Perspectives on Gaming: Is Size Important?

...they say yes

Hi all,

Yet another question from my late-night, coffee-fuelled ponderings- what size gaming table should you use?

A few posts by Luis Ed recently got me reminiscing about the hobby over the last few decades, and something struck me- when did the playing area shrink?

For those of you reading this that remember the 1990's, the standard size of gaming table was always 8'*4'. Bear in mind that armies were smaller, rules were more complicated, not all games used d6's and "scenarios" were actually missions. Also- there weren't many tanks or fast moving units.

At some point, we all came to accept 6'*4' as the standard, and at the same time became comfortable with massive armies. So- less space and more models. Have games suffered?



At the moment (and I've only been thinking about this for a few days, so I may well change my mind) I don't think that gameplay is worse than it was 20 years ago. In fact, I think that the understanding of the strategy and tactics is far better now than it ever was. I also think that games would be better on an 8'*4' table. In fact, I'm actually considering 8'*6'.

Imagine that for a second- deeper deployments, objectives further apart, more open battlelines- it would be harder to defend flanks, armies wouldn't be able to redeploy half way across the board in one turn- just a simple change in the playing area changes the game massively.

I'm hoping to try this out at some point- but I'm going to have to find the space first! Not for an 8'*4' board (2  of my regular opponents always play on this at home, but we always scale up the size of game. Oops!) but an 8'*6'.

What do you think? Anyone tried this?

Comments, as always, are welcome.