There's a difference with regards planes. It's established that planes have an option to Stand Down. So if there are Pylons/SkyRays/Hunters covering your baseline, you have the option to 'burn' an activation.

Personally, I'm not sure that Portal/Teleport/Tunneler/Droppod units shouldn't be permitted to 'burn' activations. It is, after all, a fairly costly expense to have a formation absent for large parts of the game. I just don't want to see an inconsistency between two rules that should be almost identical.

Morgan Vening

couldn't we just ask chroma (or any other eldar expert) what eldar do and copy that? as said before, we should keep all the rules similar between different army lists

Thus this comment...


Chroma?  Neal?  Hena?  Helllllooooo!  They can't hear me.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Is this consistent with the other lists like SMs and Eldar?  What constitutes an action?  Any action?  Don't the core rules dictate that you must choose an action?


This isn't dissimilar to what happens if Space Marines are swooped up off the board via Thunderhawk but then the Thunderhawk fails to activate the next turn.  Do the formations inside the Thunderhawk get to activate and regroup?  I can't remember.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

I don't believe they get an activation in that case.

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Dave

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I can't recall that the Answer Mods on the old SG boards or the NetERC ever made a firm call on this.  I can't find anything on it in the old FAQ docs.

On the aircraft, a unit loaded inside a WE cannot take a separate action, so no Marshalling.  It can, however, still Rally in the end phase and does so with its own roll separate from the transport WE.  An aircraft which fails would Stand Down and remove all BMs.  The loaded formation would gain no benefits from the Hold action.

===

My inclination would be as Corey says, that a formation taking a Hold action has to move onto the board.  I could see an argument that it could take a move of 0 and choose to remain in reserves, but that would still keep it from Regrouping.

I'd like to hear Chroma's opinion, though.

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Neal

Personally, I think taking any other view would be opening a dangerous door.

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Necron Army Champion
"Do not come whining to me because you are weaker than your enemy." - Alexander Corvinus

I've never allowed regrouping off board, but I've certainly never played that a holding formation must come on to the board. That seems unneccesarily harsh, especially if there are a low number of portals on the board.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

I wouldn't call it dangerous.  I've always felt that the Necrons could do this, but after years of playing them I never did it once.  That's because it never seemed like a good idea at the time.

So given that it probably would have zero effect on the game, I'd say we would just need to do what is consistent with the other lists and be done with it.

-EDIT-

Of course now that I think about it we've never allowed Eldar to regroup off board, so...  Nevermind!  

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

The whole point is that portals represent a significant tactical advantage, and so there have to be some significant downsides to them to prevent them from being unbalanced.

Sure it's harsh, but then Epic is harsh.

You can only activate an offboard formation if you have a means to bring it ON the board, and it MUST come on board as part of it's activation.  If you failed an order check and have to come out and do nothing but offer a target, then life sucks... but that's the game.

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Necron Army Champion
"Do not come whining to me because you are weaker than your enemy." - Alexander Corvinus

I'm not so sure. To my knowledge, you're never obligated to activate an off-board unit. So if you make the roll, you .

You can always wait, and get the rally in the end phase. But being able to sit, just screams have cake + eat it.

Morgan Vening

really?

You don't think allowing an argument that off board formations can activate is a potential danger?

What about those wonderful space marine lists?  What if they start having their off board Terminators and other formations start going into "overwatch" in order to make you burn activations?

What about the Eldar, what if they want to keep a lot of their infantry (like Guardians) off the board, and just burn their activations make you use yours?

If you can do that, and force people to expend activations to bring themselves into a position that's advantageous to you, and you can't stop it, how does that make for a good game? It creates a situation where the portals have no downside to them.  I don't see that being a good thing.

But that's my opinion.

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Necron Army Champion
"Do not come whining to me because you are weaker than your enemy." - Alexander Corvinus

Just curious, what is the procedure for activating an off-board formation?

Obviously, you pick the activating formation, but do you pick the Portal they'll be arriving through before or after the activation check?

If before, then yeah, life sucks. If the latter, then life sucks a little less.

Not that I really mind life sucking, if that's been factored into the cost.

Morgan Vening

I edited my original statement (go back and re-read).  I never play Eldar that way so it would make sense for Necrons to be consistent.  

It's just one of those things that really never came up for the Necrons before.  And why would it have?  Rallied formations would shed their BMs so rare is the time they would fail an activation.  Even when they did the Necron player would do anything to avoid being stuck off board and moved it into the battlefield anywhere they could.

So problem solved.

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.