When I first saw the Arquitens I was not impressed, a ship that is not supper maneuverable cost almost as much as a GSD-I, dose not have a brace this ship is awful, it came out a few weeks before a regionals in my area and I dismissed it as a bad ship so I did not play with it and went on my merry way. After that regionals I decided I would give the little guy a shot.

When I first played with them I thought they were okay not the greatest in the world but okay. I decided I would keep playing with them until I felt like a knew the ship inside and out I wanted to be as comfortable flying this ship as I was my Gladiator. So I played a lot of games with this guy and I have got to say this may be my favorite ship in the game now.

As I played with Arquitens more and more I learned a few key things: That this ship more then pretty much any other Imperial ship wants to take a con fire command, That despite a predictable maneuver chart the two clicks at the end make it pretty easy to have your guns where you want them to be, its defense tokens do a good job of keeping the ship alive at long range, when upgrading it wants to stay as cheep as possible while still getting a substantial boost from the few upgrades it dose take. The most important of these upgrades is the Turbolaser upgrade.

Why is the Turbolaser slot so important well a naked Arquitens with no con fire command has a mathematical average of about 2.25, pretty laughable for its weight class. If we take a con fire command well then that mathematical average increases to about an even 3 damage still not the most impressive and it took a command for us to get there. The only upgrade that and Arquitens can take to increase its damage output is its turbolaser.

In the game right now there are 11 turbolasers 5 of them: XX-9s, XI7s, Heavy Turbolaser Turrets, H9s, and Quad Turbolaser Cannons all make large damage rolls better and well we are not getting that with our Arquitens right now so we will not look at them, the other 6 all do something to increase our damage output: Dual Turbolaser Turrets (DTT), Quad Battery Turrets (QBT), Slaved Turrets (ST), Turbolaser Reroute Circuits (TRC), Spinal Armament, and Enhanced Armament (EA). As I thought about this I wondered witch one was “best” and thus the conception of this wright up.

As I was thinking about this I was working overtime on a graveyard shift literately just being a body encase someone called, no one ever calls on the graveyard shift. So on one of my breaks I went out to my car where I had my armada stuff and grab my dice and started to roll and recorded the results, this is how it went. I dismissed Spinal Armament as the Arquitens is a broadside ship, and rolled for DDT,TRC, QBT, ST, TRC, and EA. My methodology for rolling was 10 sets of ten for a total of 100 rolls for each upgrade, so I would roll ten times take the average then repeat (I assumed a con fire command was issued while rolling this.). When rolling I only rolled for damage so if I got an accuracy It would change to a damage if possible and I combined EA/ST as they each did the same thing by adding a die to the attack, then I plunged my results into a excel and got this.

So as you can see from the graph TRC out performed all turbolasers in almost every set so case closed, numbers don't lie, to which I would answer sort of. If your content with the graph and its information great, but when picking a turbolaser its more than just damage output there are different pros and cons to taking each and if you want to know about that I would encourage you to continue reading the wall of text, we will also look at each overall average damage as well, lets look at DDT first.

Just to make one thing clear while rolling dice if I got all hits I would use DTT to fish for the double hit. So lets talk pro and cons with DDT, its overall average damages comes out to be 3.33, not much higher than just a con fire command, however this is one of the cheapest upgrades you can take, and is still useful for when you roll well and can fish for better. However if you have a double arch you can only use it once so that is a bit of a downside as well. However when picking this upgrade it works well on its own as some of the other turbo lasers get better with addition upgrades, this is good as is.

Pros:

Can still help improve Damage even when you roll well

Is a cheap upgrade.

Cons:

Works on any build

Lower overall damage when compared to other turbolaser 3.3

Can only help modify dice once

Next up QBT so while rolling I assumed that we were getting the dice bonus hopeful that was obvious. Evaluating QBT is a little more difficult then just adding a die thought as a ship has to be moving faster then you are, so you wont always get the extra die. However the utility of QBT is worth investigating so lets look at an example.

