Block Tech 20x20 plates

In the « Bricks And Figures » blog I read a note about Block Tech bricks available at Walmart, I took a chance and went to my local store to see what they had.

I ended with four 20x20 plates (one per bag), I took two blue and two in sand color, blue matches perfectly with Lego, sand is a bit lighter. The size is not a standard one but it would work with what I had in mind.

When I got home I took care to check if the size was the right one before opening all, some time ago I bought a Brictek baseplate package (two 16x32 studs) those are almost 1mm longer than the Lego ones, it adds a lot of stress on the bricks and causes problems when trying to build something (starts bending) completely useless. The Block Tech ones are perfect! I will probably buy more.

I have the Lego set 6490, it was a good improvement for the display, more playable...

Before:

Then I added the Lego set 6665, a Kayak from the ToysrUs Build&Take events, the Hiker from the collectable series 16 and a customized 4x4 I built over the red car that comes in the Lego set 6375 (Exxon gas station):

Mixed harbour

For a long time I have been dealing with the idea of building a Lego harbour (port) layout, last weekend I took some time to start with.

Whenever I can I recycle material, this time it was not an exception. I had some chipboard wood panels with white melamine stored, and a textured acrylic panel, so I quickly built up something in my “play room”. 

The idea is having two levels:

• Sea level
• Port/harbour level

I measured everything in order to have baseplates on the raised level that would be exactly at two bricks height compared with the sea level:

I forgot that the raised baseplates from the 90's had the road a bit higher, I should have planned a height of 2 1/3. I will need to adjust this next weekend.

Anyway, here are some views of the first mockup:

The last two pictures were taken after adding a blue colored paper and a transparent textured acrylic, to create the water effect.

Mostly Lego, but also the Enlighten Rescue Center (copy of Lego set 6479), some MegaBlocks base plates and a BlockTech 20x20 blue base plate that I bought at Walmart some days ago (see « Bricks And Figures » blog).