Had a game last night against Necrons. I declared Tau Cruiser would appear in Turn 2 - Pop Up Metallic Pr*cks (PUMPs) held everything off table until Turn 3. Cue debate over whether Spaceships are just like any other activation & can thus be stood down for a turn or have to cross fingers & hope to fail their activation roll due to the special nature of declaring what turn they will appear.

TL;DR

Can you ‘stand down’ a spaceship?

You can't decline to activate a formation, so the spaceship must make an activation roll.

From 1.6:


And 1.6.1:


Bold formatting added by me.

From memory, the only exception is that formations already on Overwatch can stay in Overwatch without an activation test, but only if they are the last formation to activate.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Aircraft can choose to stand down. This is an activation that does nothing, but is listed in §4.2 as an activation. If you failed the activation roll to stand down, you stand down automatically anyway, so no need to roll, so it can appear like 'choosing' not to activate, but is mechanically an activation. Only aircraft can choose the stand down activation, spacecraft are not aircraft (cant go on CAP with a strike cruiser ).

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AFK with real life, still checking PMs

Interesting. I obviously got the concept of ‘Stand Down’ from Aircraft, but 4.2 suggests it only applies to them, not to ‘normal’ formations or spaceships. Thanks.

It opens up another can of Necron worms though. My opponent regularly ‘stands down’ off table Necron infantry type units on T1 to burn through activations. There is a Tomb Complex portal on the table. They could theoretically be given an advance/double order to come through. Must they?
Can they marshal or hold with no blast markers & just stay off table?

If you're activating a formation on board it must use its activation to enter the table. The only time it wouldn't would be if a portal was ZoCed and the formation failed to activate. It would take a blast marker and that's it, it wouldn't even get a hold action.

https://tp.net-armageddon.org/faq/#5151 ... technology

Also, you can't stall with off board formations. They either activate to come on, or you're done for the turn.

https://tp.net-armageddon.org/faq/#616- ... formations

On the spacecraft standing down, you can't for the reasons pointed out above. "Spacecraft operations must be planned well in advance" too, so I can't see a captain standing one down because some dirtsider tells the to.

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Dave

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Squats 2019-10-17