Natty

Ummmm... I use Pandora's crew to support her. She can do everything on her own. Her crew is just there to accomplish some objectives and to try to keep her soulstone use to a minimum. She is the lead actress in the play. Baby Kade is dressed up as a tree and has no spoken lines.

Also, the dreamer should be deploying all his guys anyway. Don't forget that while they are buried they don't experience an end phase; so effects don't wear off. You deploy them, activate all their abilities (Stitched Together's cover, Teddy's charge, Daydream's -Wp, etc), then you bury them after that. It only costs a single spell to rebury them all, and when they come out they all save actions.

My roommate has the Viks and I play Pandora, so I actually have a lot of experience in this matchup. Don't even bother attacking her with your crew, you are just wasting activations. Use your crew to fight her crew and accomplish objectives. Here is the one solid piece of advice for you: start with 8 soulstones, and try to kill Pandora with the Viks in 1 or 2 hits. Save any high cards you have to get past the Wp->Wp duel to target her and then soulstone your attack. You may have a 6 Wp to her 7 Wp but you win on ties since you are the acting model. So a soulstone flip and high card cheat gives you about a 50/50 shot of hitting, assuming they have a high card in their hand for defense (which they will, since Pandora should save most of her high cards for defense). So, assuming your Viks aren't falling back because of Pandora's trigger, with their maneuverability, you should be able to get a charge on Pandora by using your other Vik as a slingshot. This gives you about a 1 in 4 chance of killing Pandora in a single activation. If you fail, most likely your Vik is gonna be dead, and you can (maybe) get a second chance to kill her with the other Vik (maybe). If you can actually win 1 in 4 games against Pandora with Viktoria, then consider yourself to be a really good player =) It's a bad matchup. <edit> I say a 1 in 4 chance because you can't kill her in 1 hit, even if you add the +2 damage because she will soulstone to reduce the damage. So you have a 50/50 shot of hitting her with the charge (after slingshotting into charge position with the first Vik), and then a 50/50 shot of killing her with the melee expert attack, so you take those together and it should be about a 1 in 4 chance. <end edit>

No no, I was saying that when the Dreamer hires Teddy, it should no longer drop scrap counters because now it is a nightmare and when it dies it disappears in a puff of smoke. However, the nightmare trait only stops things from being living, not from being a construct.

Also, I plan to buy orange Tic Tacs and glue them to 30mm bases and use them as my Daydreams. I'm serious. I wanna do that. Best proxy ever.

...hasn't happened yet. It'll be tonight. I'm gonna eat Vik's face. Then I am going to eat her sister's face. Then I am going to get my opponent a beer, but I will shake it up first, and as it explodes into his face, I will push all of his miniatures off the table onto the floor and run away laughing. Sound like a good game plan?

I don't like how the dreamer's Teddies still count as constructs even though they are nightmares. Not sure why they should be leaving scrap counters if they aren't really there. Only Kade's Teddy really exists.

Also with book 2 out you can use up extra actions with Zoraida by summoning in those new dolls. The one time I proxied Zoraida quite a while ago, I found myself having extra actions on a number of turns. I just wasted them by trying to remove stupid abilities through the conduit. The remove abilities spell is such a high cost low result spell that I didn't waste the cards cheating it, so it generally failed anyway. Would have been much better if I could have spent my time getting free little poison dolls.

I've never played against a Colette player, but I would love to see a Neverborn player make the Duet get pacified and have to activate last.

In any newly made box for Bad Juju. The new errata for v2 is supposed to be coming out soon. I can only assume that it contains a lot of balancing things, such as making Bad Juju useful. Personally, I would just play with the current books + errata since there are probably v2 cards that are not balanced when you don't have every single v2. Plus people who don't have that model with the v2 cards might not know what to expect when you put the model on the table. Especially if you don't mention to them that your card is different from the book. It's not really fair. They have said, though, that if you have the old card you can send it in to get the newer cards, but they haven't released any details about that program as of yet. I assume they will tell us more about it once the new errata comes out, which should be soon.

Apparently the v2 card for Bad Juju says that he is now hard to wound 2 (instead of 1) and only costs 1 soulstone (instead of 2) to bring him back. This came up in one of the rules threads I just read. Maybe he isn't so bad now!

It would be nice to get a Zoraida specific one. Maybe something that keys off the new dolls that you can summon in. I feel like her crew lacks a defining characteristic like Pandora's woes, Lilith's Nephilim, or The Dreamer's nightmares. She just kind of takes other peoples crap because her big construct that is supposed to work with her... well, it sucks. Wait... WAIT... A better idea... make creatures that work WITH Bad Juju. Add in little Zoraida guys that make him usable and gives the crew that much needed theme. You could easily make them swamp-themed dolls so they work with the doll faction as well.

I always take Pandora's totem even though it almost never does anything. The reason is that it is a 7 defense model for 2 points, and it is a spirit taking half damage to boot. I mainly use it as a distraction that they have to target and waste AP on. They can't really ignore it, and it is one of the hardest totems to kill. The other use for the totem, which I try to avoid, is to make your own guys go last, and have a sudo-alpha strike, then have the doppelganger let you go first again the next turn. It works great with companioning Silurids (honestly it works too good and makes you do so many actions without your opponent doing anything it makes the game not very fun).

