Creature rankings often come up on this sub, with some people asking or discussing whether they are relevant for PvP. I'd argue that they are rarely actionable and relevant for competitive PvP play for a couple of reasons:

• Unit availability. The fact that a centaur is stronger than a goblin is mostly meaningless in a PvP match given that you can realistically only have an early powerstack of one or the other. On most templates, you are rarely if ever given a choice between two kinds of units of the same tier. Rather, you have to choose between the available map objectives, the sort of dwellings you are going for, or which units to upgrade or not.
• The choice of the faction as a whole has a drastically greater impact than the individual strength of its units. Before each game, you will usually be trading for one of the randomly selected towns. Knowing which faction is better in a match-up and what sort of handicap you're willing to have to play them is much more impactful than knowing the strength of the individual units at each tier.
• Utility is much more important than unit statistics. The weakest tier 1 unit can have more of an impact on your average game than many high tier units with an awkward build path or otherwise low availability. This is because you can have a powerstack of the former on day one by choosing a unit specialist, while the latter might be beneficial or impactful only under specific circumstances.
• Having a powerstack of a specific unit has a completely different impact on the gameplay and requires a different kind of comparison than a single week growth worth of units. The difference between a unit ending up as meat for hives or becoming the main force of your early army often comes down to the choice of the starting hero or a single Pandora box. Some units would have to appear several times depending on their stack size to accurately measure their impact, or in some extreme cases a separate ranking would have to be created for each viable starting hero if they favor going for specific upgrades or dwellings over the others.
• Templates vary greatly between each other. Viable starting heroes and unit utility on Jebus Cross will vary significantly when compared with e.g. the duel templates.

