BW2011 pt.2: And we will Crawl

I was able to get into the vendor's area before the mad public was let in. I nabbed some of Will Chapman's accessories (brickarms) just before the line that had stretched the length of the hall was let in. On a second excursion to the booths for some sand green wedges I overheard one aggressive soccer mom exclaiming to another:

"I'm buying my son a minigun"

Love is purchasing third-party precision molded plastic.

I liked this fish.
The bottom the the new Star Destroyer is not sloped. Seems as if the Kuat Drive Yards subsidiary of The LEGO Group is slacking.

I could have sworn I took more photos of this WWII-era U-Boat. Its creator had threaded some obnoxiously small lighting system through it. Fickle!
The Middle Earth display had some impressive castle-fantasy set ups, some better than others. Here are my favorite bits.





That's all old dark grey.

I quietly accompanied Kevoh, Nick Dean, and Lukas to the LEGO store and witnessed the purchase of nine 7984 for a parts draft.


I observed a brickwarz table-top war game, notable combatants included Robby and Carter Baldwin. I nearly fell asleep during the beginning dispute over the rulez, but when the game actually started I found myself able to take interest in....

Well, let's just say it must be a more engaging activity for the participants than spectators. This blogger will stick to "Advance Wars". Actually, the dim lighting in the empty restaurant area was reminiscent of staring at an old 2001-model Gameboy, before all the LCD displays were back-lit. Good memories, but not really. I took the opportunity to gawk at Carter's NATO armor.


After the battle closed, during which vehicles were found to particularly useful infantry-ramming instruments, I brought my ugly beige/brown mech over from the tweepunk dirigible table where Jonesy was kind enough to make room for it. I talked with Peter and discussed 2 x 2 round tiles with Robby while Carter ordered pizza on my laptop.

Former(?) crewman Jacob and I questioned the appropriateness of the display card next this Tank Girl MOC.

"Think about it like the first time you got laid. Gotta go, "Daddy, are you sure this is right?"

Yeah, I don't get the reference. But it did stand out against the some of the more drab, dull military displays.

Cool sci-fi towers:



Some guy with a possibly french accent was toting a laptop computer, on video chat. He was showing the person on the other end around, who if I heard the man with the computer correctly said was from Montreal. Like many others he had stopped to gawk-view at the twee-fantasty-nonsense-battlefield display and all its flowers. The man on the computer screen wished to know its creators, and while he didn't recognize their real names he did know them by their flickr screen names.

It was a weird, detached-but-connected kind of feeling.

The last thing I did before leaving was talk with Rocco Buttliere. After the public and all its dumb questions (where can I buy that?) he was able to disassemble sections of his models for me to peer inside of. His work is heavily based off that of Spencer R.'s, but he claimed he reworked the internal bits to his own liking. Finding different routes to the same conclusion is its own art.

We talked of things like compensating for the lack of trans smoke 1 x 2 plates and headlight brick vs. brackets when it comes to half-plate maneuvering. Looks can be deceiving, even the most rectangular of his builds had some sneaky, intricate internal SNOT. Not as obsessive as Jaster, but still damn impressive. Check out the old grey/new gray transition on the maintenance floors of the WTC towers.