Argenta is your retinue’s resident Sister of Battle, whose religious fervor will more often encourage or demand a great purge of Heretics and Xenos. Her trusty use of the Soldier base Archetype allows her solid use of mobility, ranged tactics, and a versatile playstyle for anyone looking to shoot, snipe, or burn their enemies away. In this build, we’ll be using a Burst Fire playstyle to generate some incredible bonus shooting fit for Tabletop enthusiasts to improve their damage in combat and become a one-woman wrecking crew. Here’s a closer look at what to expect from our Argenta Build in Rogue Trader, with a focus on using Rapid Fire and burst fire to decimate bosses and mow down hordes alike.

View Full-size

An Argenta Build, featuring a focus on multi-attacks using crits offering incredible horde clearing and armor pen, with scaling damage.

Argenta Build - Rogue Trader¶

The idea behind this playstyle is that you’re setting up your character towards Heavy Bolter weapons, with the potential to take Aeldari and Drukhari versions at the end of Chapter 3 if you so want to. Your starting bolter weapon is okay, but, by the end of chapter 1 and start of chapter 2, you’ll be able to get a regular Heavy Bolter with a rate of fire of 8, which doubles to 16 with the Rapid Fire skill. You’ll grab this from the Chapter 1 final boss as a reward, but only if you’re Heretical. You can get a more generalized one from the Drussian traders. You will need reputation 4 with them, and need to have 36 Profit Factor to buy it. However, it takes a while to get, so something like the Heavy Stubber, which you get from Chapter 1 enemy drops can be useful to you instead, despite being a Solid weapon type.

via GIPHY

Soldier Build¶

The Soldier Build is all about getting you in a spot where you can start getting key upgrades to improve your shooting and AoE capabilities. Talents like Rapid Fire do just that, and the Fired Up talent is handy for damage improvements through fights. If you get more turns, then Fired Up only gets better as your Soldier gets even more powerful as fights go on. Furthermore, we take proficiencies in Bolters because that’s the main weapon type we’ll be using for better action economy, which you’ll use a lot throughout the game, along with other useful baseline buffs for the future build. You also get talents that improve Argenta’s role in the party for Awareness and Demolitions, and some Medicae if you want to make her a medic too since she has decent Medicae traits.

Order	Unlock 1	Unlock 2
1	Run and Gun	–
2	Demolition	–
3	Revel in Slaughter	–
4	Firearm Mastery	Rack and Ruin
5	Ballistic Skill	Fired Up
6	Ballistic Skill	Rapid Fire
7	Perception	Nimble
8	Muzzle Velocity	Awareness
9	Firearm Mastery 2	–
10	Rapid Reload	Strength
11	Controlled Shot	Your Preference for Party Roles
12	Perception	Heavy Weapon Proficiency
13	Unfaltering Fire	It Will Not Die
14	Bolt Weapon Expert	Optional
15	Firearm Mastery Upgrade 3	–

Archmilitant Build¶

View Full-size

The crit pistol accessory and bonus turns can easily allow Argenta to stack Fired Up incredibly effectively using AoE in turn 1. See, she has 56 stakes of Fired Up before turn 2!

Order	Unlock 1	Unlock 2
1	Versatility	–
2	Wildfire	–
3	Always Ready	–
4	Steady Superiority (Heroic Act)	–
5	AP Increase	Ballistic Skill
6	Critical Versatility	Ballistic Skill
7	Cautious Approach	Overpower
8	Awareness	Adaptability
9	Perception	Characteristics Training: Ballistic Skill
10	Preferred Targets	–
11	Demolitions	Perception
12	Steady Superiority 4	–
13	Demolitions	Heavy Gunner
14	Agility	Breaking Point
15	Reckless Rush	–
16	Exploit Weakness	–
17	Agility	Demolition
18	Distract	Agility
19	Toughness	Characteristics Training: Agility
20	Steady Superiority 2	–

Preferred Targets is useful since you’ll have either Idira or Pasqal in your party exploiting weaknesses, or Cassia’s dodge-lowering talent. This is great for increasing crit chance against targets to make your multiple attacks against enemies in Rapid Fire even more effective. Exploit Weakness is also an effective talent, since you’ll likely have an Assassin or Exploit Weakness shredding armor values making this an effective talent to pick up. Our Yrliet build for example uses Pierce the Armour, which is something you can also work off for boss or high wound special enemies to get use out of this talent.

Reckless Rush is a nice skill to take since it doubles your Vers (Versatility) stacks. It’s handy for when you need some bonus damage on a turn you don’t need to use Controlled Shot, for example. This synergizes with Adaptability, which increases crit based on Vers stacks, so, you can have a round where you have really high Crit chance for one of your more effective Rapid Fire engagements. It is another reason the Always Ready talent is so useful. Cautious Approach is also the other handy skill you want for this Archetype, thanks to its granting defensiveness, which is important for the harder difficulties.

In terms of other weapon options, you can get items in Chapter 3 like the Shuriken Cannon, a higher damage Aeldari equivalent of the Heavy Bolter. If you want to, you can slot in a Aeldari Weapon Proficiency for Argenta and use that weapon as an upgrade somewhere in the Exemplar. Alternatively, there’s an improved Heavy Bolter for capping out your rep with the Drussians. So you have two choices for end game weaponry. When you get to Chapter 4, we also recommend opening the locked container on Qutza Temer on the metal base just before meeting Calligos for the main storyline. This contains a cloak accessory slot called the Tempestus Carapace Elite Backpack, which will negate all recoil for your 8 round burst fire weapon.

Exemplar Talents¶

Exemplar Talents have a lot of bonuses you can get that were not quite needed in the Archmilitant or Soldier tree. There are a few must-haves, but there’s a lot of fluff post Level 6, so, we’ll leave the missing talents up to you for how you want to diversify Argenta’s second weapon slot in later chapters and to specialize her role more in your party. Still, the Exemplar Talents are good for her weapon choices and defensiveness. Take Firebrand for example. Argenta wants extra turns for her free pistol attack if you crit, so, it means you can reload three-to-four times for every 2 AP she gets given from an Officer. You can see our recommended level unlocks in this tree below.

Order	Unlock 1	Unlock 2
1	Critical Velocity	Trace the Trajectory
2	Optional	Discipline
3	Toughness	Swift Movements
4	Dash	Optional
5	Cataclysm	Broad Expertise
6	Ballistic Skill	Optional

From here, there are a lot of dead talents for Exemplar. Simply go with whichever is more useful for her role in your party, hits the core identity of Ballistic, Agi, and Toughness for offense and defense, and then what other talents fit Argenta’s party role in your retinue. This is where you likely want to start thinking about grabbing talents for your preferred second weapon, for example. In addition, we are aware that there is a Sororitas Power Armor, which is a very late game armor, so don’t bother grabbing any armor talents as they’ll be a waste.

When it comes to Exemplar Talents, those are still relevant. You want the following:

• Degraded Defence (for better boss killing)
• Tricky Defence

This concludes our Argenta Build Guide in Rogue Trader. Hopefully, you now have a better idea of how to use Argenta’s Soldier and Arch-Militant to create a really powerful burst fire playstyle, with many damage ramping opportunities, capable of getting many bonus shooting actions with incredible damage ramping. This makes her a solid horde manager, while also still being able to use her Bolters to generate really efficient damage per turn against even the toughest of bosses, offering juicy aid to Assassins who want others to land crits so they can get more Weakness and Openings to finish the job for them.