As an example, here are some subjective rankings for a single town on a specific template: Inferno on the Jebus Cross with the HotA expansion. I've decided to split it into 2 parts: early play (pre-break, mostly week 1) and late game powerstacks. You might notice that some units appear multiple times: I've decided to rate starting heroes' powerstacks separately, since they are arguably the most impactful units during the first few turns. Without further ado, here's a ranking for the early game (pre-break) unit impact:
Inferno units impact on Jebus Cross (HotA)
S
Efreet: slower but not much weaker than their upgraded counterparts, efreet are a staple of the Inferno army. Even a basic growth of the efreet will vastly improve your chances when taking the smaller hives. They can outspeed wolf raiders and one-shot their stacks in pickets with some extra units from the external warnings, yielding a reliable method to clear pickets with a Calh start. An overall amazing unit that you will usually want to go for in the first week unless e.g. focusing on the mage guild. Even though they can technically be less impactful than some of the starting armies, getting efreet is often how you're able to open other creature banks and start snowballing the starting biome.
Efreet Sultans: an amazing unit with a ton of utility. Can outspeed dragon flies on lava terrain, allowing you to slow them down in hives to minimize the losses. If you can flag some external efreet dwellings, they can clear pickets quite easily with minimal losses of 1-stacks regardless of the starting units. In the absolute worst map rolls, Calh can use a magog powerstack to clear experimental shops with minimal losses by kiting with damaged sultans, which is something you generally cannot pull off with other units including an angel or a devil. Their high speed might also yield you the first move in a fight with the opposing player, and their fire immunity has excellent energy with the Armageddon spell. It is one of the few high tier units that you will usually want to upgrade if you kept at least a few.
The only reason that I rated them slightly lower is that personally I utilize basic efreet one way or another pretty much every time I play the Inferno, but I'm not always in a position where upgrading them is feasible or justifiable. They are, however, a better unit overall without a doubt.
Magogs (Calh Powerstack): Calh is the most common starting hero on the Jebus Cross template due to his specialty: gogs and magogs. With 3 stacks of starting gogs, as well as additional ones from the dwelling and the other Inferno hero, Calh can have enough magogs on day one to clear most wandering armies protecting external dwellings and creature banks. Magogs can reliably clear churchyards on any hero with minimal 1-stack loses, which is very important given that crypts do not appear on the lava terrain. They are also excellent at capturing external dwellings, opening the smallest griffin conservatories and experimental shops, as well as small pickets when led by Calh with some support from the efreet or other quick units. They rarely stay relevant in the mid and late game once a different powerstack is built, but at times they can greatly help with the break if extra gogs are found in a Pandora box.
That is to say, they are not without flaws. As ranged units, they struggle in hives. The general strategy is to gather units from other sources such as external dwellings and use those to snowball hives instead, leaving the magogs to deal with the wandering armies and other objectives. They are also vulnerable to fast opposing units. In particular, they can pretty much lose you a game if the efreet or devils morale too soon when flagging an external dwelling, since magogs become quite useless in the close combat.
A
Familiars (Ignatius Powerstack): it might be counterintuitive to see familiars placed so high, given that objectively they are not a very good unit. However, with an Ignatius start they can be quite effective at clearing certain map objectives. In particular, they can take pickets with minimal losses of 1-stacks, allowing to start building a powerstack of cyclopes from turn 1. They can also open small hives and size 1 conservatories/shops, albeit not without some losses. With their external dwellings being quite common, it's pretty easy to increase or restore their numbers and take on larger objectives such as size 3 pickets. With 7 base speed, they can be used to speed up secondary heroes from turn 1. Overall, it's a decent starting powerstack that might be preferred by players that are not comfortable with the ranged magogs.
Now, I also want to be very clear that their shortcomings are unfortunately quite obvious. Their only strength is a decent base speed and their numbers. Their statistics are awful, they are weak both offensively and defensively, and will drop like flies if you're not careful. This is especially problematic given that they are the best at clearing pickets, and having cyclopes alone does not make it super easy to snowball other pickets with minimal losses: they need the support of faster units and preferably some spells such as Haste or mass Slow. Familiars are also rather mediocre at taking external dwellings.
Cerberi (Fiona Powerstack): Fiona is the last viable and perhaps the least commonly used starting hero. Due to a low growth and mediocre starting stacks of the hell hounds, the initial powerstack of the cerberi will be rather small (11-21), but unless very unlucky it should be large enough to take all but the largest hives. Snowballing on wyverns is perhaps their greatest strength, as cerberi are the only starting unit that can reliably take on size 3 hives with some supporting meat. Cerberi can also open pickets quite reliably with a minimal loss of 1-stacks, but only when supported with Bless. Just like most powerstacks, they can open the smallest conservatories and experimental shops by sacrificing some meat for kiting and taking some of the hits. They can be considered better than familiars at dealing with wandering armies due to a higher speed and the no retaliation ability.
Most importantly, cerberi are already quite fast at speed of 8, or effectively 9 at lava terrain, which means that they do not require the unit specialist to take on most objectives. That means that you'll usually want to main another hero and use Fiona for her scouting. (Perhaps the only exception is the churchyard; the only pattern I know to take those with minimal losses of 1-stacks requires the extra speed from Fiona or an artifact to do reliably.)
There are several problems with the cerberi though. First of all, unless you get extremely lucky with a hill fort with an easy guard, chances are the fastest you can start dealing with the map objectives is turn 2. Without the upgrade, hell hounds are simply too unreliable and vulnerable to take on any significant battles, including some of the relatively weak wandering guards. This affects your momentum and might force you to skip some riskier battles in turn 1 that you'd normally take if you can still ask for a map reroll. Their growth is rather small, and the external dwellings are somewhat rare. Their extremely high damage range benefits a lot from Bless, which unfortunately cannot be rolled in the Inferno mage guild. Since they take two hexes, they're also more difficult to protect and position correctly. They are less effective at external dwellings than magogs, so if you don't roll creature banks that they excel at (i.e., hives or smaller pickets with Bless), it might be difficult to start snowballing with them early on. In fact, the only reason that they are rated so high is that if you do start with Fiona, you will likely be relying on them a lot.
Devils: by all accounts, devils are a very useful unit that can do a lot of the things that the efreet can. Their ability to negate the opponent's retaliation combined with flying and a high movement speed allows them to take on fights that would normally be problematic with units of a similar strength. Getting a devil early on opens up a lot of possibilities to reliably take on small creature banks that you'd normally lose more army on with the starting units alone.
I have not ranked them higher due to a single factor: availability, or lack thereof. With a relatively high dwelling cost and vast requirements, by the time you recruit them in your home town chances are you'll already have opened some creature banks and started gathering a more reliable powerstack. Opening the external dwellings is also not easy, with perhaps only Calh being able to do so somewhat reliably with the starting army but not without leveling archery or getting extra gogs first.
B
Demons: this is a prime example of the so-called "meat". Sturdy, reliable, somewhat slow, easy to recruit. You will also usually want to place their dwelling either way to get access to the stronger units such as the efreet. Demons often take on a support role in the early game, helping your starting powerstack with taking the hives, as well as the small conservatories and experimental shops.
Demons are also tied to the pit lords' resurrection ability, which will be described in detail below. In theory they have the potential to become a powerstack, but in practice it's difficult to pull off on most maps and they aren't very effective even if you do.
Pit Fiends: a tiny bit faster and a little stronger, pit fiends usually fill the same role as demons. On most of the maps, they will be used as meat for hives, conservatories or experimental shops.In general, 3 fiends are preferable over 4 demons. The only reason I've placed them lower is the fact that they are more difficult to obtain in general. I've certainly had games where I did the break without ever having access to the fiends, which would be much rarer for the demons. It comes down to a couple of factors:

• their dwelling cannot be placed on day 1;
• their dwelling is not a prerequisite for the efreet, and you'll usually prefer going for those instead;
• their dwelling will be protected by extra 9 fiends as opposed to just the wandering guards;
• their entire basic growth is more expensive than demons' by 500 gold.

Arch Devils: they do everything that the devils can and more. Better speed, health, firepower on top of a higher luck penalty for the opponents. Arch Devils might be lacking when compared with other upgraded tier 7 units, but they're still extremely strong and have the potential to be one of the mid and late game powerstacks. Finding one in a refugee camp can be quite literally game changing.
The only reason they're placed here is their availability. The upgraded Forsaken Palace is very costly, and you'll rarely have both the resources and enough units to justify the purchase. As such, they are less impactful than most if not all lower tier units in your average game, especially before the break. For that reason alone I was tempted to put them even lower, but I have to admit that if you happen to get them relatively early on and have some external dwellings to take advantage of the upgrade, they can be quite devastating.
C
Gogs: as basic ranged units without Calh, they can help somewhat with the wandering guards and flagging the external dwellings, but you usually won't have enough of them to make a large impact. They are, however, quite sturdy and happily targeted by the AI, which can be very helpful in hives when starting with a hero such as Ignatius.
With Calh, skipping the upgrade for at least one turn might make sense if you have no immediate fights in turn 1 to place a mage guild, or if you want to flag an efreet dwelling in which case the fireball ability might get in the way and force you to target your 1-stacks.
Imps: the designated 1-stack unit. You'll be constantly using those (until you inevitably run out) to take the retaliation off the opponents or to protect your more valuable armies. From time to time, you might gather enough of them from the external dwellings to capture a secondary town with a secondary hero on the way there.
In that sense, they can be considered more impactful than any unit in this tier, if not for their absolute redundancy. You could supplement any tier 1 unit from a hero with an army from another town or more rarely a refugee camp, and they'll mostly fill the same role except for the lack of a morale bonus when paired with the other native units. Their stats are also so bad they are nearly insignificant as meat. In fact, you might prefer rolling Drakon or Shakti as the second recruitable hero with an army over Ignatius, since their starting armies are more likely to give you a better chance of clearing objectives such as hives.
Hell Hounds: your starting roll of hell hounds without Fiona will be minuscule, and their awkward build path means that you'll rarely go for them as you continue to expand your home town. That is not to say that they aren't a welcome addition to your early army when found in a box or an external dwelling. As quite sturdy and fast 2-hex units, they can do a good job of protecting your magogs in creature banks such as conservatories or experimental shops. They tie speed with the wolf raiders on the lava terrain, helping position the units correctly when taking the pickets with powerstacks other than the familiars. Finally, you can't go wrong with more meat in hives, so there's always that. More often than not though, they will end up speeding your scouts up and forgotten about past the first turn.
Familiars: without Ignatius, you will rarely go for the imp upgrade, but it does have some uses. In particular, they tie speed with the wolf raiders on lava terrain which can help with taking pickets to farm cyclopes: even if not used as a powerstack, they give you more positioning options than the slower 1-stacks. Having a base speed of 7 also opens the possibility to speed up secondary heroes, since barely any other starting unit (that you'll be willing to lock up on the other side of the map without a second thought) is faster. That is to say, their main purpose remains the same as for the basic version: disposable 1-stacks and mediocre meat.
D
Pit Lords: an iconic Inferno unit that opens up the possibility to farm demons to build a sturdy powerstack by sacrificing the lower tier units and meat from the secondary towns. The upgrade itself is quite costly and has nearly no benefits other than their unique demon resurrection ability, with the only improved stat being speed. Unless specifically going for the demon farming or to tie speed with the wolf raiders at pickets, the upgrade is usually not worth it even if you did manage to build a larger stack of those.
As for the demon farming strategy itself, it hurts me to say but the problem is that it's not viable on most maps. When relying on the town alone, the upgraded Hell Hole can realistically be placed on turn 5, or turn 4 if skipping the starting powerstack upgrade which comes with an impact on the momentum. By then it's usually too late to start farming demons to form the primary powerstack, since the other map farming strategies will usually involve sacrificing the meat to take some creature banks or external dwellings one way or another by that time. Demon farming only becomes viable if a combination of those can be found on the map:

• multiple external demon or pit fiend dwellings;
• a Pandora box with some extra units (demons in particular);
• a hill fort with a doable guard, the sooner the better.

Horned Demons: an upgrade bordering on insignificant that effectively hinders your demon farming strategy. You might still go for it though at times with nothing better to build, especially with multiple external demon dwellings or a (horned) demon box. Worth mentioning that the upgraded demons tie speed with wolf raiders on lava when led by Marius or any hero with a speed artifact, so going for the pickets with them is an option if you have absolutely nothing else going for you.
Magogs: if you don't start with Calh, you will rarely be in position to have enough gogs for this upgrade to matter, especially by the time you have nothing more important to build.
Cerberi: can be very impactful when found in a box, but otherwise you pretty much never go for this upgrade. Even if you get a lot of hell hounds, it might not be worth it to sacrifice 2 build turns to go for the upgraded dwelling if that means you won't be able to get the efreet or the devils in the first week.
And now for the powerstacks ranking:
Inferno powerstacks ranking on Jebus Cross (HotA)
S
Angels: this likely holds true for any faction. Angels are the best unupgraded tier 7 unit, hands down. The reliable damage, the high speed, the high health, the extra morale. Even if you have a different main powerstack, it doesn't hurt to bring the angels for their extra utility. The only problem is that Inferno will have a very hard time opening any but the smallest conservatories early on, and even a small conservatory can be a challenge with a particularly low roll of gogs and bad supporting units. However, after you build a small powerstack of angels with perhaps some other small supporting army, you can pretty much snowball conservatories on these alone.
A
Wyverns: a decent flying melee unit that is relatively easy to pull and snowball further banks with? Yes, please. Hives are perhaps not the easiest banks to open with a Calh start, but once you get a wyvern stack rolling, they should be able to crack other hives with little support from the native armies.
B
Giants: sturdy and hard hitting juggernauts that can be excellent in hives, utopias and further experimental shops. The lack of flight combined with a relatively low speed puts them lower than the other powerstacks from the creature banks, but that is not to say they are weak.
The main problem is that Inferno might struggle to open all but the smallest experimental shops early on, and a single giant is not enough to take on the larger shops alone, which makes them a bit difficult to snowball with without additional supporting armies.
Cyclopes: excellent at clearing wandering armies and many breaks, cyclopes are the only ranged powerstack on the list. Initial pickets are quite easy to open with Ignatius, and feasible with Calh and Fiona given the proper support of some faster units such as the efreet.
Their issues are that cyclopes are relatively fragile and much less effective in melee combat. Combined with a relatively low speed, they aren't exactly the easiest to farm extra pickets with while unsupported. Similarly, with their melee penalty they might struggle in hives, aren't the best for the utopias, and in general require careful positioning in conservatories and shops.
C
Efreet/Efreet Sultans: fast and immune to fire, the efreet are an excellent unit that opens up the Armageddon bombing strategy. With a large number of external dwellings, they can pack quite a punch. Assuming their dwelling is built in the home town during the first week, by the start of week 2 each captured external dwelling will yield a total of 5 efreet, with an extra 1 for each secondary Inferno town with an additional dwelling.
There are two reasons they are placed so low. First of all, external dwellings, in contrary to the creature banks, require purchasing the units and revisiting the locations which makes recruiting all the available units more of a challenge. More importantly, on most of the maps you will not find any extra efreet outside of your biome, which makes growing the stack impossible once you mostly leave your biome to farm the desert. The longer the game is, the lesser the chance of them staying your primary powerstack.
Devils/Arch Devils: fast and attacking without retaliation, devils can be a viable powerstack. Assuming their dwelling is built in the home town during the first week, by the start of week 2 each captured external dwelling will yield a total of 2 devils, which is comparable to a size 2 creature bank.
They suffer from pretty much the same issues as the efreet, but even more so. Their dwelling is more expensive and has more requirements. It's pretty much unheard of to place an additional Forsaken Palace in a secondary town in week 1 even if technically possible with some lucky prison and tavern placements. They are also not immune to Armageddon, Berserk or Blind unlike the efreet.
D
Pit Fields/Pit Lords/Demons: I grouped all of those units together, since they play very similarly and rarely end up having a large impact on the final fight. They're an "emergency" powerstack that can get you through the break if you have nothing else going on, but with no real hopes to grow them significantly in the desert you'll usually end up sacrificing some or most of them in whichever creature banks are available to build other powerstacks before the final fight.
Firebirds: included for completeness. If I remember correctly, only a single red tower is spawned per biome, which limits the ability to build a large stack of these. They are also not the easiest banks to take with Inferno due to the fire elementals' fireball projectile immunity. Firebirds' main selling point is the speed advantage, and while they can help with taking some banks or breaks, they are not really reliable as the main powerstack.