So in the above example the Arquitens are going speed 2, so now the AF has a nav token so it has a choice it can stay at speed two and not give the Arquitens the extra dice, but it wont escape the front arch of the ISD it can jump to speed 3 and escape but it gives the Arquitens the extra dice. With QBT it sets and effective “speed limit” on the other player and I have personally used that to great success in trapping ships in a spot they would rather not be.

Some other things to consider with QBT is that it adds a blue dice so you are more likely to generate an accuracy as well, in addition it can add it to all attacks so if you have a double arch on a ship that is going faster then you your firepower is boosted even more. In the example above if the AF did jump to speed 3 it would be doubled arched by the lead Arquitens and with a con fire that Arquitens would roll 5 out the side and 3 out the butt for a total of 8 dice ouch!

In addition to all of that the total average damage output from my graph would average out to be 3.86 so pretty close to 4 damage on average. However needing to go slow can be a problem when your Arquitens needs to get out of trouble, however you can mitigate that impact with anticipation and some a pretty cheap upgrade skilled first officer, or you can keep a nav token handy. Sometimes I like to drop my Arquitens down to speed 1, in that case having both SFO and a token would help get your Arquitens out of trouble if needed, so a simple load out for a QBT Arquitens would be:

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
- Skilled First Officer ( 1 points)
- Quad Battery Turrets ( 5 points)
= 60 total ship cost

Now lets balance the pros and cons of taking this upgrade.

Pros:

Can add a die to both attacks

may cause opponents ships to move slower.

Better chance of generating accuracy.

Average damage near 4 (3.86)

Cons:

Ships have to move slower to get the die

may not always get the die.

Now on to the guy that dominated on the Graph TRCs. So with the errata the ability can only be used once, another downside is that its fairly expensive at 7 points and that in order to trigger it your Arquitens has to spend its only evade it has on it, and that is pretty huge as its the only defense token that keeps damage off the Arquitens. Its big plus is that its total average damage comes out to be 4.77 that's nearly 5 damage! There are a few ways to negate the glaring disadvantages of this card.

The first is if you are only running one Arquitens in your list just put needa on it and you now have 2 evades and you should be good to go, but what if you want to run multiples well there are a few builds you can do the first that comes to most peoples mind is put hand of justice on needas ships so something like this.

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
-Hand of justace (4)

-Captain Needa ( 2 points)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits ( 7 points)
= 67 total ship cost

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits ( 7 points)
= 61 total ship cost

This however leads to a predictable activation order and as none needa needs to go first to get the hand of justice benefit well it will still go at least one activation with an exhausted evade. Another option would be to drop hand of justice and put Montferrat on the non needa.

Arquitens-class Light Cruiser (54 points)
- Admiral Montferrat ( 5 points)
- Turbolaser Reroute Circuits ( 7 points)
= 66 total ship cost

This makes attacks against you obstructed and that is nice however you must stay at speed 3 so there is a bit of a downfall there. Another thing you can do is just put blast doors on your ship and use that to boost your thoroughness, another option is Tagge, but you know Tagge.

Pros:

High Damage output almost 5 (4.77)

Cons:

lowers ship durability.

Expensive, particularly if you try to mitigate the loss of the evade.

can only be used once per activation

Slave Turrets is simple you get to add a red die to your attack pool but you can only attack once, this however is not the largest disadvantages as it seams as Arquitens generally only have one shot to take, however it can sting at times. You can slap this no other worries, other than only being able to attack once. However it can be added to the front or back if a ship doges the side arch

Pros:

average damage output almost 4 (3.77)

powers up rear and front arch if ships doge the side

Cons:

only attack once.

EA is very similar to ST but you can attack more than once, and you get an extra die out of each side arch so you could slash, however I would not recommend that as that puts the ship in grave danger of dying very fast.

Pros:

average damage output almost 4 (3.77)

cons:

Very expensive.

Before we wrap up I want to mention a few things here is the overall average damage in one place.

