Catan board so far!

Made on a Glowforge
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Nothing officially new here. Mostly leveraging the designs shared by glowforge team and components from this Reddit post: Reddit - Dive into anything

Very excited with how it’s shaping up so far! Next step is designing custom game pieces for cities/settlements/roads/etc. Those I plan to design myself.

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Beautiful! Like the color choices! :grinning:

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Thanks! Here’s what I landed on:

Brick = Padauk
Ore = Walnut
Wheat = yellow heart
Lumber = Wenge
Sheep = Maple
Desert = red oak
Number chits = maple

Most materials came from inventables

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BTW - I was having a really hard time finding yellowheart in the size that I needed. Neither the glowforge shop or inventables carried it.

Ended up going with these folks: http://www.woodnshop.net/index.php?p=catalog&mode=search&search_in=all&search_str=yellowheart

Overall, the wood quality was pretty good, but it didn’t come with any masking tape. Not a huge deal since I have a roll of vinyl transfer tape (NOTE: it’s not vinyl-based, but laser-friendly tape that is used for transferring vinyl onto surfaces), which worked well to prevent char marks.

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I have had pretty good results using plain old blue painters tape. I’m not sure how the price compares, just thought I’d let you know.

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Woodnshop is pretty good, you might also consider Green Valley. Tends to run slightly less expensive than Woodnshop, but not too much of a difference. For next project, perhaps.

I do a cost analysis vs Inventables somewhere in that thread I think. It’s not even close, GV trounces them on cost.

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I’ve used blue painters tape when I’m in a pinch. The vinyl transfer tape is nice because they come in 6" wide strips/rolls. I’m sure they have other sizes too.

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Very Nice! I got the yellowheart that I used for my Catan Board (Here), on Amazon.

This one looks like it might be a good fit.

It doesn’t look like they have the project boards that I originally purchased. I got pieces that were 3" wide x 24" long x 1/4" thick. There were 3 Yellowheart, 3 Purpleheart, and 3 Bubinga pieces in the pack. The unfortunate thing was that the original Catan Resources are just a smidge over 3 inches wide, so I had to scale the entire thing down by about .25". In the end it wasn’t too noticeable, but it introduced a LOT of additional work.

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That really came out looking great! I can’t wait for my forge to arrive so I can put together my own board. Like the others mentioned, great wood choices!

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Where do you get your transfer tape?

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Here you go!

https://community.glowforge.com/t/use-vinyl-transfer-paper-as-masking-for-non-proofgrade-materials/11672?u=adrianf&source_topic_id=18628
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I use this stuff and it has been working like a dream for me. And at $.12 a foot the price is hard to beat.

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NEXT STEPS FOR ME:

  1. Design game pieces for cities, settlements, roads & achievement cards (longest road, etc). I plan to use Walnut for the game pieces & will paint them to differentiate between players.
  2. Need to cut & stain the water border pieces.
  3. Add some sort of soft backing to each of the pieces. I’m thinking about using cork with embedded magnets (see step 4).
  4. I plan to get a big galvanized metal sheet (something like this) that I will hang/mount on the wall. Then, for storage, I can have the glowforge board setup & magnetized to the sheet. This way it’ll be on display in my office when not in use. I’ll probably put some sort of wood veneer on the metal sheet to hide the metal.
  5. I plan to make a few small boxes with a living hinge to store the game pieces (one for each player). Also will make a box for holding resource cards. These boxes will also have a magnet on the back so they can magnetize/attach to the galvanized sheet.

When we’re ready to play, I can simply pull it down from the wall & lay it on the table. The other benefit is that the magnetized tiles will prevent the board from shifting around during aggressive game play :wink:

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Happy Birthday @julybighouse ! :grinning:

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Excellent ideas! I like the individual player boxes and magentized storage sheet. :grinning:

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@julybighouse…happy birthday! Hope your day is fantastic!

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THANKS @jules and @Xabbess !

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Finally picking this project backup! Here’s my first iteration of my custom player pieces. The idea is that settlements simply lay flat on the board, but once a settlement is upgraded to a city, the game piece sits on an elevated pedestal.

Doing my best make everything friction fit, mostly through good old trial and error!

The settlement pieces will all be walnut with different geometric animal vectors scored on both sides of the “token”. Each animal/player will also have a different color acrylic ring/gear cog border to make it easier to decipher between players on the board. The pedestal is acrylic as well. Trying to decide if the pedestal will all be the same color, or if I should color match to the various player colors.

Looking forward to any feedback, suggestions, or comments!

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Looks awesome! Trial and error is my favorite method for friction fit too. My only question with the cities is does the board start to feel to busy? Only way to find out is play a few games and there’s never anything wrong with that.

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I find it harder to discriminate during game play if pieces are marked with patterns rather than color. Color lets you easily scan the board to see what’s where – with patterns you have to individually focus on each piece. Or at least, that’s how it works in my brain. :wink:

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