Game Board for Settlers of Catan

My  brother plays a lot of board games and one of his favorites is Settlers of Catan. For those who know it, the game "board" is a set of hexagonal mat board tiles that are placed next to each other on the table top. Game play happens on top of these tiles. In one part of the game play little wooden pieces are set on the tile edges to represent roads.

It all works fine until someone drags a sleeve across the table and the tiles move around. He needed some way to keep them from moving and this Instructable shows what we made.

Brother Bob would do a layout, I'd create tool paths, then I'd cut it on the ShopBot at TechShop, Menlo Park. I did a number of prototypes with different cut depths to find the perfect fit. In the end, 0.05 inches seemed best - the hex cards fit well and could be lifted up easily. Note how there is just enough space between the tiles for the "road" pieces to fit.

The board is in three pieces. Two pieces fit together to make the standard game layout. If you play with the expansion pack, then third piece is put in the middle. We tried several different layouts for the edges until we settled [pun intended] on the layout you see here. We went through 10 different revisions to get this final design, not to mention the numerous tool path tests of each revision.

The photo with the tiles on the board shows how well it all fits together and how nicely the tiles are held. Now when a player gets excited over a good roll of the dice we don't have to spend ten minutes putting the game back together!

Jim
my web site

Brother Bob's Web Site with many more photos and ideas

Comments

[gmonroy]

Congratulations Jim!!!

[bschrempp]

WE have moved from the Shop Bot to a Laser cut board. See www.prawndesigns.com to see where we went next.


Brother Bob

[MikeCicc]

This is an awesome project! I really like how you guys fit in the center piece to expand for the larger board. Any tips for someone hoping to replicate this at Tech Shop SF?

[jschrempp]

Thanks for the comments Mike. We're working on making it for sale:

http://www.prawndesigns.com/settlers.shtml

Cheers,
Jim

[bschempp]

It looks even better now that it is painted.
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1259817/the-settlers-of-catan

Here is a picture with the other parts we made to go with the baord.
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1259816/the-settlers-of-catan

Settlers of Catan Accessories;
- five space holder for the Resource Cards,
- hex shaped dice rolling box,
- single space holder for the Development Cards,
- Close up of the game board,
- game board with the 5-6 player expansion piece.