Cheap Terrain: Sauce Dipping Cups

Call them what you want: McNuggets, Nugs, Tenders, Bites. Many fast food restaurants sell a breaded chicken product meant to be dipped in sauce, and those sauces arrive in small plastic containers that can be rinsed out and used in terrain after you’re done with your meal instead of just throwing them out. 

A few sauce cups I’ve acquired.

Perhaps I haven’t visited enough different places, but so far many of my sauces have come in almost identical rectangular containers. Except for the black containers which I know are from McDonalds new Mighty Hot Sauce, I cannot tell at a glance whether the other containers are from McDonalds, Burger King, or Golden Skillet (a local chain).  I’ve also gotten a couple of small round sauce containers, but those are far less common.  

A quick mockup of a piece of terrain using inverted sauce cups on a base of corrugated plastic with a few unpainted Space Marines for scale.

My plan for the rectangular containers is to use them to make dragon’s teeth tank traps. I may experiment with using the containers as a mold for plaster or resin, but they are easy enough to acquire that I’ll just glue them face down onto a base, and add some texture and paint. 

Cutting the rectangular face from the containers will allow it to be used to indicate doorways on the face of a building. While the sides of the container can act to provide a bit of decoration or texture to large flat areas of a terrain piece. 

A single sauce cup cut up into pieces to create a sci-fi doorway frame, some teardrop shaped details, and a few other scraps.

The containers would also work well to represent HVAC units, large electrical panels, or other types of control boxes or panels on the outside of larger structures. 

How would you use this bit of trash in your terrain projects? Please leave a comment below and let me know.

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