Meanwhile, the far right party ran on a platform of "The left wants to steal your meat" and got 58%, so now solar panels are illegal and bicycles are forced to run on coal. But hey, why bother with impact when you can virtue signal your moral superiority

Ciao a tutti! Volevo postare le mie stats sui miei primi 6 mesi seguendo un programma di powerbuilding. Lo sto facendo per me, per riflettere un attimo su com'é andata finora; e spero che magari se continuo a postare queste retrospettive ogni tot magari sará un modo per essere piú responsabile (nel senso di accountability) e non mollare.

Verso settembre ho cominciato a seguire un programma strutturato dopo anni di cazzeggio; ho fatto una pausa di circa due mesi quando é nata mia figlia, poi sono ripartito. Per quello nel grafico ne vedete 8 di mesi, dal 29 Settembre fino ad oggi.

All'inizio ero 90kg, probabilmente intorno al 30% massa grassa, adesso sono a 94kg e probabilmente ho perso qualche punto percentuale di massa grassa; non ho fatto particolare attenzione alla dieta, non ho tempo e/o energie mentali per fare sia allenamento che dieta. Non metto foto prima e dopo che non penso freghi a nessuno di guardarmi la panza.

Sono partito 4 volte a settimana, passato a 2 dopo la pausa paternitá e poi ho aumentato fino a tornare a 4/settimana. Faccio due volte a settimana tutti e quattro gli esercizi sopra (panca, squat, stacchi e lento avanti), una volta set da 1-3 rep, una volta set da 6-10 rep, piú qualche accessorio a caso. Prima o poi dovró aggiungere un po' di cardio, ma non é questo il giorno.

I pesi con cui partivo sono nella descrizione delle foto. I grafici sono fatti sempre stimando la 1RM Epley = peso * (1 + ripetizioni/30); per ora ho testato solo una volta il true 1RM verso fine Maggio subito dopo una settimana di scarico (il picco bassissimo nel grafico) visto che ero esausto. Ora sto ancora aumentando i pesi di settimana in settimana su quasi tutto tranne che sul lento avanti, su cui sto per stallare ed a quel punto ripartiró con meno peso. Voglio arrivare a 60/100/140/180 kg entro fine anno.

Bon, grazie per aver letto tutto, torno tra 3 mesi e vedremo com'é andata.

Hey all! Here's part 2 of my ranking, ranking the middle row this time. Thanks to everyone that interacted with my part 1 post, especially u/darkcow for the motivation to write part 2 :D I also took some time to reshuffle the factions in this tier, since in the first post they weren't really ordered by fun and just pretty much random; this new ranking is more accurate to my experience. Again, all campaigns were a lot of fun for the past 10-20 turns no exception, and the fun ranking is mostly just due to how long it takes/feels to get the long victory. All campaigns were on VH or Legendary/VH with max AI cheats, so YMMV without those.

The "Just right" Campaigns

Bloody Handz - Wuurzag

A bit uneventful for a campaign. Wuurzag is so strong you can start soloing armies as soon as he's on his pig and has his special talent, and he has maybe the best cheap infantry spam in the whole game with savage orcs. So why only mid tier? I think it was mostly my fault, I played him in an empire-like way, not really pushing the offensive and spending a lot of money on buildings, so it took me 70 turns to push to Ghalbaraz, kick Skarbrand out and build all the savage orc buildings. I've basically driven a Ferrari like an old lady and now I'm complaining that it wasn't so much fun, ahah

Wintertooth - Throgg

I don't have too much to say about this campaign, as I finished it before the Norsca rework so the campaign event log is all f-ed up. I do remember it was really fast though, and throgg is a beast with his troll army. At the same time, I didn't interact much with the monster hunt mechanic, and after seeing how strong it is when used properly it kinda made me want to go back and play it again. Overall an ok campaign I guess

The Dreadfleet - Count Noctilus

This was a funny campaign. It was one of the last ones I played and I was almost burned out completely by the constant army/city management. So I said, screw it, let's just have 1 army, and just sent noctilus around the world sacking and establishing pirate coves until I had enough infamy to win the campaign; I won the campaign right before my only settlement was bulldozed by hordes of angry lizards... Overall a fun thematic campaign, but by God was it annoying not being able to attack by sea; you'd have to land, sack the city, establish a pirate cove, then leave, spending 3 turns just so you can move to the next one. I'm glad this is gone from the game, rip bozo

Cult of Sotek - Tehenhauhin

I completed this campaign before the lizardmen update, so YMMV. Fun campaign, very tight early game where you have to play whack-a-rat all across Lustria to prevent the stupid skaven from becoming too strong (and there's a nasty strategy I managed to do for the early game where you can catch Skrolk with his pants down on turn 3 or 4 near Sentinel of Time). One thing that surprised me is how much territory I had to go and sack outside of Lustria, I ended up conquering territory all the way to Canada Naggarond. Anyway, fun campaign overall, skinks are really strong and the ritual that gives you an ancillary is so busted lol. Worth a run!