DTT: 3.33

QBT: 3.86

TRC: 4.77

EA/ST: 3.77

then in regards to EA and ST specifically and its hard to talk about Arquitens without talking about him the dark lord himself Lord Vader

You don't know the Power of the Alt art Darth Vader card!

With Darth Vader as your commander and and Arquitens with ether ST or EA we will roll 5 dice with a con fire each red dice has a chance of .375 of not rolling damage so in total we have a chance of 1.875 dice coming up with no damage Vader lets us re-roll with a .75 average damage per die (accounting for the double damage face) so Darth Vader will increase our damage on average by 1.4 so that would bring our ST and EA average damage up to 5.17 the highest average damage out of all the turbolasers, this would also be the same for the QTB there average would increase by about 1.3 (the blue die makes is a bit though as im not a math wizard, if anyone sees mistakes in math let me know) that brings its average up to about 5.16 ever so slightly less than 5 reds.

In closing if you are going to take Darth Vader as your commander take EA,ST, or QTB. If you are only taking one Arquitens in your list it is worth taking the needa TRC combo, if you are taking multiple Arquitens in your list QBT, ST, or DTT are probably best, but if you want to take TRC you can I am going to play around with them more but they do make a fragile ship even more fragile and if Sloan is a thing in your area it could be a little scary.

I love the Arquitens and I think it is a very under rated ship, I would encourage everyone to try it before you knock it.

I've loved the ARQ the moment I laid eyes on it. I just wished it was a bigger ship.

I've had a lot of success with my "ARQ Battery list" of three ARQs with Slaved turrets, Vader, and concentrate fire with an intel officer on each. That's a lot of withering firepower you can get on three activations, the first of which either blows away or denies the brace token as successive shots keep landing more damage. Large and small ships alike need to try closing the distance before they are weathered down, and the ARQ just throttles up and sharp-turns to keep firing on target and maintaining the distance.

If the game rewards multiple attacks or big shots to overcome brace tokens, the ARQ can offer both when built to maximize one shot (as it doesn't have the capacity for Gunnery Teams). Since it's cheaper, you can take more of them.

And if nothing else the ARQ is a great support ship that puts pressure on ships while your main attack vessels close on their targets.

I hadn't really thought of the interesting symmetry between Vader and QBT, mostly because in my mind 'Vader = Arquitens' and 'Arquitens != going slow'. The VSDs, for example, LUUUUUURVES themselves the QBT, but I'm usually flying the kitties at triple the speed I run a VSD.

But it's an interesting thought, especially if you are able to position yourself reasonable well for double-arcing a target. (That really seems the key, given QBT working on both shots and the ship able to more-or-less burn two defense tokens without losing a lot of sleep over it, at range, to give Vader quite a lot of options)

Great article. But im still not sold on t being a great ship.

Have you actually found it to be better for the arq to go slow? Cuz going 2 and 3 speed for me invariably led to requiring navs for turning.

This is an outstanding write up. I still haven't figured out a good way to use this ship, and this is helpful. Thanks!

I've enjoyed a decent level of success using the Arq as an escort for my ISD. I've found that engine techs helps solve the maneuver issue of the ship, albeit this is costly. I fly mine with TRC's and Screed as the admiral, this way I'm always certain to score at least 3 damage with a crit effect.

In my experience keeping it about distance 2 off the beam of the ISD works best as folks seem to ignore it for the larger threat of chase after it thus pulling targets into the gunnery teamed front ISD arc.

I haven't run multiples successfully and believe that the ship has a bit of a learning curve best tackled by running a single one within a very flexible fleet.

11 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Great article. But im still not sold on t being a great ship.

Have you actually found it to be better for the arq to go slow? Cuz going 2 and 3 speed for me invariably led to requiring navs for turning.

I usually run them at speed two and with practice I don't feel the need for a nav command, at speed 3 that is a different story, But at speed 2 I feel that they can keep there guns pointed where they need to be and still stay in the action from my experience.

6 hours ago, Darth Lupine said:

This is an outstanding write up. I still haven't figured out a good way to use this ship, and this is helpful. Thanks!

Thank you glad you enjoyed it.