My first post here. I am a Master Mechanic and hobbyist calligrapher. A good friend of mine who’s into fountain pens bought me this Kaweco Sport to try out as my daily normal use pen and I’ve been impressed enough with it to give it a quick review as I’ve just finished the first ink cartridge after several weeks. I really like this little thing! It lives in my work shirt pocket next to a micro Streamlight, a Snap-on pocket screwdriver, and a Sharpie. I’m constantly taking these items in and out of my pocket, crawling around underneath vehicles, bending over, and just generally jostling the pen around. It has not leaked on me even once, the nib stays clean, and it’s always ready to write. It seems to write well on a variety of paper. I was worried that the fine tooth threads to secure the cap would quickly wear out given they are plastic and it gets a lot of use, but I have been conscious about not over-torquing the cap and so far it’s held up well. The barrel is not too scratched up, and the clip is still in good shape. The only down side to this pen it’s that it’s practically microscopic in my huge hands, but somehow I still manage to write well with it. I just wish the body extended into the crook of my thumb.
All in all I’m pretty happy with this pen. I hardly ever see “real world” reviews of fountain pens and it’s kept me from purchasing one for that purpose, so I thought I’d write this review for anyone that may be in the same spot.
Does anyone else have a good rough n’ tumble fountain pen they enjoy for daily use?

https://preview.redd.it/jdm5eer4zr4d1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=0eab35dba5a9d509467b60998e317d6f2876dcdd
I like meta-studies a lot. They really leave no space to say – well, this was a coincidence, or this is very individual. This study summarized the results of multiple papers covering more than 26 thousand adolescents. The more likely teens are to display depression symptoms, the more likely they are to have issues with emotional eating.
This is wrong on its own, but the effect of emotional eating lasts quite far into the adult life – when grown up, these adolescents are at a much higher risk of heart and cardiovascular problems.
On a separate note, it is also worrying that the relationship between these two factors was stronger if it was obtained from self-report studies and not from parent-report sources. This means that teens do not share their difficulties with their parents and try to “cope” by themselves. Pity.

spoonfulofreason #psychology #adolescents #depression #emotionaleating

Photo: Stephanie Albert from Pixabay
Study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666324003143
My name is Monika; I am a health and nutrition psychologist. I help to deal with daily and challenging questions about behaviour, thinking, and emotions. I write, give lectures, and provide psychological counselling. Book my session here: https://calendly.com/saukstasproto/psichologine-konsultacija