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Are Vox Casters worth it

The ability to pretty much never fail an order for 5 points, plus having an additional slot to abuse wound allocation with?

Hell yes.

^
what he said. I nevr leave home without vox casters. They are definatly worth it.

Thanks

Indeed, if you have the extra points, there are MUCH worse things toi spend it on.

As others have said. They can be good. But if you plan on having a lot of squads. It might be costly shelling out for every one of them to have a vox.

Great if you have guys on foot, not so much if everyone is mech/aircav and doing their own thing. Not only will you not always fulfill the range, sometimes its better not to get outside the chimera

As with many things in the IG Codex: it depends.

If you have a lot of line infantry with HWTs, and orders are a vital mechanic in getting your army to work then yes, they are worth it as they increase the liklihood of that order being successful.

If you run lots of mechanised units then no, vox casters are not worth it, as you cannot issue orders into a vehicle.

Sadly, the two units that would most benefit from vox casters, HWSs and SWTs, cannot actually take them as upgrades.

L. Wrex

P.S. On a side not, shouldn't this really be in the Tactics forum?

They're not worth it in my mind. 10 pts minimum (because you need one in your command squad too) for the ability to let a squad reroll orders? Meh. A good 95% of my orders are to HWS squads anyway, as the power blob is charging and the mechvets are meching, so it's not really applicable to my scenario.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OTOH, if you're orders and foot-guard centric (Creed and several platoons) then it could definitely be worth it. There is (surprise, surprise) no black or white answer. What type of army do you run?

No.

Being unable to receive orders while embarked makes them predominantly useless in mechanized and air-cav armies. That you can't take them on SWSs or HWSs, means that there is little use for them in infantry heavy armies.

In fact, there is only one time when voxes would be worth taking: If you're running an infantry-heavy static gunline with infantry platoons with no commissars. Of course, if you're running this kind of list, you're already so screwed that a few voxes here and there won't do anything.

In the end, you're going to be giving most orders to officer squads and squads with commissars in them, which aren't really all that likely to fail orders tests anyways.

Also... there's a reason that orders are free. With the exception of some very timely BiDs, it hasn't really mattered much for my army if orders have been actually carried out or not.

In the end, an extra flamer or an extra meltabomb are more likely to come through in a pinch than a vox set will.

Ailaros wrote:In fact, there is only one time when voxes would be worth taking: If you're running an infantry-heavy static gunline with infantry platoons with no commissars. Of course, if you're running this kind of list, you're already so screwed that a few voxes here and there won't do anything.

I'm fairly certain you are completely, utterly, and hilariously wrong about he competitiveness of infantry-based Guard lists.

@Melissia: But static gunline? With no Commissars?

daedalus wrote:@Melissia: But static gunline? With no Commissars?

Yes. Make proper use of a good number of basic infantry squads to absorb assaults, letting them die or be routed so that you can shoot at the assaulter. Support with more basic infantry squads and heavy weapons teams.

In fact, an IG army of ONLY HWTs and infantry squads can be surprisingly effective-- if the player knows what they're doing (and is filthy rich of course).

Yeah, I recently went back to my guardies and decided to update them. So I bought loads of chimeras to stick lots of Veterans in.

After a few games though, I'm finding mech very boring. So I'm going back to how I used to play; massive infantry guard! Good thing I shelled out all the money for those 12 or so heavy weapon squads 2 years ago.

Not speaking from tabletop experience, but mostly speaking from spending the last three months researching every little nuance of the IG codex in planning my own IG army.

I won't be taking them. I'm planning two IG armies - one mechanized, one infantry-heavy. In the mech army, most of my squads that can receive orders will be too far away to do so, and in the infantry-heavy army, my blobs will all have commissars and won't be failing orders often anyway. I'd much rather be able to take one extra plasma gun in that command squad than take an upgrade I'll almost never need.

How or if my actual tabletop experience once these armies are put together will change this opinion, I dunno.

Melissia wrote:I'm fairly certain you are completely, utterly, and hilariously wrong about he competitiveness of infantry-based Guard lists.

I AM an infantry-based guard commander.

Melissia wrote:Yes. Make proper use of a good number of basic infantry squads to absorb assaults, letting them die or be routed so that you can shoot at the assaulter.

Have fun on KP games...

Melissia wrote:In fact, an IG army of ONLY HWTs and infantry squads can be surprisingly effective-- if the player knows what they're doing (and is filthy rich of course).

If mean HWSs, then they can't take voxes. If you meant HTWs in infantry squads, then they need commissars or will get swept off the field. Things don't fail Ld9 all that often.

Melissia wrote: if the player knows what they're doing.

And what if the opponent knows what he's doing? I'd like to see how well a all-heavy-weapons guard army plays against heroic intervention BA or outflanking heavy guard armies, or anything with a "I come in on ANY board edge" units.

Just sitting there and crossing your fingers with one hand and holding the trigger with the other is a great way to loose games against experienced opponents.

Actually an all heroic intervention BA should be pretty easy to crush if you play your card right... just be sure to sacrifice squads as necessary.

As far as kP games go... yes, it's vulnerable to KP. But that's only a third of all games, and just as importantly, you can pack so much firepower that you can wipe out quite a bit of most enemy armies, if not table them, when played right.

If you run infantry with tank support, you need vox. If your running armoured aircav or something, with veterans and such, dont bother. remember, 5 points is small, but 5 points is a special weapon.

Jaon wrote:If you run infantry with tank support, you need vox. If your running armoured aircav or something, with veterans and such, dont bother. remember, 5 points is small, but 5 points is a special weapon.

10, actually - you need a Vox Caster on both ends.