The last couple of days, I’ve been enamoured with Rival Cities, the new 2p games from Andreas Steding (also the designer of Hansa Teutonica). It’s a clever, has a beautiful production, but I had one minor gripe with: sliding the court case cards down the line and managing the cardboard tracks next to them is quite fiddly. So I quickly did a 3D version of them that integrates the card and the track into one piece so it’s easier to manage. The raised numbers make the marker cube a little bit wobbly, but it was just more legible than doing them sunken in and it’s not too bad. Have fun!
Designing It
I’ll skip over this part as it was my standard process: take picture of the original component, trace it in Blender 3D, boolean operators, could have test prints, done. The only thing wort mentioning is the small raised edge I added to the left part of the card area. Without it, cards would slide off the smooth plastic and just adding this tiny edge completely removed that problem.
Printing Tips
I printed this with a standard 0.4mm nozzle, 0.10mm layer height, in some wood-type PLA. Using a 0.25mm nozzle would have increased the fidelity of the numbers and iconography, but would also have increased the print time quite severely. Normally I would also activate ironing to get super smooth surfaces, but again, this is a simple functional piece and it didn’t seem worth it to me. It’s not like I’m printing a miniature here.
STL Files & License
Here are the files for download. Please note the license file in the ZIP. You’re free to print for personal use, leave a comment if you do so. However, you’re prohibited from uploading them on other sides like thingiverse, printable, etc or put the stuff in your Etsy shop! This was a fun pet project for me and I’m happy to share the results with the community. But it would be disappointing if someone takes it and tries to profit from them in whatever form. So don’t spoil the fun for me!
- Rival Cities Tray.zip – 0.04 MB (v1, last updated Mar 23, 2025)
Disclaimer: Use at own risk! In particular, check for print artifacts such as blobs or sharp edges that might damage your game components. For more information, check license file. All copyright regarding Rival Cities itself of course belongs to the original publisher.
