Bad+Juju

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 * Bad Juju, Neverborn Minion [[image:WYR4010_500.jpeg width="360" height="368" align="right"]]**

=__Overview__= Despite packing some great resiliance and a very respectable punch, our favorite mudman is similar to Zoraida in that he's more of an objective claimer than an outright face beater. If you are looking for the latter, then consider taking Teddy or the Mature Nephilim instead, both of which have some better damage potential and more useful abilities and triggers for getting to and killing enemy models. Bad JuJu is at his best in Strategys and Schemes that just need a model to be somewhere, like Reconnoiter, Treasure Hunt, Claim Jump, Breakthrough, and Stake a Claim. In these, he can help fulfil the strategy by either protecting the treasure counter on turn 1 and not dying for a few turns, or just ensuring you'll absolutely claim a specific table quarter/terrain piece/deployment zone at the end of the game (thanks to Eternal).

=__Mobility__=

From the Earth
Much of Bad Juju's mobility comes from his talent "From the Earth", which lets him deploy at least 7" from enemy models anywhere on the board and partway through the game. This is a great talent that allows him to pop up out of nowhere and ambush isolated enemy models, or claim objectives before your opponent has a chance to do anything.

The negative of From the Earth is that because he's summoned 7" from any enemy models, Bad Juju will be slow and thus unable to engage any models that don't first move toward him. Needless to say, pushing/pulling enemy models into combat with Bad Juju using effects like Lure can help mitigate this but otherwise, you'll need to be prepared to wait a turn before doing any damage with your mudman. It's for this reason that it's usually a good idea to summon Bad Juju late in the turn, giving your opponent as few activations as possible to respond to the threat before Bad Juju does his thing in the next turn.

The '7" from enemy models' rule also means that if you want Bad Juju to sit on an objective (especially a Treasure Counter), you'll need to either do it before your opponent gets there, or accept that Bad Juju will have to spend some time getting close enough to claim that objective. This is usually not a problem - after all, 7" is Bad Juju's Charge range. However if your opponent is expecting it, they might wind up deploying a 'buffer' of cheap models to push Bad Juju even further from the objective.

Also once he has emerged, with an average Wk of 4 and no way to avoid severe terrain, Bad Juju is not going to be moving anywhere fast. This means you'll have to consider his initial deployment carefully. If he's in the middle of severe terrain or simply too far away from the action, your opponent may well just ignore him and Bad Juju will be unable to bring his offensive power to bare.

=__Offense__=

Claws
With Cb6 and Damage 3/5/7, Bad Juju's claw attack is very respectable. However without Paired or any Cb triggers, it's not quite on par with the offensive power of other models like Teddy and the Mature Nephilim. Using Flurry on single models is well worth the effort though, and the very high severe damage of 7 makes it worth cheating the damage flip whenever you're able.

Landslide
Landslide is a hard spell to justify using. The damage can finish off enemy models and Slow is good for reducing the attacks dealt to Bad Juju in their next activations, but you really need to be sure you can cast the spell with a high card, otherwise your opponent will just resist the spell and you'll have wasted 3 wounds. The best time to use Landslide is when you can affect a large number of low or moderate Df models. Even if you flip or cheat a moderate card for the spell, your opponent will be hard pressed to prevent more than a few damage if s/he's having to resist with four or more models.

Terrifying
Bad Juju also has Terrifying 13, which is at the upper end of what you'd expect for a Terrifying model. It's an effective talent against crews full of living models and if you can engage enough of them, you should at least force them to cheat waste cards on cheating the Terrifying flips.

=__Resilience__= Bad Juju is about as resiliant as they come. His high Wd stat combined with Regenerate 2 and Hard to Wound 2 means that your opponent is often going to need to devote alot of effort to bring Bad Juju down. However as per usual for low Df models, Cb triggers can be the downfall of Bad Juju. Triggers like Onslaught and Trigger Happy are very easy to use against Bad Juju, so you need to be aware of what your opponent can do in this regard and ensure such models are either occupied, out of their threat range or dead.

Eternal
Bad Juju's best resiliance comes in the form of Eternal. So long as you have soulstones to discard, Bad Juju will be able to turn up anywhere on the board (as per From the Earth) at the end of the turn after he dies. He does, however, lose half his wounds each time he comes back so while his offensive power isn't diminished, with only six or three wounds he's going to take much less effort to put down. It's for that reason that you'll want to spend his subsequent "lives" engaging isolated enemy models or claiming out of the way objectives.

One advantage for Eternal is that unlike From the Earth, he's summoned at the end of the turn. This means that Bad Juju won't be slow when he first activates in the subsequent turn. Thus with a successful initative flip, a resummoned Bad Juju could charge an unsuspecting enemy model before they have a chance to respond.

Immune to Influence
Bad Juju is one of the few models available to the Neverborn who is Immune to Influence (the others being the more fragile Hooded Rider, Teddy or if you take any outcast Mercenaries, Lazarus). This is generally most useful against Resurrectionist or Neverborn crews, both of whom tend to have a variety of potent Wp-based attacks.

Immune to Influence is especially useful when you consider that it prevents Bad Juju from being affected by Wp-based movement effects, like the Rotten Belle's Lure or Zoraida's Repulsive, which would otherwise disrupt it's role as an objective-claimer.

=__Tips and Tricks__= The best way to use Bad Juju is to think of him as having two different roles during a game. His first role, when you initially place him on the board, is to distract and kill your opponents crew. Ideally you want to kill whatever you can and make sure your opponent has little choice but to devote a chunk of of their crew to stopping Bad Juju.

