So, pretty simple card, this. Calculus has maintained her 1” melee zone, and most of her stats from her original version. She has gained a TAC though, and 2” of KICK range, which gives her a 16” Sprint and Shoot distance, which pushes her into ‘off-striker’ territory. TAC 5 is also that break point at which she can reliably hit her first column against just about any model in the game. It’s also worth pointing out she’s kept her DEF/ARM stats of 4+/1, which is a very solid defensive statline to have.

Speaking of her Playbook, she has a good array of momentous results, starting with a Dodge on column 1, and a Tackle on column 2. This helps show her focus, she’s supposed to be chasing down the ball and snaffling it off of enemy players. A momentous Push/Dodge on column 4 and a Tackle/Dodge on column 5 are her final momentous results, again giving her plenty of options for manoeuvring around and grabbing the ball off people.

Non-momentously, she has the standard 1 damage on column 1, then a double Dodge and 2 damage on column 3, and finally a non-momentous 3 damage on column 5. The double dodge is certainly helpful for her to get around the Pitch if she needs to move a bit further at the cost of not generating momentum, while the damage results allow her to ping some damage and hopefully finish off an already wounded model. If Calculus can get some gang ups from friendly models, she can actually do a nice bit of damage. It’s not her first choice, but it does give her that option if need be.

Veteran Calculus has a single Character Play, which is where the title for this section of the blog came from, called Sticky Bomb. This unique Character Play allows Calculus to control the enemy team by limiting their movement. While -2”/-2” Movement isn’t an enormous debuff by itself, when combined with the other movement control options in Alchemists, it can really slow down an enemy team. The main one to mention here is the burning condition, which the Alchemists have a *tonne* of access to, as well as snared on Midas’ Legendary turn. And of course, we can’t forget Blind from Hemlocke (at least until the £#$p£”()?^/\s Minor Guild is released!).

Stacking these multiple movement penalties on the enemy team allows the Alchemist player to pin their foes in place while they move around and control the ball, safe from retaliation. Even if the opposing team can clear burning or snared in order to get to your players, this forces them to spend Momentum to do so, and means the player in question can’t heal during their activation. This is always a tough choice against Alchemists, which Veteran Calculus makes doubly difficult. It also means they’ll struggle to get into the positions they would ideally like to be in, which aids the Alchemist player with planning Counter Attacks and their own positioning.

Drawing the Venom