tikicult

In February, my wife bought herself the Mixer, and its still sitting un-built. Does anyone think we can return it, then re-buy it next week for double points? Or is that frowned upon?

These are awesome! Its exactly the scale that I want to learn to build for my city. Thanks for the inspiration!!

I built custom tables from plywood and lumber. For $30 I can make two tables, one 3x6 and one 3x3 (measured in baseplates). I chose this method because I could get the exact size I wanted, and its easy to expand/modify to obtain different configurations.

I really like the Toy/Grocery building. I can see myself getting two of these because the alternate builds look interesting. The new creator buildings are really cool, they fit well in my city.

Wow... I am really disappointed by this first release of pics. Nothing in there really stands out. The demolition sets are even kind lame. They look like more simplistic versions of the mining sets. I'm actually most excited for Elsa's Castle and the Elves sets. My nieces are going to love them,

Our city has a beach/camping area set up next to a mountain. I'll get some pics up here later tonight after work.

I analyze and design these types of stations for a living. I am really impressed with the realism!! Only thing missing is a second pump for redundancy!

I ended up getting a set for my birthday that I already have, so I'm about to have $90 in store credit. I'm torn between the following options: 1. Town Square (60026) 2. Custom Pickup Truck (42029) 3. Emmet's Mech (70814) + Cargo Truck (60020) 4. Cargo Truck (60020) + Auto Transporter (60060) + Logging Truck (60059) The Town Square and vehicles would end up going straight into my City layout after a few mods. The Technic truck and the Mech would be display pieces. I'm kinda of leaning toward the Town Square because its the oldest, but I have no use for the bus or the crane (other than parts). Any thoughts?

I'm really excited about the Toy and Grocery store. Last year's set of shops was great. Its a happy medium for those of us that cannot afford full modulars.

What a boring list. I'm tired of seeing the same things year after year. Lego has to go with what sells, I guess.

I was planning on picking up Benny's Spaceship at the end of the month for my birthday, looks like I'll be waiting a few extra days to get this bonus instead of another mini Mini Cooper.

Strange... it says that one was sold, but brown doesn't show up in the list of Known Colors on the catalog page.

I love the construction theme! Sounds like they are adding a demolition twist to it this time around. Gonna be interesting to see what they come up with.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The current layout is probably the 4th or 5th iteration, and I think we're slowly getting to where we want to be. Moving the grey baseplates and road is a good idea, that will give us the plaza area that we want. Also, having the bluebrick software looks like it will help immensely. I was doing all my planning just by doing it physically. Having a program will be much faster. I also think I'm gonna have to give up on he monorail idea too, there is no where that it would look good.

My wife and I have been slowly building up our Lego city, and we are having problems optimizing the layout to include all the things that we want. Here are some pictures and some of our ideas about what we want to include. Maybe some of you guys can help us re-arrange or come up with a more creative layout. Picture #1: This area shows the mountain/mine and an incomplete street. In the lower left corner, there is empty, unused space behind the buildings and the train station. I am fairly happy with the mountain as it acts as tunnel for the train, and will eventually support some winter village buildings on top of it. The empty area and the shared grassy lawn around the tower could use some work. We also have two more creator houses to add somewhere (family and hillside) (Link to full size: http://i.imgur.com/2FRcrD7.jpg) Picture #2: This shows the same area as #1, but looking from the other direction. Below the mountain is our wilderness/outdoorsy type area. Also, the beach is in the lower left of the pic. Our residential area can be seen in the lower right. I was considering removing the street here and expanding the grassy area to make it feel more open. This also allows for a larger beach. My wife loves the beach and she worked hard on it. I would like her to have some room to add more to it. We're fairly non-creative people, which is why we only have the creator houses and not many MOCs. The road in the bottom right also has a whole strip of unused space on the opposite side of the houses. (Link to full size: http://i.imgur.com/7GI3y8b.jpg) Picture #3: Continuing around the table, this shows the airport/spaceport. (Ignore the random Heartlake HS on the runway, I put it there temporarily and forgot to move it for the picture) Again, I am fairly happy with this section. I felt really good after I was able to mod the parking garage to fit into a 32x32 section. This made room for my spaceport. (The safety issues of having a rocket launch next to public parking can be saved for another discussion, haha) (Link to full size: http://i.imgur.com/eRgMHug.jpg) Picture #4: This leads us to the section of town that we are most unhappy with and have no idea what to. Originally, this was meant to be a downtown/plaza area. However, the train tracks take up so much space, that its hard to fit things in here. There is also the problem of the wasted space behind the tracks and the train station. We thought maybe the haunted house would look cool being on the "wrong side of the tracks" but it ended up looking silly. We also have a variety of city buildings (seen on the far left) that we can place, but again its hard to fit them in. My wife also thinks that the grassy area around the tower can be better utilized. She really liked the idea of running the tracks through the tower. We also do not have enough baseplates yet, so that doesn't really help things either. (Link to full size: http://i.imgur.com/SwQoG3m.jpg) Picture #5: Here is the current layout in plan view. Each square is the size of a 32x32 baseplate. (Table was built exactly to this size) Some other issues: Is our layout too small for a train? Is it worth losing space for it, or do we just need to change things up? How can we add a monorail? I'd love to have it go to the airport, and preferably in a full loop. Modulars are completely out, we cannot afford them and we will (unfortunately) not be purchasing them. So, no need to plan for those. Should we make the table bigger? I have space to add another 3 baseplate wide section on one side of the table. Thanks in advance for any help that you can provide. Like I said earlier, we're not that creative and this is the best we have been able to come up with after many iterations and complete teardowns. I just feel that there is a better way to build it up.