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Been thinking about this lately. The prices start adding up when you want to cover multiple squads, and I'm not sure how much more effective they really make things. It also means one less special weapon in the CCS for those vets.

When would you get a vox? When would you pass?

Personally, I like the idea of the vox, and in some of the games I play it gets pretty important not to fail the FRFSRF order... but a bunch of other posters have said to avoid them, because they take up that SW space.

I will continue to experiment with them, definitely in higher point (1500+) games.

 Evertras wrote:
Been thinking about this lately. The prices start adding up when you want to cover multiple squads, and I'm not sure how much more effective they really make things. It also means one less special weapon in the CCS for those vets.

When would you get a vox? When would you pass?

Take them on your CCS if and only if:

-It is giving orders to a blob

-That blob is 40+ men strong

-That blob is 100% reliant on orders to operate effectively (I'm talking bring it down and get back into the fight. FRFSRF isn't enough of a boost to justify voxes.)

If any of these criteria are not fulfilled, the vox just isn't worth it. It doesn't bring that much to the table.

Take them if your army relies on orders to do things it doesn't particularly excel at. Besides this, not usually worth it.

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Evertras wrote:
Been thinking about this lately. The prices start adding up when you want to cover multiple squads, and I'm not sure how much more effective they really make things. It also means one less special weapon in the CCS for those vets.

When would you get a vox? When would you pass?

Take them on your CCS if and only if:

-It is giving orders to a blob

-That blob is 40+ men strong

-That blob is 100% reliant on orders to operate effectively (I'm talking bring it down and get back into the fight. FRFSRF isn't enough of a boost to justify voxes.)

If any of these criteria are not fulfilled, the vox just isn't worth it. It doesn't bring that much to the table.

Seems reasonable. FRFSRF isn't enough justification on a 40+ blob, though?

What about a PCS, then? Leave the CCS to do whatever, and make the PCS slightly less useless with a vox in there and a vox in the big blob?

PCS doesnt have any useful orders.

 Evertras wrote:

What about a PCS, then? Leave the CCS to do whatever, and make the PCS slightly less useless with a vox in there and a vox in the big blob?

Problem is, CCS has all the good orders. and your warlord. CCS should be kept safe, PCS is always a suicide unit. Otherwise you're wasting a cheap, basically free with the blob scoring unit.

And no, FRFSRF on a 40 man blob, even if all 40 men had lasguns (which they shouldn't) will on average kill 2.35 more marines. Assuming no cover.

BiD, GBitF, and FoMT are the good orders. FRFSRF is the order you use if you don't need to use any of the good orders.

Good to know, thanks! I've been putting a little too much emphasis on getting those extra shots. I think I need to reprioritize things in my head a little.

 Evertras wrote:
Good to know, thanks! I've been putting a little too much emphasis on getting those extra shots. I think I need to reprioritize things in my head a little.

It's an easy mistake to make, because it sounds so good.

"You mean I pass leadership and get FOURTY MORE SHOTS?"

But when you look at the math, it starts to make sense. You have good, situational utility orders, and then one/two (move, move, move as well) that is/are always useful.

 TheCaptain wrote:

And no, FRFSRF on a 40 man blob, even if all 40 men had lasguns (which they shouldn't) will on average kill 2.35 more marines. Assuming no cover.

From 12-24 inches it's 80 shots, 40 hits, 13.3 wounds and 4.4 dead.
At <12" it's 6.6 dead.

Cover is irrelevent.

edit - I still don't regard this as being worth taking. Lasguns are always useless, for all intents and purposes they do not exist.

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Evertras wrote:
Good to know, thanks! I've been putting a little too much emphasis on getting those extra shots. I think I need to reprioritize things in my head a little.

It's an easy mistake to make, because it sounds so good.

"You mean I pass leadership and get FOURTY MORE SHOTS?"

But when you look at the math, it starts to make sense. You have good, situational utility orders, and then one/two (move, move, move as well) that is/are always useful.

In my head it was more like "To make this unit not useless in shooting I need more volume of fire. Oh look!" But close enough, yeah.

