Mind = Blown

Okay, so I made a rough estimate of game weight, not including shipping box, and came up with 3.3 lbs. That seems like a lot. It's mostly the chipboard.

I'd already decided to go with 1.5mm chipboard for my big map tiles instead of 2mm.. that's by far the heaviest component.

My tiles are 8" x 10". It just suddenly occurred to me that map squares don't really have to be 1" square.. If I made them 3/4" square, the tiles would be 6" x 7.5", and they'd be about 55% of the surface area (and weight, and probably cost though I need to check on that). So the box would weigh more like 2.5 lbs instead.

It might made the map a little cramped (because I don't want to scale down my tokens if I can help it), but it will also make the map fit on a table more easily (one of my level design struggles).

It will also change the size of the box from 10x11 to 8x11, while giving me a little MORE space for my dice and plastic parts (a 3x5 section becomes 5x5). And the change to 1.5mm chipboard also lets me fit in a 1" tall box (15 pieces x 1.5 = 22.5 mm = 0.88 in). I need a few manuals in there too, but at least something like 30mm should be fine.

With an 8 x 11 x 1.25" box vs. a 10 x 11 x 1.5" box, the volume of a box is reduced by 33%.

The only negative change is that my tokens were going to go on 3 pieces of 8x10 board, and now I'll need 5 pieces of 6x7.5, since I feel they should be the same size as the tiles. Pretty sure I can make that work. Might be a little higher setup fee for the tokens because of more plates to set up, but overall I think it:

1) is a cost savings on the map tiles
2) gives more room for dice and plastic stuff, so maybe I can add some "spare" dice
3) is a large weight savings -- Though this appears to have a surprising small effect on shipping costs.
4) is a volume savings -- this is a reasonable savings in ocean freight cost and in fulfillment storage fees.

Now just need to try it out.. Naturally I just ordered prints of the LARGE map tiles the other day.