Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi guys,

Pondering on wether or not to invest in a VSG set-up. I've found some good proxies, but I haven't seen much talk about them lately. I read the fortification thread that was up a while back, but there wasn't much in the way of talk about them other than that they are worthwhile in certain applications.

I run a Necron army, and face AdMech war convo, space wolves, ultra cheesy jetbike/WK eldar spam, DE, Blobguard mainly.

We have terrain, however not enough currently, slowly building up as we build up our armies. Hence the VSG as its a cheap-ish purchase for what it does.

How big is the bubble from each shield? Are they clumped together to get three layers of shielding or are they staggered to give a single layer over a larger area?

I'm mainly thinking of using a staggered setup to get a large corridor of protection to get my high priority buffing stuff (Stalker/Spyders) up the board with relative safety.

Or is it better to place them all up as far into the deployment zone as possible so they are triple protected once they are in the centre of the board.

Thoughts/opinions?

Void Shield Generators are an excellent choice, especially if you play by the ITC FAQs (ignore TH, Haywire, Grav, Gauss, markerlights). As far as rules go, a single Generator has one to three void shields, all in the same place, which is 12" away from the edge of the generator. The rules for a VSG can be found inside the "Stronghold Assault" book. VSG are especially good against Eldar, Tau, SM with grav, and DE. However, their main purpose is to protect against an Alpha Strike, or to protect a long ranged firebase all game. For Necrons, you may not need that, but that depends on how often you find yourself being Alpha struck. They are certainly considered a competitive choice though, so if you can get one (or a good count as) at a reasonable price, I would highly encourage it.

Yea my mate is salivating over that new SW formation with free drop pods all coming in first turn, so might be handy.

So for purchasing the proxy, you only need one physical tower?

Thanks for the advice friendly Internet friend

 jifel wrote:
Void Shield Generators are an excellent choice, especially if you play by the ITC FAQs (ignore TH, Haywire, Grav, Gauss, markerlights). As far as rules go, a single Generator has one to three void shields, all in the same place, which is 12" away from the edge of the generator. The rules for a VSG can be found inside the "Stronghold Assault" book. VSG are especially good against Eldar, Tau, SM with grav, and DE. However, their main purpose is to protect against an Alpha Strike, or to protect a long ranged firebase all game. For Necrons, you may not need that, but that depends on how often you find yourself being Alpha struck. They are certainly considered a competitive choice though, so if you can get one (or a good count as) at a reasonable price, I would highly encourage it.

Not agreed that they are good against Tau or Eldar, at least therotically these two army can bring a ton of S6 S7 high RoF weapons on board, and easy glance down all three AV12 shields, then their D weapons can knock out whatever you want to protect. The VSG is great against droppod marines or Dark Eldar though, since they only have that many meltas lances or lascannons equivilent to bring down the shield, and at least your AV13 arks and walkers are all saved by then.

Besides, I think most SW list won't concern about the VSG, they most likely to need their TWC and the new Wulfen to reach and win combat.

Tau are able to down the Void Shields, yes, but it can take a lot of S7 guns to do so, not to mention that those guns are all firing without the benefit of markerlights. And yes, scatter lasers will take down the Void Shield, but it'll take about 6-7 bikes worth of shooting to do so, which are shots not going into whatever is under the shield.

Or you can just move under the void shield, and gain its benefits versus enemy fire. The one huge flaw in the VSG is that both armies can benefit, which makes forcing your opponent to down their own Void Shield poetic.

SJ

Exactly. It's not great protection from Drop Pod armies, who'll be in under your shields pretty fast.

Against a stand-off shooty army....well, a fully charged shield has got to absorb a hundred points worth of fire to be worth it's cost. Which it will.

Yes, Eldar and Tau can shred shields fast. But the thing is, those shots would kill almost anything you'd have put under the shield in the first place even faster.

locarno24 wrote:
Exactly. It's not great protection from Drop Pod armies, who'll be in under your shields pretty fast.

It isn't that hard to space out your units and force the drop pods to land outside the VSG's bubble, especially if you deploy it against a table edge.

You can also set up Drop Pod traps to tempt the opponent into risking a dangerous drop. (create circles with your infantry that a Drop Pod can land in but no one can deploy, thus destroying everyone inside if they scatter in the circle.)

 Grumblewartz wrote:

locarno24 wrote:
Exactly. It's not great protection from Drop Pod armies, who'll be in under your shields pretty fast.

It isn't that hard to space out your units and force the drop pods to land outside the VSG's bubble, especially if you deploy it against a table edge.

Its impossible to do that in Dawn of War deployment

It is very easy to block off your VSG and keep people out of it. No matter the deployment. 2" coherency is a lot.. and a pod requires roughly 6" of space due to having to stay over an inch away from enemy units

 LValx wrote:
It is very easy to block off your VSG and keep people out of it. No matter the deployment. 2" coherency is a lot.. and a pod requires roughly 6" of space due to having to stay over an inch away from enemy units

In Dawn of War you have a 12" deployment zone. The VSG's bubble is 12" but you also have the 4-5" building displacing the bubble so the bubble sticks out of the deployment zone a couple inches.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 LValx wrote:
It is very easy to block off your VSG and keep people out of it. No matter the deployment. 2" coherency is a lot.. and a pod requires roughly 6" of space due to having to stay over an inch away from enemy units

In Dawn of War you have a 12" deployment zone. The VSG's bubble is 12" but you also have the 4-5" building displacing the bubble so the bubble sticks out of the deployment zone a couple inches.

Yeah in this case, you can't protect the VSG in this way without either insane terrain, or going first and filling in the bubble.

Why buy the proxy? Just get a recast one from china or russia.

For its points its an auto take, I cannot think of anything at 100pts that will completely negate the VSG.

Its one of those quirks of the California meta that it has been upped in power through the ITC FAQ/errata

 Glitcha wrote:
Why buy the proxy? Just get a recast one from china or russia.

I run necrons and I've found a cool looking one that fits the necron theme