Nowadays there is so much garbage entering our houses on a regular basis and many of those things are not necessarily recycled given a proper treatment once they are used, but some things are too useful to go to waste, so this blog is a compilation of examples on how things can be given a new life and in this particular case used for wargaming miniatures, terrain, dioramas and so on.

The examples show here are in different stages of WIP, so the end result can certainly look different, but hopefully they will be a good source of inspiration.

 

Lets start with some small barricades made out of cardboard and bits of sprues. It is an extremely simple concept, but can easily be expanded depending on your preferences. It was made using 2 pieces of cardboard from an ice cream box and a sprue corner connecting both pieces of cardboard using super glue in this particular case.

The ingenious part of this design is that the vertical and horizontal pieces of cardboard are the same shape and size, so you can rotate the barricades and still get the same protection level for your troops (no need to carefully check which side is up).

 

 

 

Next, some cardboard bridges. The source of the material is the same as with the barricades, just different parts of the box. I like to use these particular boxes because the cardboard is thin but resistant, so they make rather durable designs. In this case the work was mostly cutting the cardboard pieces and folding anything that was required, before gluing with the usual white PVA glue.

 

 

 

 

With some wider cardboard you can make something larger for your vehicles to move through, for example.

 

 

You can also make some tunnel entrances or similar structures.

 

 

You may start wondering at this point whether I only do stuff with cardboard, so here is an example of how you could convert some scale vehicles for a 40k/necromunda role, provided you wanted to go for a post apocalyptic look.

 

 

Obviously that was not necessarily something you can compare with the previous examples, but for something different imagine you have some small branches lying around after cutting some wood for the fire to warm up in the winter. With some proper treatment, including some varnish, you can turn small branches into dry trees for wargaming purposes. Depending on the size of the branches you can make different types or sizes of trees.

 

 

With some plastic boxes you can also make some interesting terrain pieces, for example a small bunker fortification with a gunner on top.

 

 

With some used matches and a sniper rifle or any other weapon you have spare and don't know how to use, you can make a shelter with a gunner. Complement it with a piece of netting camo and some aquarium plants and you have a concealed heavy/special weapon position.

 

 

 

 

With some roll-on balls from a deodorant, some plastic containers and bits of sprue, you can make working turrets or anti-air weapons.

 

 

Similar with bottle caps for turrets (not actually rotating in this case).

 

 

 

 

 

You can also use some metal cans and some spare bits from your bits box to make some fortified emplacements for guards or heavy weapons.

 

 

 

If you are crazy, you can even make large buildings out of matches (and a bit of cardboard).

 

 

Damaged toy? No problem!

 

 

 

 

I hope these examples tough somewhat rough can help you give new life to things around the house.

Imagination is typically the limit