It's been awhile since I've posted here, with my last post being the MC80 star cruiser analysis. I'm back and here to talk about the blasters of the Imperial era which exceed basically all other blasters.

For the sake of time and my sanity, I'm not going to discuss the blaster pistols, or heavier blaster cannons and will only focus on small-arms weapons (blaster rifles, and heavy/repeating blasters). The blasters that I'm going to talk about are the: E-10, E-11, E-22, DLT-19, DLT-19, and the T-21.

The E-10:

The E-10 blaster was a cheap blaster rifle used to replace the DC-15A used by the clones. It was not a very reliable weapon and you can see the resemblance to the DC-15A in terms of its iron sights, and overall appearance. This weapon is prone to jamming and was considered to be pretty bad, so it doesn't exactly help with the point I'm trying to make. There's not much to say here, other than that it's a bad rifle that was used as a stop-gap for the next weapon on the list. That being said, the E-10 was primarily issued to garrisoning troops, as well as the Imperial army (not stormtroopers), who needed a lot of equipment in a short period of time. Luckily this weapon was phased out pretty quickly, as we see Imperial army troopers on Mimban equipped with better blaster rifles.

The E-11

The E-11 is perhaps the greatest blaster rifle in the saga, with an apple-store derivative (F-11D) being used by the First-order decades later. It's a powerful, reliable, modular, and cheap (in cost) blaster that combines the low-weight of a DC-15A with the power of a full-size DC-15. This thing shreds concrete and steel easily. The weapon also boasts select-fire, but that is seldom used because it's a waste of ammunition. In fact, the only downside to this weapon is its relatively short range of only 300m. While this seems bad, it's worth noting that the E-11 is mostly used by stormtroopers fighting up to only about 150m. On a larger battlefield, the E-11's lack of range is picked up by the other weapons on this list, as a single stormtrooper squad is likely to employ larger weapons (as seen on Jedha where a lot of the troops were issued T-21's). The E-11 seems to be able to cycle through power settings, which vary from sting/stun to kill and up to vaporize (if you do the math). This makes is excellent at taking out light vehicles (in massed fire at least), armored battle droids, or even damaging shielded units. With this kind of power, I would assume that a clone trooper would prefer an E-11 to a DC-15A when fighting battle droids. The E-11 is also an extremely modular system boasting grenade launcher, flare-gun, flashlight, and other attachments. To add to this, the E-11 is a rather light weapon, clocking in at only 2.6kg (~5.73lbs), which makes it lighter than an unloaded M4 carbine used in the real world. When its weight is compared to its blaster-carbine peers the E-11 still wins. The DC-15A weighs 4.15kg, or nearly twice as much. While weight seems like a weird thing to talk about, its extremely important to the soldier carrying the weapon all-day long. The E-11 can be seen as an improvement upon the previous DC-15A and E-10 blasters, as it incorporates the short length and modularity of the DC-15A and E-10 respectively. However, the E-11 also fixes the low-power, high weight, unreliability, and horrid iron-sights of the DC-15A and E-10 carbines. The E-11 excels in every category it's found in, save for long-range accuracy, which is mitigated by other weapons found in Imperial squads.

The E-22

The main problem with the E-11 is its short range and so the E-22 exists to remedy this malady. The E-22 is essentially a scaled-up model of the E-11 combining its existing qualities with a larger weapon. There's really not much to be said about this weapon as it is just as good as the E-11, but sacrifices weight for range. We do see it employed by Imperial army troopers on Mimban as well as stormtroopers/shoretroopers on Scarif, which implies that it is a relatively common weapon in the Imperial arsenal, used in conjunction with the E-11. Think of it as an M16, where the E-11 is an M4. The E-22 is described as having reciprocating barrels, but I doubt it's used like that, as the second barrel is probably more useful as a quick-change barrel if your primary barrel malfunctions or overheats.

The DLT-19

The DLT-19 serves as the Empire's chief heavy blaster, existing analogously to a light-machine gun. It is just as reliable as the E-11, but it holds a more specific role, that being a long-range automatic blaster. It has a high rate of fire and makes up for the E-11's rare use in automatic fire. It pins down enemy squads at long range and is even useful at tearing up light vehicles single-handedly. The main drawback to this weapon is its weight and size, but that's more or less expected from a weapon of this type. It's less common than the blaster rifles on this list, but that's generally because it isn't as useful when chasing down a handful of lightly armed-rebels in tight corridors (basically all of the original trilogy). The fact that this weapon has been modified for sniper use is a testament to its accuracy and power, but the marksman variants are a discussion for another time.

The T-21

The T-21 is a light-repeating blaster and at a weight of only 4.5kg, it lives up to its name. This blaster is extremely good at cutting through shielding and armor, but that comes at a cost of range and capacity. The blaster only holds 25 shots, which makes it pretty poor at sustained fire. However, if attached to a power-pack on the back of a stormtrooper, its effectiveness increases massively. Unlike the DC-15 which comes before it, the T-21 actually had useful iron sights, as well as the ability to mount an optic, which makes it into the T-21B variant. This weapon is best when paired with the E-11 in an assault role, as it's able to annihilate shielded units and armored units from a distance. This weapon does admittedly suffer when transferred from legends to canon, which the legends version having a relatively short range and the canon version having extreme range. Either way, it pairs nicely with the E-11 and is used in conjunction with it in many scenarios, like how the DC-15 and DC-15A were used together by the clones.

Overall, the Empire has a nice set of blasters that put the over-glorified and outdated Republic blasters to shame, while also competing with the more niche weapons, such as the EE-3 and A-280C.