the vynsane asylum

The next Modular set is a Jazz Club with a little Pizzeria next to it.

Yesterday, I finally got around to putting last year’s Boutique Hotel together. I thought the non-traditional angles thing was gonna bother me, but it looks better in person than it does on the box. And I appreciated the engineering of building it with a diagonal wall. And three of the four sides are “displayable”. Usually the corner sets are full blank walls on two sides. The high-end art store is a little cramped, but that whole corner is like a little bonus set anyway. Liked it better than I thought. At some point, I’m gonna unbox the rest of the Mods from when we moved and set up an epic downtown area. At some point…

Got the Galaxy Explorer. That's the biggest set I've bought in a really long time. I did manage to screw up something in bag 4 and didn't realize it until bag 7. Luckily it wasn't that hard to fix it.

There’s a Blacktron ship that’s free with $190 purchase. I bought the Lighthouse set to get it. Also used most of my VIP points to shave $50 off the price.

yeah, I'm a few years behind on modular buildings so may spring for one of those, or the most recent space shuttle set to get the Blacktron promo. they have it at the LEGO store in Danbury, CT which is where we are right now looking for a Sweet 16 dress for my daughter. that works out nicely!

ended up getting the modular police station (10278), which i hadn't acquired yet. they didn't even have the jazz club in stock at the store!

already built the Blacktron remake. it's awesome, and i built it the way it was meant to be built - threw all pieces on the table at once, none of that numbered bags bullshit. when i was a kid we had to HUNT for our parts! the only thing i don't like is that the wings on the forward module don't sit flush along the cockpit, but i think that can be modified to do so relatively easily. removing the 1x2 wall panels already does it, but i think it might look better by flipping the wings around. i'll play around with it. i also wish they had gone with the original technic connections instead of using clips, so it could integrate with original Blacktron, but oh, well.

I sincerely hope this Classic Space renaissance becomes a regular thing. The only classic Blacktron set I have is the base set, which I lucked into on eBay before Lego started getting stupid expensive on there.

i never had the Blacktron base, but i had the Invader (which this promo re-imagines), Battrax (which i got again off eBay a while back), and Renegade. gotdam those sets were the BOMB back then! also had the three smaller Space Police sets because this was the start of real opposing factions.

I’d scroll thru eBay auctions where people would be selling “random” Lego pieces and in the pics you could clearly see, albeit disassembled, which sets were there. It would be parents presumably clearing out their kids old stuff and not knowing what they had.

But I got a bunch of M-Tron, Space Police II, and one of the other space subsets(I forget which one) sets for like $40. I mean it was like a dozen sets, including a couple of the bigger ships.

There’s no way you’d find that kind of stuff nowadays.

Did they have a bunch of those Queer Eye sets clogging up the shelves at the Lego store when you went? If the price drops more, I’d contemplate buying two or three or even four of them, just to get all those grey brick elements to build a massive MOC of a large office building or something.

i don't recall if they had a bunch. i saw the set, but didn't focus too much on it. the store was pretty picked clean, to be honest. i think i picked up the only copy of the police station they had!

I was in a second hand store and found a set of the new Lego road plates for $7.50. I had already purchased 4 of them(some full price, some on clearance) in anticipation of using them in my eventually Modular town. But I had never opened them. Since this one was “used” I opened it up and put it next to my new Boutique Hotel to see how they look. I had to put the Modular set up on a piece of cardboard, otherwise the “road” is higher than the sidewalk. But it’s giving me an idea of how much space I’ll have to work with when I get out the other 12 Modular’s and other city sets. And how many more road plates sets I might need.

This is a pre-rough draft WiP of what it’ll look like eventually.

Here’s a shot with a building on either side.

A problem I can foresee is where to put the stoplights and assorted signage without making the streets even wider. Also, the roads will look cramped with assorted buses and cars on them.

The area where I’m probably going to set it up is gonna max out at 30-32inches deep, but almost 13 ft long.
Modular sets are 10” and the roadplate is 5”, so that’s 25”. Doesn’t give me much room to play with without making the area too cramped to walk in.

But it’s a few months away. I’m focusing on sorting the comics first.

NICE!!! yeah, it's a little unfortunate that the 32x32 and 32x16 baseplates are that odd/non-system height. i'm sure most people who make a full layout like this discard them in lieu of 16x16x1 plates (and then maybe additional plates or bricks underneath for additional 'curb height'), but that's pretty expensive and requires redoing all the tiled floors, since they're usually on the first floor. no great option.

All my drawer boxes come with cardboard dividers that are almost the same size as the 32x32 mod plates. And I have a TON of the dividers.

The fiancée got me my annual bday present; this year’s jazz club set. And it came with another Blacktron ship, so now I have two of them. Hotcha!