Kill Team: Should Scions take the Vox-Caster?

Welcome back to the Officer's Mess!  My last post discussed how I might expand Gaunt's Goats in the future, and how I'd like to explore mitigating Nerve Tests for my pure Scion Kill Team. The most obvious way of doing this is to take a Vox-Caster on a Scion, but it is a very expensive piece of Wargear. We must therefore ask the question "Is the Vox worth it?"

Not Goats, but these are Stormies!

Let's ask our friend Mr Maths Hammer!

Without repeating all the rule conditions, a Vox Caster allows models to re-roll failed Nerve Tests. These tests are taken by models suffering from flesh wounds or by every model in a broken Kill Team.

A Nerve Test is = D6 + (Number of Shaken/Out of Action (OOA) Models) - (Number of Nearby Unshaken Allies). If the result is greater than the model's Leadership then the Nerve Test is failed and the model becomes Shaken. Regardless of the result, the test is always passed on a dice roll of 1.

The Gaunt's Ghosts Kill Team is 9 models strong, and their basic Leadership (Ld) is 6, so let's have a look at the possible Nerve Test Results (assuming no one in proximity):

Initially (with 0 Shaken/OOA Models) then the Vox Caster isn't needed since the model taking the Nerve Test will automatically pass. After this point however, our Scion might start losing his cool! Lets turn the table above into some probabilities:

Before we need to consider Break Tests (i.e. 2 to 4 Shaken/OOA models), then the Vox Caster looks pretty good, taking our Nerve Test success rate to 56%-97%! That looks pretty good.

At Break point (5 Shaken/OOA models) we have a 31% success rate with the Vox as opposed to 17%. The Vox actually gives us a fighting chance at this success rate! These numbers are pretty interesting as they indicate the Vox Caster is more effective than I initially gave it credit; it looks like a worthy addition to the Scion force. 

There is a catch of course and that is the price; you can practically buy 2 special weapons for the price of the Vox Caster and those are key for a Scion force. Given how fragile a Scion force is (T3, 4+ Save), I don't think you can sacrifice the offensive capability. The alternative is to drop a Scion (or swap to a regular infantry man with Vox). However, the numbers indicate it is worth of play testing.

As a final aside here's the table assuming you are running a Comms Specialist and use the "Rousing Transmission" tactic (which gives everyone a nearby friend). I'll let you compare against the probability table and draw your own conclusions. 

The table is flawed on the bottom row. If you only have one "active" model then you'd spend the 1CP to use the tactic to automatically pass the Nerve Test on the remaining model.

+++ Update +++

A discussion of this post with some fellow gamers brought up the topic as to whether the Vox Caster could (indirectly) affect Break Tests. The only circumstance it affects is preventing your highest Ld model, with a flesh wound, becoming shaken so his Ld can't be used on a Break test in the next turn!

Otherwise, given both Shaken and Flesh Wounds count towards the model tally for Break Tests then the Vox Caster is irrelevant.

+++

I hope you've found this post useful and (vaguely) interesting. I like working through these little mathematical problems to try to nail down gaming quandries; I still think it's better to spam the special weapons in a pure Scion Kill Team but the numbers indicate that Vox Casters have their place. They may be a touch over costed however.

As always, thanks for reading and come back to the Vault soon!