7 : The Musketeers’ Garrison

The Musketeers’ Garrison model is based on the build done for the BBC TV series The Musketeers.

Upstairs, Captain Treville has his office. The ground floor is made up of stables and, presumably, a common room. The stairway is the most imposing feature of the building. Note the opportunity for a Musketeer to race down the stairs and leap straight onto a horse that trots out of the stables with perfect timing!

The Musketeers spend a good long time in the courtyard in the episode where they compete with one another to be the champion who will duel the Cardinal’s Red Guard champion.

The model is designed pretty much as the stage set was – just as a building frontage. Both have a canopy over the walkway but neither build has a roof.

This is clearly the most complex courtyard model build so far. The stairway has to provide a practical platform for miniatures to fight their way up and down in swashbuckling style. Making the steps too thick would result in a much taller building to accommodate the extra height. However, we can’t avoid altering proportions so that the stairway accommodates 28mm figures mounted on 25mm-round bases.

The stage set had a chest under the stairs so I designed one to go there. All the doors open and close.

The model, like the stables on the other side of the courtyard, stands on a 200mm-square terrain tile.