Yesterday I took the long trip out to NE Portland to get my teeth cleaned. That's a long way to go to see a dentist, but he's a buddy of mine from eighth grade on, so it's always nice to see him and remind him he owes me money. Or I owe him. Something. Anyway, the other thing about where his practice is is the IKEA store that's only about ten minutes away. Now that my gout has finally cleared up enough for me to start dealing with these boxes, I took the opportunity to pick up four 16" deep bookcases, thinking I'd put them where the boxes were and just put all of that stuff there.
In the middle of doing all of this, I realized that I have a perfectly good closet in the game room, one that was housing the wargame collection. Since a lot of the Euro games, currently out in standard 11" deep bookcases that didn't fit them so well, would fit nicely in the new bookcases, I did a little rearranging, and here is the result. Note that I spent about eight hours hauling the bookcase boxes up the stairs, assembling, then rearranging. Because there was a lot of stuff in the room, I could only really do one bookcase at a time, move stuff from the Euro collection over, move wargames from the closet into the old bookcases, then move things into the closet. Since I have some rearranging to do, only the RPGs and Warhammer stuff really went into the closet. Right now I still have the counters from magazine games in the closet, as well as the ASL stuff and the *BIG* FFG boxes like Descent and Tide of Iron, but everything else is now in the game room proper.
I just want to go in there and roll around on the floor like Ann-Margaret in the bean/chocolate/champagne scene from Tommy. Thats how old *I* am.
While I haven't packed the non-game boxes (they need to be organized much better than they are now), and the rest of the room is a mess, here's a quick tour of the place for your amusement and a little insight into how screwed up my priorities are. Sorry, I neglected the closet, I'll include it with the "after" pictures once the room is set up in it's final configuration. All shots are in clockwise order, so if you print them out and put them in a circle around you it will almost be like you were here with me.
This first shot starts off just to the right of the closet door. The bookcase, which was there before, is holding mostly smaller games, although some of the larger boxes like Java and Formula De are there. The table-like object is actually a set of shelving units sitting on top of very skinny and short bookcases that hold the two-player games like Lost Cities. The shelves are for holding wargames in progress (from top to bottom, they contain all of my hastily-laminated maps from the 90's (open tray), Stalingrad Pocket (SCS 2nd ed), Blitzkrieg '41 (from the first issue of Command Magazine, which has three full pages of rules for the supply situation), and my ongoing Downtown game with Chris. These all sit in poster frames from Wal-Mart. The trays are ridiculously expensive - I think they were something like $50-$75 each, and they come in pairs. Also note the handy drink fridge to the right of the trays.
The next shot shows the new bookcases. I can't recall the product name, but it's something like Bestto or Blasti or something with an umlaut. They aren't the Billy bookcases that are so popular (and cheap) - these are deeper, narrower, and include adjustable feet for slightly more money. They are *exactly* wide enough to hold two Power Grid width boxes side by side without the box sticking out the front. I got four of them, leaving space for a floor lamp where the power outlet is. Box size rather than type of game was the deciding factor on what ended up here, so the first case has mostly Euros, the next two are a mix, and the fourth is mostly wargames.
The third shot is of the far end of the room from the door and closet. I have two Office Despot 2'x4' tables that I use to set up my USB piano keyboard if I need to patch songs for my band (note the gui'board at the left), although right now the tables are hosting an Ambush game (not as much fun as I remember, but still pretty cool), and a test drive of the Lock 'n' Load system, in this case one of the low end scenarios from Band of Heroes. Neither have seen much action in the last few days. Note that the floor lamp to the right has a handy second fixture, normally used for a reading lamp but here used as a spotlight looking for those sneaky Nazis hiding in the bushes. Also notice the very nice Blue Sky near field monitors on either side of the window (sub is under the desk on the right, hidden by the table) that I plug the iPod into for tunes or for music work. Outside the window is the fairway for Green 2 on the Charbonneau Golf Course, which is *just* starting to show signs that spring started three weeks ago. I'm informed that we should get to summer around July 25th. Really.
Shot four completes the collection. There are four bookcases here of varying brand, but all are 11" deep. All were in the Doug room from our old place, which was about half the size of the current Doug room. The rightmost bookcase is currently holding such useful items as cassette tapes (remember those?) and a line mixer that I can't decide if I'll ever need again. The next two bookcases are holding most of the GMT (aside from most of the ancients stuff, C&C and GBoH included), MMP (aside from ASL), Columbia, and Avalon Hill (aside from the flat or long boxes) games. These were all previously in the closet, I prefer them out and visible, demonstrating my neurosis to one and all. The final bookcase holds about half of my large Kosmos-style boxes (Ticket to Ride size), the CCG stuff (all in the top shelf), and the teeny boxes like card games. If you look closely you can see a glamour shot of Mel from around 12 years ago on the top shelf - she looks exactly the same, proving that I did in fact marry the undead. This last bookcase is the only one other than the very first one you saw that has stayed the same. Everything else moved around.
Here's one last shot to get you all the way around the room. The bookcase on the left of the shot is the one on the right you just saw, and the one on the left is the one in the very first shot. You can see the door to the hall on the left and the closet door on the right. Sorry about all of the lights whiting out everything - I took these shots with my iPhone, and it's kind of a limited application camera. You should get the idea of how the room looks, though.
I will post new pictures once I've finished clearing the room and get the table back in the middle it's a great gaming table, if you don't need to set up huge maps in some configurations. It has two butterfly leaves on either end, and when fully extended it will hold the entire Eurofront map (but I hope you don't need a place to put drinks down other than Syria). Note that these maps are 17" x 44" for each quadrant, creating a 34" x 88" total map, not typical for most monster games. I can handle two standard mapsheets under most circumstances on this table. The other two Office Despot tables are intended to hold larger games, although they have a limit of 48" to a side when they form a square. I'd originally intended on buying three or four of these to place along the wall where the new bookcases are, but that didn't work out and I'm glad I stuck with two. These can also be used to hold more gamers on the extremely off chance that more than six people show up to game at my place at one time.
That's my porn, hope you enjoyed it. Just don't let anyone in Arkansas know you let minors view or possess it.
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