OK, folks, here's a follow-up. I bought the table for $295 on eBay about a month ago. This was for local pickup only which happened to be not too far away, so there was no shipping. I set up the table just today and, well, you get what you pay for. OK, it wasn't that bad, but when I opened the box, it was immediately obvious that only the cheapest fasteners and sloppiest contruction methods were used. Several screws used to hold the cabinet together were stripped out by either an impatient assembly worker, or really low quality tools (along with the terrible quality of the fasteners). Probably both. In several places, ends didn't meet up, support cross braces were cut too short and had gaps where they are supposed to be supporting (but have angle brackets to take up the slack). The entire construction of the cabinet is MDF, basically a furniture-grade particle board, which is fine and plenty strong and heavy, but it's way too easy to overtighten screws, making them basically ineffective when installing the additional leg support brackets you have to install. The legs are held on by two bolts with washers that go right down into the top edge of the leg (through a 45 degree angle brace in the corners). That works fine, though you then have these extra brackets that the company included along with a note basically saying they were getting complaints about the legs not being sturdy enough, and this was their answer. Well, it doesn't look outstanding - the brackets are basically off the shelf from Home Depot - but it definitely does the job. The legs are rock solid. But there is no way I'm ever taking those legs back off - since all those brackets were a PITA, and the holes left in the MDF material from the screws would be worthless for reattaching the brackets. But in way too many places on the underside were there rounded out screw heads and screws that were not even fully tightened and sticking out a good 1/4". Another thing with this table, is that the metal goal boxes in each goal send the ball down to a plastic collector, which funnels the ball into a corrugated plastic tube which bends down and around to your opponent's ball box. So when you score on them, the ball ends up in their little receptacle in front of them. There is one on each side (unlike a Tornado). I have no problems with this, but on one side, the plastic collector at the bottom of the goal box that funnels the ball into the tube just fell off when I did a test shot on the goal after installing the three man on that side. So I got under the table to see what was up, and where the collector attaches (by two screws), the wood was totally split on both sides, and both screw holes were worthless. So tomorrow, I'll probably glue the collector in place and that should fix it for good. But that's just a great example of the kind of crap you have to deal with when putting a Ricochet table together.
Now the rods and handles are actually pretty nice. They are centerless ground, of proper commercial grade dimensions, and have a great chrome plate finish. One thing I like is that the handles (octagonal wood) attach with a stainless steel screw, instead of a roll pin, countersunk in one of the sides of the octagon. It looks good and it works. So I think that they will not loosen with time, and if they do, it's nothing a screwdriver can't fix in five seconds. The men are great as well. They seem very strong, are counter-balanced, and have a foot design almost identical to that of the Tornado men and provide the controllability that you expect. They are held on the rod with roll pins. They went on very tightly, and the whole handle-rod-man assembly is extremely solid and VERY Tornado-esque. HOWEVER, and here's my second biggest gripe (after the crappy attention to detail with all the screws and the goal box collector), the bearings leave way too much slop in the rods. It should be much tighter. A Tornado will shake a little bit - of course - but this probably has at least double the play between the rod and the bearing. So what I will probably do is get some Tornado split bearings and just replace them. Assuming the outside dimension (size of the hole in the cabinet for the bearing) will allow it. But I'll play with it they way it is for now. I will also get some quality fasteners and replace them where I think they need replacing.
Overall, it's really not a bad table. Especially not for less than $300. You probably can not buy a better table brand new, out of the box, for this kind of money. But you have to be prepared to deal with some fairly shoddy workmanship (three words: Made in China). I wouldn't say it's disgusting, but I'm kind of a perfectionist with this kind of stuff, and it bugs me. But the table overall feels solid, and just passing the ball around and shooting has the same feel as a Storm 2/Cyclone 2. It really does. If the bearings were a little tighter, I wouldn't be complaining as much. But it does have 1 1/2" sidewalls, and a good weight and feel for both the table and the rods. The playing surface, while shiny, allows very good controllability and seems to be of decent quality. I might not even dull it down. We'll see. And it has four flip-down cup holders - two on each end of the table. And you know what...I used to think that was stupid, but I'm on board with that now. I like cup holders. Now I don't have to put my beer on the ground or somewhere far away. And the scoring system is the standard five wooden bead set up and it works fine.
So I know this has gone way long, but when I was looking at buying a Ricochet table, I found nothing in the way of a review on the table. So I took a risk and bought it with the intention of writing something like this about it. The Ricochet brand is basically unheard of, but is a solid choice for someone who wants a decent home table for a very decent price that is a cut way above your standard Sportcraft or Harvard table that you buy at the sporting goods store. It's definitely not on par with a Tornado in terms of quality, but in feel and playability, it's not all that bad and actually pretty close. Better bearings are a must. They need to work out the bugs of the workmanship that goes into the contruction of their table, but it's not going to fall apart (and if it does, I'll fix it). It should be a decent home table for me - we'll see how it holds up in the long term. Please let me know if you have any questions at all.
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