"Stained glass" catan

I like boad games enough to have played many, many games of Catan, but not so many that I no longer enjoy the game. Some time ago, I came up with some designs for a custom, lasercut version of Catan. The original version was all made of plywood, with interlocking pieces. The issue with that, though, is that wood warps, meaning that the interlocking mechanism didn't work very well. 

 

A few years later, I wanted to revisit the project. To fix the wood interlocking issue, I decided to make it out of acrylic, which doesn't warp as much. To make the parts easier to delineate, I wanted to used colored acrylic. It only seemed natural, then, to use the stained-glass-like appearance of transluscent acrylic to make something truly beautiful. 

 

The board consists of three pieces: a plain hexagonal base, a blue middle ocean with cutouts to hold the land tiles, and a clear top tile with cutouts to hold the roads and settlements. Each layer is held together by magnets, making the set-up board easy to transport and also 60% cooler, considering magnets are involved.

To test the design, I played a round of Catan with a couple of friends. We found that the individual components felt good to work with, but visibility of numbers and text could be improved. Halfway through the game, we placed a piece of black mat board underneath the acrylic. This helped immensely. As such, my next step in this project is to build a custom-cut, felt-lined box for board storage and visibility while playing. I plan to continue this once I next get access to the appropriate tools; since graduating from school, my access to building tools has been limited, and I am working to build access back up.