Once he dies, Bad Juju is considerably less resiliant in combat, thanks to the much lower wound count. At this point his role should move towards either fulfilling your, or disrupting your opponents, schemes and strategies. Since alot of the scenarios require models to be in certain positions at the end of the game, Bad Juju's ability to redeploy almost anywhere on the board is excellent for this.

=__Master-Specific Tips__=

Zoraida
Coming in her Starter box, Bad Juju is generally associated with Zoraida and his swampy theme only adds to that association. That said, people will often shy away from using Bad Juju with Zoraida because he's Immune to Influence and thus, cannot be obeyed. This doesn't make Bad Juju a poor choice for Zoraida. He's still very good in his role as a large tank/objective grabber and his Immune to Influence is still an asset against enemy Wp-based attacks. It also shouldn't stop you bewitching Bad Juju's targets and using repulsive/obey to get enemy models into Bad Juju's melee range to allow him to (2) Flurry. Zoraida is also one of those Masters who generally doesn't have a great need her cache of soulstones, so you should have little trouble keeping one or two aside for Bad Juju's Eternal Talent.

Lilith
Once again, Immune to Influence means that Lilith cannot Transposition Bad Juju. But like Zoraida, that wouldn't stop you using Transposition to get enemy models close to Bad Juju or in the case of Earthquake (which is a Df-resist), Bad Juju close to enemy models.

Pandora
Bad Juju will lose Immune to Influence while within 12" of Pandora, which is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it allows you to cast your own Wp-based spells on Bad Juju like Lilitu's Lure. However it also leaves Bad Juju vulnerable to your opponents Wp-based attacks too.

Pandora could use Dementia or Pacify to hold enemy models in place while Bad Juju moves up on them, and Project emotions: Depression/Low Self Confidence could also assist Bad Juju in melee. Trapped In Your Own Nightmare is another option against enemy living models with terrifying, since they'll now be affected by Bad Juju's impressive Terrifying 13. That said, Bad Juju's lack of Wp-based attacks means that Pandora herself doesn't gain alot from including him in her crew.

Dreamer
Dreamer generally prefers to run around with a crew full of Nightmares, and already has a tendency to put minions into play anywhere they want to on the board. Thus Bad Juju tends to offer very little to his crew. He does offer some very good resiliance to an otherwise fragile crew and can pop up out of nowhere without needing any help from the Dreamer or his Daydreams, so he wouldn't be a dead weight in this crew.

Leveticus
It's worth noting that being a Construct, Bad Juju is available to Leveticus. More than the Neverborn Masters, Levi would appreciate Bad Juju's mobility. However as an outcast Master, Leveticus generally has few SS to spare for Eternal, and Mudman means he won't generate scrap counters for making Steampunk Abominations each time he's killed.

=__Minion-Specific Tips__=

Wicked Doll
The most obvious synergy that Bad Juju has with other models lies with the Wicked Dolls, who will lose insignificant when within 3" of Bad Juju via Doll House. Sewn in Poison will also give Bad Juju Poison 1 on his melee attack, so pairing a Wicked Doll with the mudman is an effective combination for both improving Juju's melee damage and helping to claim objectives.

Insidious Madness
As per it's entry, the Insidious Madness tends to be a great choice for Neverborn crews for it's ability to enhance the Wp-based attacks from other models, either by giving :-fate flips to Wp duels or stripping Wp-immunities via it's ranged Neverborn Whispers attack. This can be used to improve the effectiveness of Bad Juju's Terrifying 13 abilitiy, especially considering that Bad Juju is mostly unaffected by the :-fate Wp flips from Psychopathic Episiode due to having having Immune to Influence.

The Insidious Madness could also target Bad Juju himself with Neverborn Whispers to strip his Immune to Influence for a turn. Combined with Zoraida, this could let you summon Bad Juju 7" from an enemy model, strip his Immune to Influence with the Insidious Madness and then use Obey to charge Bad Juju into melee. Bad Juju will regenerate any damage from the Neverborn Whispers attack and considering Bad Juju cannot normally reach models to engage them on the turn he is summoned, it's a trick that your opponent will not normally expect.

=__Playing Against Bad Juju__= Bad Juju may not have the damage output of the other big Neverborn minions like Teddy and the Mature Nephilim, but he's still not a pushover in combat and his tendency to keep coming back turn after turn can be a real pain, especially if he's going to disrupt your own schemes in the process. It's for that reason that a scheme like Holdout can be a poor choice against Bad Juju, since it's not too hard for him to be get into your deployment zone by the end of the game.

The thing to remember with From The Earth/Eternal is that Bad Juju needs to be placed at least 7" from enemy models. This means that short of movement effects, he won't generally be able to attack one of your models on the turn he arrives. This will usually give you an activation or two to either move your models out of the way or concentrate on killing Bad Juju before he can do too much damage. It also allows you to prevent Bad Juju from easily claiming objectives too easilly, by ensuring you have a model on or near whatever point your trying to hold.

Bad Juju's best damage output comes when he's using Flurry. So it should go without saying that if you want to engage Bad Juju in melee, you should be planning to have him dead before Bad Juju can activate again. As usual for low Df, Hard to Wound models, the best approach for killing Bad Juju is to take advantage of Cb triggers like Trigger Happy, and/or hit him with multiple attacks with a high weak damage value.

Landslide is the sort of situational spell that's only really useful if Bad Juju is close enough to multiple low Df models, so try to avoid letting Bad Juju taking advantage of that.

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