I’m pretty sure Josh was joking, but if it’s catalyzing a legitimate discussion / reevaluation of MILS, I’m all for it. Just be civil, yinz guys (I think you have been, thus far…)
Greg’s points are well taken. I agree that I’d rather not see vast, barren expanses (of tablecloth or baseplates), unless it’s a space / desert layout where that is deliberate and adds to the effect, rather than making it look like we ran out of time. And I don’t think we should necessarily undo work that’s already MILSed. And MILS can provide for neat effects (ponds, the curbs Tim mentioned, etc.) That said, MILS is a lot of extra build time & money, and the payoff is not necessarily there in most cases.
Not doing MILS on outer loop train tracks also makes sense so that we can build up the track beds (which is more realistic) using the PennLUG track standard.
This also makes sense, but I’d say it’s not essential to use PennLUG standard either – I definitely like the look more than track just lying on the tablecloth, but (especially if we can find ways to blend smoothly) I think it’s not a problem to go MILS to PennLUG track to bare track as needed, depending on the display. We did mostly (all?) track on table at Ligonier Valley… (granted, that one isn’t our most AFOL-centric display…)
So I’m a big fan of the cohesive Lego display look and personally, I don’t like seeing a big display with the table cloth showing. It just looks like they ran out of time and/or parts. For that reason, I would place baseplates wherever there’s empty space and force ourselves to build something fun in those spaces to liven up the display. This opinion does not include the space displays with tablecloth discussion as I’m not familiar enough with displaying that theme to comment.
The other option being fewer / smaller tables… 😉