DESIGN OVERVIEW

The bottom tray was where the real design work came into play. The Kickstarter had an optional 5th player expansion, so it was important to be able to fit the additional ship and treasure chest into the box. However, it had to be done in a way that didn't impact the storage for customers that did not buy the expansion. The well for the chests could not just be sized to fit 5 chests because then if only 4 chests were placed in the well, they would slide around and possibly damage the ships when players transported the game to their game group. To address this, small ridges were added to the well for the chests. That way the 4 base game chests will not slide, but there is still space for the 5th player expansion. 

The next challenge was card sleeves. Card sleeves add about 6-8 MM on each side of the card and increase the card stack by between 2 and 2.5 times. To accommodate both customers who want to sleeve the cards and customers who do not, the card wells have two orientations. If the cards are orientated one way, the cards fit sleeved, if they are rotated 90 deg. they fit un-sleeved. In the sleeved configuration, the cards rest stack rests on the bottom of the well. In the un-sleeved orientation, they rest on platforms that are raised off the bottom of the well. This way, both customers can easily and safely store the cards.

The final consideration was the deluxe components vs. the standard components. For the standard components, the customers will place all of their tokens in the felt bags that are provided as part of the game. These bags can be stored in either the top or bottom trays. Customers that bought the deluxe components store the ships in the treasure chests and the other player tokens in the bags. The chests are stored in the bottom tray and the bags in the top tray.