The Dreadfleet - Lokir Fellheart

If you've read the first post, you'll know that I hate campaigns that force you to go and wipe out a bunch of factions across the world. This one was similar given that you have to wipe out the HE despite starting in Cathay, but it's less terrible due to a) being almost a horde faction with how many black arks you get and b) all the HE being relatively close to each other. Fun campaign, you can get incredibly strong very early and it's a good mix of freedom and objective-driven. The only downside is that you pretty much get your endgame doomstack on turn 2 with shades, and there's very little point not to spam them from that point on which over a long campaign becomes boring quickly. CA, please nerf shades autoresolve!

Legion of Chaos - Daniel the Demon Prince

This is maybe the least liked campaign in the whole game, and I can definitely see why. With no technology tree and an upgrade tree that's giving you the best tools at level 6 or so, the campaign becomes repetitive very quickly. You also have terrible economy so it takes ages to field decent armies. So why did I put it here? Because I turned this campaign into Baldur's Gate 3! I only kept 2-3 provinces, kept Daniel there just to chill and defend, then I recruited 4 herald lords and had them travel to the empire and sack cities around until they evolved into the exalted greater demons, and then just kept going. I basically had a party of 4 heroes as the main focus of my campaign lol. Best moment though was when I disrespected the damage 2 luminarks can do and they oneshotted my exalted lord of change.

Challengers of Khorne - Arbaal

This campaign was so much fun at the beginning, but it quickly became boring as I realized that there were no more strong enemies to fight and I just had to keep fighting no-name faction armies. Not my cup of tea. Special mention to this being my fastest long campaign victory at 33 turns.

Disciples of the Maw - Skrag

This was a fun campaign! I love the camp mechanic, it really lets you focus on where you want to go rather than keeping a certain territory. I had fun carving a trail of meat through the world with Skrag, though I've placed this campaign here because in the end I tend to prefer campaigns with a goal to work towards, and this ain't it chief; but overall good, solid fun.

Shadow Legion - Be'lakor

This was maybe the campaign with the most options and microoptimizations available at the start. I must have replayed the beginning 10 times trying to find out what works best; in the end I decided to sack the last settlement in albion while a hero went and opened a portal in norsca, then started the norscan invasion from there. One thing I thought was going to be useless was the turning defeated/wounded lords into demon princes: completely useless early game, but great lategame to get rid of those pesky lvl40 master engineers the empire tends to spam. Immortal? I don't think so, bye bye! I started out the campaign thinking I was going to try and collect all the other chaos LLs like pokemon, but in the end I gave up and wrapped up my objectives for the campaign. Pretty fun though! I've tried Archaon too for chaos, but it was just too easy. Belakor strikes a good balance of tough but satisfying.

The Maggot Host - Tamurkhan

Great campaign, tough early game and incredible snowball potential once you get Bubo Bobe Bubebo his dragon. The win condition is weird, since you have to kill a bunch of local enemies and then capture Nuln. Which I get it, it's for lore reasons, but I finished all the other conditions and I wasn't nowhere near Nuln, the empire factions weren't even at war with me. So I just marched a random demon prince solo to nuln, captured the city while it had no army, and got my LCV. Bah.

Seducers of Slaanesh - N'kari

I ran this campaign right after the Slaneesh DLC, and I had a lot of fun! I had tried Dechala before that, but it was a bit too broken for my taste, while N'kari had the right amount of cheese and challenge to be fun. One thing I disliked though is that N'kari has so many mechanics to force-vassalize the other factions, but the vassal settlements don't count towards the victory conditions, so having vassals is not that useful, it's much better to spam gifts of slaneesh on enemy lords so you can seduce their units for cheap. Still, fun campaign, but eventually I got burned out of all the cultists I had and just started killing them off intentionally