Karn has got it. I honestly didn't even bother posting the uses for the doppelganger because I assumed everyone knew it was the best model ever for Pandora. Half the time I just copy emotional trauma, a nice defense or defensive ability, go into defensive stance, and walk right into the middle of their guys. The doppelganger is worth it's weight in sorrows and then some. I mean, the sorrows can't decide to switch it up and copy Teddy's damage and the Cerebus' melee master and then destroy whatever is in front of it. The Doppelganger is by far a must have for Pandora. I can't even see anyone arguing for not using it. If I was playing a 10 soulstone game, I'd take the Doppelganger as my only minion. I will admit that the Doppelganger is kind of a hard to use minion, and Pandora is a hard to use master, but once you get the hang of them together they are an almost unbeatable combo that just uses the rest of your minions for support. If it wasn't for having to win by victory points and having limited turns, the Doppelganger and Pandora could probably wipe out a lot of 25 point crews + master by themselves.

Oh, and Nekima looks fun with Pandora, but it would have to be a high point cost game because you ALWAYS want the doppelganger with Pandora and then you want at least a few tots with Nekima and add on that you want to start with max soulstones on Pandora, always, so: Nekima 13 Doppelganger 8 That's already 21 points. Nekima + Pandora would probably be good in a 35 point game though...

I can see taking the Lelu/Lilitu pair as far as winning the game goes, but lets change this discussion up a bit and talk about the sanity of your opponent: Pandora is annoying to play against and add onto that a group of models that companion each other. Basically your opponent is doing one of two things: #1: Sitting through a Pandora activation, which no one wants to do or #2: Sitting through a chain activation of your Lelu/Lilitu while you do a slew of activations all at once. I had this trouble in a few games with the Silurids. My opponent would sit there forever while I activated all my models at once, or he would sit there forever while I ninja hopped around the board with Pandora taking four-hundred (0) actions and causing a billion tests. For the sanity of your opponents don't take Pandora AND Lelu/Lilitu/Silurids!!! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

Even after looking at the new models I still maintain that Pandora with the Doppelganger is enough Wp duels. Her list needs physical damage to balance it out and take down certain targets with high Wp. Maybe add in one of those insidious madnesses. They look good for 4 points.

It only removes the mindless trait during that zombies action at the end phase. This is correct.

Pandora eats Steamborgs for breakfast.

It seems no one mentioned her ability to utterly destroy Pandora by ignoring the Wp duel to target her. Pandora is, in my opinion, one of those other top 3 masters, and Perdita has the ability to take her down incredibly easily.

Personally I prefered to use the doppelganger and then ALL melee beatsticks with Pandora. Even the doppelganger becomes a melee beatstick depending on what it is standing nearby. Using all my soulstones to hire tons of melee beatsticks has never failed me yet. Silurids or Teddy/Kade are my favorite choices. ------------------ Advice to fight against the Silurids: Always remember that the Silurids are one of the fastest moving units in the game. They can basically attack any of your models from anywhere they want and they don't really care about terrain to get there. You cannot separate your troops too much against a Silurid pack because they with all companion and take out anything that isn't being backed up. The flaw to the Silurids is that they go down easy. You need to be able to attack them after they kill several of your models (and they WILL kill several of your models before they are done being companioned). Always have a counterattack strategy in the back of your mind. Always think to yourself: "If the Silurids attack THIS group of minions, I can take them out with _____, and if the Silurids attack THAT group of minions, I can take them out with _____." Position your troops in a way that your troops could actually shoot or charge each other if they wanted to, because those Silurids will pop out of nowhere and end up standing right next to where some of your troops used to be.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the ability the rats have to take a wound and move into base contact with another rat. This ability is amazing! You don't care if the rats die so going from 2 wounds to 1 doesn't matter. Once you have one rat in base contact or close to an enemy, all of your rats can get a free ride over there and still attack with their action.

Remember that the Stolen turns into a rat whenever it is killed OR sacrificed. So unlike every other model, you can sacrifice it and still get a rat. Early game I would recommend summoning the stolen, then sacrificing it, drawing two cards. After a couple turns you want to stop doing that because you will need Hamelins actions for other stuff and the Stolen around to save Hamelin in case of death, but in those first couple turns your hand should look like this: Draw 6 cards in draw phase. Draw 1 card from totem. Draw 2 cards by sacrificing Stolen (and get a rat) Draw any cards opponents use (probably 0) Discard 3 worst cards. Draw 1 card from totem. Draw 2 cards by sacrificing Stolen (and get a rat) Draw any cards opponents use (maybe 0) So at turn 2, which is when the fighting starts, you should have 2 more rats than you started with and the best cards out of the minimum of 12 that you have drawn. ------------------ Also remember that in addition to producing a rat, sacrificing the stolen lets Nix take a (0) action. ------------------ In addition, Nix can, in the early games when you don't want him too far ahead of everything, attack your rats and hope for the trigger to go off. Most likely you won't get anything for this because you wont want to use cards, but there is always a chance that it will happen on its own and you aren't using all of Nix's actions in the first turn or two anyway. If you kill a rat it just comes back and maybe you have a small chance of doing no damage and getting a free rat.

Teddy fighting advice: Always remember that if Teddy can get his flurry off, whatever he is fighting is gonna be dead dead dead, so be careful of having Ramos anywhere near either Kade or Teddy (since Kade can switch in). Teddy's ability to give him (1) cost charges makes him charge the closest model. Keep that in mind when you are positioning your stuff. Don't have that steamborg closer than your spider. Make him kill the spider. Never attack Teddy unless you are sure you can kill him between his activations. Regen 2 is a waste of your damage output if you let him heal. Either take him down completely, find a way to neutralize him without killing, or ignore him. Advice on fighting Kade: Don't underestimate Kade. He often looks bad at first glance but he is one of the best 6 point models out there. Don't underestimate Kade. I'm saying it twice because it's true.

I basically never play with sorrows. They are bad. Targeting the sorrows is not a very valid strategy against a Pandora player that doesn't field any sorrows. Admittedly sometimes I take exactly one sorrow just because of the conversion work I did to the guy and I like to see him on the table, but that doesn't count.