Rabbit’s Reviews #372: Wandjina (5* Foreigner)

Wandjina is quite good as ST units go. They have a strong and manipulable form of damage ramp in the form of a stackable Supereffective niche, and they pair this with all the usual DPS things—steroids and batteries and so on. They’re in a similar position as Kagekiyo, in that they’re a generically strong ST unit with a small niche in which they’re arguably the best option. They also benefit from the fact that their primary niche (killing Foreigners) also happens to be the one thing a well-invested Berserker can’t reliably do, and their initial banner pairs them with an SR Berserker who’s among the best ST units in the game. While banners and timing don’t directly impact the strength of a Servant, Wandjina’s are almost certainly not a coincidence. They’re a Servant you bring for the cases where a Berserker won’t cut it, and they’re very good at that role.

Wandjina has the second-highest attack of the SSR Foreigners, behind Kukulkan. This is a good starting point for a damage-dealer, which is especially nice given that Wandjina is the only ST Quick Foreigner to-date. They’re good at star gen as well, by virtue of having two Quick cards, a Quick NP, and good hit-counts. Their NP gain is less impressive. It’s not bad, but it’s entirely average for their deck. For passives, they get Entity of the Outer Realms, for a bit of debuff resistance and two extra stars per turn, along with Magic Resistance A+. The two passives together give Wandjina a decent chance of staving off debuffs, which is nice. Cradle of the Stars is a marginally interesting passive, providing a nice NP damage steroid on Airfield maps. This is a new map type, at least in terms of being something with an explicit mechanical impact, so it remains to be seen how common this will be in the future. If it’s like other field types, though, it’ll probably be a rare-but-occasionally-nice benefit.

Mana Loading is Wandjina’s most important append, as usual—they’re a 30% charger, so an extra 20% starting charge lets them NP immediately with a 50% charge CE or with a 50% charge support (like Skadi). The Extra attack buff is also deceptively useful here, as Wandjina very strongly benefits from brave chains and card stretch, so making their Extra card stronger will meaningfully strengthen them. Anti-Assassin damage is less useful, but it’s still not bad, especially if you don’t have a favored Berserker or the like for your general-purpose ST needs. Casters tend to be weak offensively, so having a neutral-class unit that’s good at killing Assassins can be helpful.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x10 Seed of Yggdrasil x10 Void's Dust
3	300,000	x10 Homunculus Baby x10 Warhorse's Young Horn
4	1,000,000	x10 Primordial Lanugo x10 Spirit Root
Max	3,000,000	x10 Fruit of Eternity x10 Fragment of a Twinkling Star

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x10 Seed of Yggdrasil
2 → 3	400,000	x10 Meteor Horseshoe
3 → 4	1,200,000	x12 Homunculus Baby
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Warhorse's Young Horn
5 → 6	4,000,000	x12 Spirit Root
6 → 7	5,000,000	x15 Primordial Lanugo
7 → 8	10,000,000	x15 Fruit of Eternity
8 → 9	12,000,000	x15 Fragment of a Twinkling Star
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x10 Void's Dust
2 → 3	400000	x10 Octuplet Crystals
3 → 4	1200000	x12 Aurora Steel
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Divine Leyline Spiritron
5 → 6	4000000	x12 Ball of Rainbow Thread
6 → 7	5000000	x15 Scale of Fantasy
7 → 8	10000000	x15 Sun Leather
8 → 9	12000000	x15 Remnants of Madness
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Wandjina’s skillset is pretty standard, aside from their trait-stacking gimmick. The most notable aspect of their skillset, aside from their gimmick, is that they actually have some decent support potential, making them good for dual-core setups (or Van Gogh teams). Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.

As a DPS, Wandjina mostly wants a standard triple-Skadi setup, with two Summer Skadis and a Caster Skadi. If you have a taunt CE and are facing something strong enough to reliably kill a support in a turn, it’s a good idea to start off with an extra support. Mata Hari is probably the best generic option for this, as she has low HP (making her easy to kill), brings 40% defense down and 50% crit damage up (though you can’t safely use one of her defense downs against males for fear of accidentally charming them), and is Man (and thus gives Wandjina Elemental Wrath stacks when she gets hit). If you really need extra damage, you can reset a fight until you get two Wandjina cards turn 1—ideally their Busters—stick those before the first NP, and have a minimum of two stacks of Elemental Wrath on their first NP and four on their second. If you’re lucky and draw two Wandjina cards on turns 2 and 3 as well, you can have as many as nine total stacks by turn 3, letting Wandjina hit roughly on par with a middling class-advantaged Servant on that third NP.

RNG can be manipulated somewhat by reloading a fight to get the cards you need, but relying on RNG is never fun and isn’t ideal, so in most cases—when you don’t absolutely need to maximize damage—you can just prioritize Wandjina’s cards and let their damage gradually ramp up, capping out at between three and seven stacks on turn 3, plus a bit extra if you run a taunting Man support. This still isn’t bad, even if the inconsistency is annoying, and it means Wandjina will be NP-ing on average about as hard as an equivalent Berserker.

One nice thing about Wandjina’s skillset is that a lot of lower-end or alternative supports are Man attribute, which means Wandjina doesn’t fall off quite as hard without SSR supports as most Quick units do. In a team of (for example) Hans/Wandjina/Barti, Barti gets a bunch of nice damage buffs from Wandjina, Wandjina has easy crit access, and any enemy fire that lands on Hans or Barti amps Wandjina’s damage by proxy.

As I alluded to earlier, Wandjina also works quite well in Quick stall teams. The Skadi/Castoria shell wants two things from their damage-dealer: party charge, and party healing. Wandjina provides both, while also hitting pretty hard in the process, letting them stall reasonably well for ST fights.

If you can loop consistently, The Black Grail is Wandjina’s best CE. Even in stall contexts, Wandjina can outheal the demerit, and the extra damage it brings is extremely valuable. If you can’t loop with The Black Grail, any Quick-leaning starting charge CE can be useful—I usually recommend Traces of Christmas.

Since Wandjina likes to put their cards before their NP anyway—especially in the case of their Buster cards—CCs that buff NP damage or that remove enemy defensive buffs are a good choice here. Alternatively, Wandjina should be critting reliably, so while they won’t have much of an impact, crit damage CCs won’t hurt.

Wandjina is not a top-end ST unit, but they’re still quite good. If you don’t have another ST unit you favor (or if all of your favored ST units are Berserkers), Wandjina can be a good grail target. More attack will let them hit all the harder, which has the added benefit of making it less likely that you’ll need to rely on good RNG for Wandjina to hit requisite damage thresholds.

Wandjina is pretty tightly balanced. Being RNG-dependent is annoying, but aside from that they have nice utility and do a lot of damage. With a lot of work and some good luck you can rig their damage to the point of being nearly best in class, and they’ll usually be good enough regardless. They also kill Foreigners well, which, while a small niche, is useful considering Berserkers kill everything else.

Overall, Wandjina’s a nicely “best in context” kind of unit. Even looking just at notable ST Quick units, Wandjina is generally better than Kagekiyo if you’re not fighting Rulers or Genji, they’re generally better than Bazett if you’re fighting Knights, and they’re much better than MHXA if you’re fighting Foreigners. With a well-developed box—and especially if you’ve invested in MHXX or Yang Guifei—you may not have a need for Wandjina, but they’re distinct enough that they still may have a standout use case even for someone with a lot of different tools, which is a good place for a new SSR to land.

Overall: 9/10
Single-Target DPS: 9/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 7/10
Offensive Utility: 7/10
Defensive Utility: 5/10
Farming Usefulness: 7/10
Weather Powers: 10/10