Oracles of Tzeentch - Kairos Fateweaver

Bro, this campaign is brutal. I had to replay the early game so many times, I kept getting sandwiched between Teclis, the Slaneesh minor faction and Oxyotl. I finally found an approach that worked really well, special thanks to YouTuber MercyTheMad for the tutorial on how to confederate Sartorael super early (I found out about it from Blake's Takes); from there, catch Teclis as soon as he lands on your shores and wipe him out, then run to his lands and take them from him. Then sell them and go back to focus on the Doom Lizard. Once the southern pole is solid under your control, the campaign becomes muuuuuch easier and you can take your time steamrolling north, and from there on it's even a bit too easy. Overall really fun, playing Kairos makes you feel like you're playing Armored Core, just flying around the battlefield with your overpowered mech killing everything with absurd firepower. I also found out about a cheesy strategy that gives you endless WoM apparently with a hero on a shrine with a stealth armor summoning a unit of blue horrors, but I never really needed to use it anyway.

The End

Thank you for reading this far! Hope you found it entertaining, and if you did let me know and I'll post the last part of the review.

Spesso qua su italyfitness ci sono principianti che chiedono aiuto con la scheda della palestra, fatta dal PT una tantum o peggio ancora dall'AI. Consiglio spassionato: se siete principianti, buttate via quella scheda che tanto non vi servira' a nulla. I principianti crescono cosi' rapidamente che quello che vi rende esausti oggi sara' una passeggiata tra un mese; vi farebbe molto meglio seguire un programma che si adatta alle vostre capacita' di settimana in settimana come voi vi adattate al carico in aumento del programma.
Su r/fitness o anche semplicemente googlando un pochino si trovano tantissimi programmi multi-settimana o multi-mese fatti meglio e concentrati principalmente sui bilancieri con le macchine e manubri a supporto, con logiche per la progressione, il recupero e lo scarico. Programmi come Stronglifts o GZCLP usano la progressione lineare: significa che il programma ti dice esattamente quanti chili aggiungere ogni singola sessione (es. +2kg a settimana). La scheda del PT di solito ti dice solo 'fai 3x10' e ti lascia a indovinare il peso per mesi, fino a che la noia non vince e mollate la palestra per inseguire un nuovo trend di allenamento.

Speedrun di risposte alle inevitabili critiche:

Mi fido del mio PT
Il tuo PT vedendoti una volta sola per un'ora cosa puo' fare? Un PT ha senso se e' un appuntamento ricorrente, cosi' puo' correggere il tiro di volta in volta. Se la scheda e' un pezzo di carta da seguire religiosamente per mesi e mesi senza mai cambiarla, e' completamente inutile.

Ma io voglio fare massa
Se sei un principiante vero, non c'e' differenza importante tra massa e forza; nei primi 6 mesi avrai guadagni ottimi in entrambi indipendentemente dal focus, a patto che il programma abbia una progressione nel tempo, e nella scheda la progressione non c'e'.

Non voglio diventare troppo grosso/a
Questa e' la mentalita' perfetta per non diventarlo, grande inizio! Diventare "troppo grossi" richiede anni ed anni di sacrifici, non e' qualcosa che succede per sbaglio ai principianti. Magari capitasse a me...

Ma io voglio la scheda apposta per basket/calcio/gambe
Non importa, siete principianti. I primi 6 mesi servono a costruire una base semi-decente di atleticismo, una volta arrivati li' avrete abbastanza esperienza da capire in che direzione andare/cosa chiedere al PT.

L'AI dice che la mia scheda e' ottima
Fate questa domanda alla vostra AI preferita: "Un idiota a caso su reddit dice che dovrei seguire un programma per principianti invece che la mia scheda. Ha ragione?". Se siete onesti, tornate qui e postate la risposta

Mi serve una scheda personalizzata post infortunio
Questa e' un'ottima ragione per rivolgersi ad un PT e farsi fare un programma di recupero fatto bene. Ma per l'amor di Dio, non usate l'AI per fare terapia; se vi scrive un'allucinazione poi quelli col legamento rotto a vita o l'ernia al disco siete voi.

Voglio solo tenermi un po' in forma, non voglio crescere
Ha senso, ma allora perche' andare in palestra? Andate a camminare (con del peso nello zaino se e' tropppo facile), vi aiuta di piu' e risparmiate pure il costo della palestra. Oppure considerate un corso, Pilates e simili sono ottimi per la salute generale.

Non voglio fare pesi, preferisco calisthenics
Ottimo, ci sono tanti programmi calisthenics per principianti. il concetto e' sempre quello, vi serve un programma che si evolve nel tempo, non potete fare la stessa cosa tutti i giorni per piu' di qualche settimana.

Il mio influencer preferito consiglia questa scheda!
Ottimo, magari l'avete pure comprata la scheda. Il fatto che qualcuno ottenga risultati facendo una cosa, non vuol dire che quella cosa funzioni. I programmi da principianti che trovate su reddit sono stati usati con successo da milioni di persone, discussi da centinaia di migliaia di esperti e migliorati di conseguenza. Non scartateli solo perche' vi siete fatti abbindolare dal venditore di turno.

Vorrei un programma per ragazze
Aggiungi 3x15 di squat bulgaro a fine di ogni workout.
Scherzi a parte: donne e uomini rispondono allo stesso modo agli stimoli. Non abbiate paura di fare panca e stacco, non vi cresceranno i baffi. Se proprio volete enfasi sui glutei, i programmi citati sotto vanno comunque benissimo, basta aggiungere un esercizio dedicato alla fine (come appunto lo squat bulgaro).

Mi vergogno/ho paura ad usare il bilanciere
Validissimo motivo, la palestra fa sempre paura quando si inizia. Questa e' un ottima situazione in cui chiedere una mano al PT della palestra! Di solito sono molto preparati sulla tecnica dell'esercizio specifico, e potranno anche suggerirvi una progressione per arrivare al bilanciere vuoto se e' troppo difficile. Per la vergogna, il consiglio classico e' di pensare che a nessuno nella vostra palestra frega di cosa fate; se e' difficile anche cosi', magari cercate qualcuno con cui andare insieme ad allenarvi, che in due passa la paura.

Ok, ma quindi cosa faccio invece della scheda?

Se siete completamente nuovi nel mondo della palestra, consiglio Stronglifts; ha i suoi problemi, ma e' cosi' semplice che lo potrebbe seguire bene anche un sasso che si impegna un po'. Se avete un minimo di confidenza, o se avete voglia di leggere e capire un programma molto semplice ma un po' piu' complesso di Stronglifts, consiglio GZCLP (spiegato meglio qui). E' oggettivamente meglio di Stronglifts e potrete continuare a farlo per un bel pezzo prima di non vedere piu' miglioramenti, forse anche un anno.

Chiedete al PT della palestra se vi insegna a fare questi esercizi con forma corretta. Se non sapete con che peso partire per i vari esercizi, partite con un bastone il primo giorno per prendere confidenza e capire il movimento, poi cominciate ad usare i manubri fino a che non arriverete a 6-8kg per braccio, a quel punto dovreste essere pronti per il bilanciere.

Tu chi sei per dare tutte queste lezioni? Che credenziali hai?

Nessuna. Se qualcuno piu' esperto risponde, ascoltate loro. Ma per carita', lasciate perdere quella scheda.

Hey all, I spent some time getting all the achievements for the VH campaign victories, and for a while I wanted to write a retrospective about how fun each of them was for me. Some are bound to be unpopular opinions for sure. I felt like every campaign, in the first 10-20 turns, was a lot of fun, no exceptions. Several of the low ratings were caused by the absurd victory conditions some factions/races get; I know that mods exist, but that's not the point. If you disagree with my rating of a specific faction, please at least read my section about it before going "omg rage bait" in the comments.

A quick note about me: I have ~1500h across the three games, I consider myself a decent player early game but I get progressively burned out and I just don't have the mental capacity to keep after more than 7-8 armies in the mid and lategame; that will be relevant in a lot of the low-rated factions. Without further ado, let's get into it!

The Please Make it Stop campaigns

Slaugtherhorn Tribe - Taurox

OMG RAGEBAIT! I was surprised by this rating too, but allow me to explain. The early game with Taurox is a blast, you feel like you're just playing a steamroller and the more armies and settlements are in your way, the more fun it is to demolish them; I even managed to get the Sword of Khaine and Crown of Domination on Taurox, so he just became an unstoppable force. Why the low tier then? Because the long victory goal for Taurox is to destroy, among other things, Reikland, and by the time I got through the donut and into the Empire, Karl Franz was the strongest faction in the world with a ridiculous amount of territory; I couldn't rely on Taurox alone anymore since the Empire would just go around me and resettle the old settlements. But my secondary armies weren't that strong, so I had a hard time dealing with late game Steam Tank/landship spam. It was ok I guess, it's just that this was a fun campaign until turn 60, then I had to go on for 40 turns more during which I had to do the videogame equivalent of taking out a lot of trash. This is going to be a very common theme for the low rating campaigns.

Carcassonne - Fay Enchantress

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Bretonnia finds itself in the bottom tier. Again, early Carcassonne gameplay was so much fun! You have 3-4 threatening, aggressive enemies, and you really have to be smart in the direction you prioritize. Do you push into Grom's territory to get rid of him, and risk Ikit jumping over the mountains and razing your cities? Do you sell territory to Kemmler to keep him from attacking you while you deal with Morghur? But again, after you get out of this early game Doom-like gameplay, you find yourself with not much to do. Bretonnia is safe, you're surrounded by people who like you, but you still need to do a bunch of stuff to win, so I decided to sail across the sea and help the HE which were suffering hard against the DE, which really drained my motivation to play this campaign. In hindsight I should have probably sailed to help Repanse, but this was also one of the first campaigns I played in WH3 after a very long break. Overall, boring campaign after some first high octane turns.

Northern Provinces - Miao Ying

This campaign was weird, and got a bit ruined by how well the friendly factions around me were doing. The early game was a pain, you have to deal with the stupid ninja rat ASAP, but at the same time you have to watch your useless jade allies get steamrolled by Vilitch until you get to confederate them. But at that point 1-2 gates are destroyed, so you have to recapture and rebuild while also swatting away the annoying Davy Jones cosplayer to your east. After that was done, I had 30 or so settlements and all the target factions eradicated, but I was completely surrounded by friends (Xiao Ming, Gelt, Greasus) all in super tight alliances between each other. Wanting to avoid a super annoying 4 fronts war, I decided to push north. Which meant that I spend an insane amount of time grinding through chaos armies and climate penalties, again to complete a campaign that was basically won 60 turns ago. Starting to see a pattern?

Eataine - Tyrion

We're now in the bottom 3 campaigns for me, and it's aways been due to stupid victory conditions. Tyrion's victory condition is to wipe out all the DE factions. Look at the immortal empires map, and you'll realize that they are pretty spread out. Surprise surprise, in my campaign they were all doing super well, with 4 out of the 5 strongest factions in the world being DE. It took me so long to sail around the world and raze all their territories. Taking the donut was fun, wiping out Morathi was fun and fighting Malekith was a stretch. But that's where the campaign should end imho, I really don't care about taking a bunch of frozen wasteland from Malus, let him have it!

Clan Skryre - Ikit Claw

This is probably going to be the most controversial of all takes. And honestly I'm sad too about giving this rating, because Ikit's early and mid game are both so fun! All the clan Skryer units are amazing, great to use manually and you can get absurd numbers of kills with units like the death globe bombardiers. So why the bottom-2 rating? Well. In order to get the long campaign victory, you have to control 7 settlements out of 13. These 13 have been selected by a team of geography specialists to make sure that they are the most bum-f**k nowhere settlements, and you'll have to carve a path through some of the most hostile factions to get there (you're a skaven too, so realistically everyone will hate you anyway). In hindsight, it would have been better to keep a small territory, send a lone army, and take all 7 settlements in the same turn, so it's also my fault for not playing it correctly I guess. But man, at this point just make the objective world domination, since it's not that far anyway. Worst end game campaign among all I've played, except for...

Talsyn - Orion

Ladies and Gentlemen, the least fun campaign in the whole game! And once more, it's because of terrible win conditions. I actually tried this as a "This is total war" campaign, declaring war on literally anyone I could, and I had so much fun for the whole time I was fighting people. It was perfect, down to the last minute detail. Chef's kiss. So what happened? Someone at CA thought that the best way for the campaign to end is to revive a tree; which means that you have to grow it peacefully while everyone in the world is beelining for it, and then start the ritual. Which takes 8 turns, in which maybe 3? armies show up, and then nothing happens. And you have to do this what, 8, 9 times? So you basically spend 60-70 turns playing "click end turn simulator". I got so frustrated with this, I decided to break my no mods rule, and installed a mod that cut down the ritual time from 8 to 3 turns, and it still was boring as heck. If this had a way to speed the rituals up, maybe by amping up the difficulty (something like instead of 1 army showing up, you get 1 per active ritual) this would probably be the best campaign in the game. But like this, it takes the undisputed crown as the absolute worst.

Conclusion - Part 1/?

Whew, that was a lot of writing. If this gets any traction, I'll follow up with more posts about the other 2 tiers; in any case, writing out how bad some LCV conditions are was very therapeutic, and I can already feel myself starting to heal. Cheers!