Yuan Chinese - ADLG Super Army?

In 2018 and 2020 I used the Art de la Guerre (ADLG) results database to probe the perennial question of super armies.  My starting definition of a super army was an army that, in the hands of almost anyone, will deliver an above average number of victories.

In ADLG games the number of variables involved in determining the outcome is huge; player skill, list choices, terrain deployment etc etc.  So to get to the influence of the army list alone I looked at a very large number of games to avoid the perils associated with small data sets.

Then last week I received an email from Mike Guth politely disagreeing with my conclusion and he sited the success of Yuan Chinese armies at the World Championships from 2016 to 2019.  

This piqued my interest.  Is there something special about the Yuan Chinese in a two list competition like the World Championship?  I began to dig.

Cheap Paint

If you are a regular reader you'll know that I am a strong proponent of adding talc to paints so that they dry matt during painting and stay flat when varnished.  In what is the blogging equivalent of watching paint dry, I'd like to discuss a range of paints that have never needed talc added: DecoArt Crafter's Acrylic & Americana ranges.

I use these paints for core colours and as a base for mixing shades.  As I paint a lot of ancient and medieval figures I need solid browns, neutral shades and greens.  I seldom need specific uniform colours.  For this, this range is ideal.  Their black and burnt umber have been amongst my stock colours for sometime:

These dry flat, varnish flat and mix well with other paints. The black dilutes really well which is useful for black lining etc.  Plus, like all DecoArt paints, they don't separate unlike Vallejo paints.

Rebasing Thoughts

One of my mini-projects for 2021 is to refresh, and re-flag, the command bases for my War of the Roses retinue & levy bowmen.  This involves a total of six bases and lots of the "new" livery flags I produced back in 2018 like this one:

The plan was to remove the figures from the old bases, replace the standard bearers, add a few new command figures, add new flags and do as little re-painting as I can get away with.

Surprisingly, this plan is still on track but the amount of work involved has been more than I'd bargained for.

15 mm Early Medieval Horde (Essex)

As mentioned in yesterday's post here's the pictures of the newly finished early medieval horde, or levy bases.  They are the latest bases to be finished as part of my end of year "finishing things" phase and are intended to be driven in front of my Timurid army: