the table while the guy was delivering it.

Jessie proudly sits at the new table

I join her to pose for our first picture. :)

The distance from bottom to the top of the table was 31", which gave us about 25" of clearance under the table.  It's tight with our 17.5" chairs, but even with all of our fat thighs, I'm the only one that's having any trouble with it.  So the valet turned out to be right about the height:  It's better to make the table tighter around the leg than to have the top be too high.

Everyone was nervous about eating on the table at first, but in reality, one of the nice things about the table is how resistant it is to dirt, spills, etc.  You don't even need to use a coaster!  Here's our first person sitting down to eat.

Pretty quickly after that, we got into gaming:

Our first game. This picture is amazing.

Playing on the aubergine velvet is an exquisite experience.  Somehow it feels... better... than an ordinary table.  Everything feels like it has its place.  It is a luxurious, clean experience.  The velvet holds the pieces in place and feels nice to touch as you pick up pieces and move them around.

The spaciousness of the table really came in handy for larger games like Lords of Waterdeep and 7 Wonders.  For the first time, it felt like we could actually fit all the players around the table to play without getting overcrowded.

Lords of Waterdeep felt great on the table

In 7 Wonders, we actually had 3 people to a single side of the table, for a total of 7 players.  It was the biggest game of 7 wonders we've ever played, and everyone had sufficient room to play.

Three people gathered on one side of the table.

Once again, the velvet held the cards in place extremely well, and dealing cards out was a dream.  Unfortunately, while cleaning the velvet, we had a minor accident where we scratched it.  It's actually very fragile and can easily be scratched, but smudging it out made the scratches nigh invisible.  It's also only 3% of the total cost of the table, so not too big of a deal.

Our general experience is that the velvet is just *really nice* to play all games on, and we play games on it whenever we can.  However, when something special is needed, we switch to "hardcore mode," where we go down to the acrylic layer.  We did it for playing Power Grid, drawing gaming information on the table, and used it with the space insert for X-wing, shown below:

A giant, 3 way, 6 player game of X-wing.

The X-wing game felt amazing on there, but we experienced a lot of glare on the acrylic.  We discovered later that the delivery folks installed the acrylic with the wrong side face up, and once we flipped it, the glare diminished rapidly.

Speaking of glare, a few days later, I got to finally run my first D&D campaign on the new table:

All decked out in preparation for the players.

For D&D, we used the leaf desks and leaf guards to shrink the inner area and expand the desk space on top of the table.  My players reported having considerably more room than in the past, and enjoyed the easy sight lines down to the projected map.  The map projection was pretty good on the acrylic, but from some angles there was a weird shimmery rainbow effect, due to the anti-glare coating.  However, none of my players complained.  Overall, they felt it was a significant improvement over the old table.  They said they felt "spoiled."

My new DM station

My new DM setup was a lot different than my old one.  Instead of using my old side tables, I was able to put everything directly on the table in front of me.  It took some getting used to, but ultimately resulted in an improved experience for me.  Everything was in a much more convenient spot than it used to be, and I was able to look up and reference information more easily.

Overall, the table delivers on its promise of providing a premium, luxurious gaming experience.  I always knew it would be nice, but I never imagined it would be as nice as it is.  The gaming space helps transport you to the other worlds and experiences that the various games take you to. There's a sort of "geek gamer" equivalent of the "Las Vegas Poker" experience when you're playing at a nice table in a nice casino.  It just feels betters.  More fun.  More immersive.  Just... nicer.

Plus, it really helps to be able to pause a game mid-way and eat without disrupting the things you're doing.  Keeping cups off the table protects game components, and enables us to focus more on the game itself.  Somehow, I feel encouraged to even drink more water than I used to while playing, because it's so convenient to have a cup holder at your side instead of trying to play a game while not knocking over a cup.

It's been a wonderful journey, and a very long wait, and it is finally here.  I am very happy. :)