 Evertras wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Evertras wrote:
Good to know, thanks! I've been putting a little too much emphasis on getting those extra shots. I think I need to reprioritize things in my head a little.

It's an easy mistake to make, because it sounds so good.

"You mean I pass leadership and get FOURTY MORE SHOTS?"

But when you look at the math, it starts to make sense. You have good, situational utility orders, and then one/two (move, move, move as well) that is/are always useful.

In my head it was more like "To make this unit not useless in shooting I need more volume of fire. Oh look!" But close enough, yeah.

Yeah, that's why I give them 4 Plasmaguns and 4 Lascannons.

Very few units can pack heat like that.

Not to mention have 32 wounds protecting them.

Until someone uses a Barrage weapon and get those SW and HWTs picked from the blob and now you got 32 lasguns.

I use them, getting a re roll on critical orders (BiD, FomT mostly) that failed is always a good thing to have, plus if you ever roll double 6s, at least you got a 'second chance ' to not loose all of your orders for the turn with the re-roll.

If I could take them on HWS's and SWS's? All the time.

But since I can't, I never take them...

Never.

The only time they would be even remotely useful is in blobs, but in said blobs you're going to have a commissar (or better), which means you're going to be taking orders on a 9 or a 10, which is good enough.

Plus, orders are nice, but they're rarely going to lose you the game if they fail to go off.

The only blobs worth taking (those led by allied contingents) lack a commissar. If the points are available after taking the necessary artillery and fast attack options, by all means pay make the investment. You'll go from about a 72% success rate to 92%.

Don't feel bad leaving them at home, though.

Corollax wrote:
The only blobs worth taking (those led by allied contingents) lack a commissar. If the points are available after taking the necessary artillery and fast attack options, by all means pay make the investment. You'll go from about a 72% success rate to 92%.

Don't feel bad leaving them at home, though.

There's a point to this, as IG units cannot use an allied character's leadership when it comes to orders.

For something like what the captain does, a mere 10pts to make that uber blob practically guaranteed to pass orders, on top of whatever pyschic shenanigans you feel like doing, isn't bad.

Other than that though, they're really just there to look cool.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Corollax wrote:
The only blobs worth taking (those led by allied contingents) lack a commissar. If the points are available after taking the necessary artillery and fast attack options, by all means pay make the investment. You'll go from about a 72% success rate to 92%.

Don't feel bad leaving them at home, though.

There's a point to this, as IG units cannot use an allied character's leadership when it comes to orders.

For something like what the captain does, a mere 10pts to make that uber blob practically guaranteed to pass orders, on top of whatever pyschic shenanigans you feel like doing, isn't bad.

Other than that though, they're really just there to look cool.

Yeah; it's strictly if your high Ld is coming from an allied IC.

Or you have a lord commissar nearby, or you have kell. Also, I don't get why you wouldn't still have A commissar in a blob, especially if they're being lead by something with fearless. You'd hate for the whole blob to go just because of some good shooting on the one guy.

He could be the "put something scary behind" commissar that hides out of LOS and shoots anyone as a coward that come into his field of vision.

 Ailaros wrote:
Or you have a lord commissar nearby, or you have kell. Also, I don't get why you wouldn't still have A commissar in a blob, especially if they're being lead by something with fearless. You'd hate for the whole blob to go just because of some good shooting on the one guy.

He could be the "put something scary behind" commissar that hides out of LOS and shoots anyone as a coward that come into his field of vision.

Not fearless, ATSKNF.

With ATSKNF, you usually want to retreat.

I was saying for the orders part.

 Ailaros wrote:
Or you have a lord commissar nearby, or you have kell. Also, I don't get why you wouldn't still have A commissar in a blob, especially if they're being lead by something with fearless. You'd hate for the whole blob to go just because of some good shooting on the one guy.

You don't include a commissar because they're a needless expense that makes your blob worse instead of better. Being able to break and flee on I4 is far preferable to being stuck in combat -- especially if you've got psyker powers like Prescience to improve your odds on the subsequent shooting and overwatch phases.

The only useful thing a commissar is going to do is help carry out orders more reliably, and a vox-caster network does that more effectively and for fewer points. If you truly think a commissar is necessary, then it's no wonder you think blobs are dead.

