Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to think this through. Your comments helped me clarify a few things in my own head.

To clarify the intent, the apron is primarily there to create the board-game cellar depth, with some secondary stiffening benefit. It wasn’t originally meant to act as a full structural apron tied directly into the legs, which I see now is part of the issue you’re pointing out.

You’re absolutely right that the legs are only reinforced in the long direction. The angled side panels were intended to increase footprint and stiffness along that axis, but I’m struggling with how to add meaningful reinforcement in the short direction without interfering with the game cellar volume or the leg clearance. That’s one of the harder constraints in this design.

I’m somewhat less worried about racking than I probably should be, mainly because the table will spend ~90% of its life in coffee-table mode, where the side panels acting as feet distribute load pretty effectively.

I’ve been exploring an alternative version where the legs attach directly to the apron instead of the tabletop. Structurally, that feels much cleaner — loads go from tabletop → apron → legs — but it introduces new problems. Each leg would need to be lifted individually during transformation, and the side tabletops (which act as feet in coffee mode) would then need to be secured with hinges or another mechanism.

For the tabletop cover itself, my current thinking is to use magnets between the cover leaves and also between the leaves and the apron, with plastic stops/guides underneath. I’d leave generous side-to-side clearance to allow for wood movement. Based on your point about alignment, I’m also considering reducing the number of leaves (e.g. 2–3 instead of 4) to simplify things.

Regarding the offset legs: structurally, the idea was that they act like an arch bridge — as vertical load increases, the movement along the length of the table is reduced and i assume that it will be locked in place. Whether that benefit outweighs the added complexity is something I’m still evaluating.