New Thing: Windmill for Scythe

I recently finished printing upgrades for all of the overlay tiles in Gloomhaven, so I decided that it was time to take on another board game project.  A couple of years ago, I bought the Scythe component upgrade bundle from Meeplesource (which is arguably what set me down this whole path of 3D printing board game upgrades).  I love getting to play the game with the upgrade resource tokens and metal coins, but there's one additional set of components that I feel could still use some love: the buildings.

The upgrade kit doesn't replace any of the wooden components that go on the player boards, which is mostly fine, as they are mostly simple shapes to represent abstract concepts.  Mostly.  Each player has 4 buildings that they can build: the Mill, the Mine, the Monument, and the Munitions Depot (big fan of alliteration).  The game comes with little wooden blocks that vaguely represent each of those buildings that sit in slots on the player boards until they are built, at which point they go onto the main board.

They don't need to be upgraded, I mean nothing needs to be upgraded, but it sure would look cool if they were more detailed.  So, I did a quick search on Thingiverse to see if that was an option.  Since no one else seems to have taken on the project of making these buildings, I decided to see if I could take care of it myself!

The first building that I've made is the windmill.  I'm still fairly new to 3D modelling, but I'm pretty happy with the result.  I tried to make it diesel-punk so that it would fit in with the rest of the universe, but in practice that basically meant adding mysterious chimneys and storage tanks to the building.  I think they're good additions though, as they also double as supports and allow me to print the mill with very little removable support material.

Unfortunately, it does need some support.  The flats of the windmill blades all stick out sideways off the main structure (uh, maybe it's best if you just look at the wikipedia windmill picture, rather than sit through me trying to describe them).  That means that the flat of the 2:00 blade sticks downwards and I couldn't figure out a graceful way to hide something on the model to provide it support.  Fortunately, Meshmixer trees worked really well for me while printing it, for they were able to run parallel to the 5:00 blade and came off with no trouble at all when the print was done.

I also had some trouble with the 7:00 blade, as it is totally supported by the steam whistle throughout most of the print (until it gets up to the central hub).  The whistle kept snapping during my early versions, so I thickened it up and have had a good run of successful prints since then.  With those two concerns taken care of, it prints pretty well, and, since it's so small, it's a nice fast print!  I knocked out 7 of them and now need to figure out how to paint them.  I'm thinking of doing them in mostly grey-white like concrete, but using each nation's color for the body of the blades and the stripes around the central tower.  I'll post photos once they're done!