Inspired by this I decided to make a brief colly of these tables in action. I’d never seen these before — I’d only played the PC versions ^_^
This one shows the hole in the middle you push all the tiles into, and how new rows that had previously been prepared for you pop right up for another game within mere seconds. That would sure make for some quick round resets — I’d like the mixing and sorting myself.
This one shows the tabletop surface lifted up exposing the innards and a general idea of how the table resets the tiles. I presume one side of each tile is magnetic, with a pole on a sorting edge so that the tile would flip the right direction up..?
A slightly better view on the innards, looks very logical. One comment on the video says that a game can last upwards of 2 hours. If playing 2 games, shuffling would be a welcome break for a moment, I think. The clicking actually sounds relaxing for some reason, perhaps because everything’s being put in a right, proper order all by itself in neat little rows ^_^
This table sorts them in the opposite direction (pushing them along counterclockwise) but also raises the tile rows up in a cooler pattern with edges overlapping slightly but not enough to give your neighbor a glimpse (though, perhaps, each right-side neighbor and equal glimpse, if any)..
Part of the wonder of these clips also seems to be the reactions of the people in the video as if seeing it for the first time. After watching this video (of four guys manually sorting them quickly) it looks like the angled layout is actually one step shy of actual gameplay, giving the players the opportunity to sort their own rows to some degree, I wonder.
I’d like to find more of this kind, to see whether it stores three sets of tiles? Seems like that would just be more moving parts to need replacing (or perhaps that was the idea on the manufacturer’s part! heh)
