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For me, it's VCO - VCA - VCF - VCA, especially if there's more than one VCO. By putting your source VCOs on VCAs, you can then cause some initial timbral changes prior to the VCF by using different waveforms and bringing them in and out of the signal path via different modulation schemes. Case in point: on my AE system, I have six banks that can be configured as complex VCOs, since they have two VCOs, two DCOs for modulation, and a dual VCA plus a mixer for the VCO outs. With that, I can then use LFOs, EGs, whatever to ping around "inside" that module structure and generate wild timbral changes simply with modulation sources. The VCAs function to control the FM signal from each DCO to its complimentary VCO in the more "basic" patching, but that configuration can get really nuts really quick with a few extra pinwires.