 Testify wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:

And no, FRFSRF on a 40 man blob, even if all 40 men had lasguns (which they shouldn't) will on average kill 2.35 more marines. Assuming no cover.

From 12-24 inches it's 80 shots, 40 hits, 13.3 wounds and 4.4 dead.
At <12" it's 6.6 dead.

Cover is irrelevent.

edit - I still don't regard this as being worth taking. Lasguns are always useless, for all intents and purposes they do not exist.

And then you give the blob Prescience or Preferred Enemy, or Doom or Enfeeble the target and that 120 lasguns shots gets brutal.

But voxes are still bad.

Yeah, failing to understand how small arms work doesn't make them go away.

I still certainly make important kills with lasguns. Not high-profile ones, usually, but important ones often.

I'd suggest you try playing with conscripts for awhile. Once you see what only lasguns are capable of, you mind will likely change.

If you're trying to see what lasguns are capable of, conscripts are not the way to go about it...

well, sure, you can take two naked infantry squads and keep them blobbed together. The problem is resisting the temptation to give them better guns. No such problem with conscripts.

Is it really that hard to run a proper allied blob list and keep track of what percentage of your kills are from flashlights? Much of the value of lasguns comes from having a heterogenous attack profile -- something that can't be negated just because the enemy brought a T5 unit or a 3+ invuln. You'll learn more about how lasguns function if you use them in the environment they were intended.

I had a rather nice game against a Necron player last night and when his wraiths got close I was more than happy to have lasguns to back up my plasma. The wraiths were less enthusiastic, however.

Corollax wrote:Is it really that hard to run a proper allied blob list and keep track of what percentage of your kills are from flashlights?

Well, it does get muddled pretty quickly. After all, we're talking about a weapon that comes for "free" with a unit (rather than an upgrade), and is always on units that are also scoring (so the value of the unit isn't entirely determined by what it kills).

In any case, I've often found that one of the differences between better and worse players is who knows how to use their small arms, and who does not.

That's fair. Criticism retracted.

I believe there are two questions that you need to ask yourself:
1-Do I need to improve my chance to successfully implement orders?
2-Are Voxes the best way of doing this?

Question 1 is usually a "yes" only if you play foot IG, thus relying (at least partly) on infantry for actual killing power, and you have points left over which you can't use to get more and/or better guns/bodies. For aircav, mech or similar setups, you would be wasting points.
Question 2 is interesting, and it depends on the size of the infantry squads. If you bunch infantry up in 3+ squad-strong combined squads, two Voxes per blob cost much less than what a LC or Kell costs as long as the number of blobs isn't too large. People might argue that LCs and/or Kell will have better combat abilities and affect multiple blobs, and they would be right. The drawback of the Vox approach is losing out on some CC ability and the ability to come back from a CC defeat (unless in range for GBitF), but you'll save some points in return. If you keep smaller squads (or use Conscripts), a LC or Kell may start looking good. I've never liked regular Commissars (hey, I play Catachans), since they cost a lot and need upgrades if they're going to do a thing, but if you intend to use a blob as a curtain of bodies that is supposed to hold an enemy in CC for multiple turns, I guess it can be a good investment. I personally prefer that the Guardsmen run away, exposing the victorious enemy unit to the raw firepower of the hammer of the emperor next turn. Needless to say, this works better with smaller squads and/or GBitF.

So consider your options, and if your answer to both questions is "yes", do get your Vox network.

Concerning specific units, if you're getting large blobs, you rarely get to use the PCS orders, and with 10-man squads their orders aren't really effective. Add the poor command range and single order per turn, so I avoid giving the PCS a vox-caster, as has been stated earlier in the thread. Any successful orders from them are a bonus. Voxes are golden on a CCS and large blobs, but that's just my opinion. I firmly believe that the lasgun is more than its popular image of "flashlight". With that many shots, something has to hurt. Not terrifying, yes, and easy to ignore, but surprisingly painful when they get "surprise" kills.

I just hope the next codex allows all infantry units to take voxes. I mean, why can't a heavy weapons guy carry a radio rather than a spade?