i hope that's not a "decision" that was more like you agreeing w/ dave. because i don't think a formation should be forced to move on board if it doesn't want to.
as far as being overpowered..... being forced to march my troops to certain death is not what i'd call overpowered.

MNB, what Neal posted does not force you to move your formations.  Go back and read it.  It is exactly what you've been playing the whole time.

If you have a formation coming on board, you activate it.  If you don't want to activate it (or you can't activate it) then you simply end your turn and you are out of activations.  It is simply forcing you to move formations onto the board that you CHOOSE to activate.  Get it?

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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.

Sorry Mosc, but under 1.6.1 you must activate if you can, you may not pass

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Ginger, a formation off board doesn't have to activate. That's how it is with the Eldar. It's when you choose to activate it that it must enter play if it can.

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Dave

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Squats 2019-10-17

No.  

You must activate a formation ON THE BOARD if you can.  The ruling we are talking about here is what happens to formations off the board.  

Take this example:
An Eldar player has a storm serpent and a formation of Striking Scorpions in the webway.  Turn 1 the Eldar player tries to perform a DOUBLE on his Storm Serpent to bring it into range of a garrisoned formation mid board for a follow-up assault with the Striking Scorpions on the retain.  Unfortunately, he fails the activation and simply moves the Storm Serpent 25cm.

If what you are saying was true, the Eldar player would be OBLIGATED at some point during the turn to move his Striking Scorpions out of the gate and be completely out of position for the assault.  

That is wrong and I've never seen Epic played like that ever.

What Neal is saying (and I agree with him) is you are forced to move the off-board formation that you choose to activate.  If you choose not to activate it, you move onto the next activation and so on until you are out of options.  Then your turn ends.

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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.

And I have had the exact situation you describe Mosc; declared the Storm Serpent activation which failed, and subsequently declared that the off-table formation was Marshalling to remain off-table in the middle of the turn (not at the end).

- and just like you, that is how we have always played this in the UK ever since I can remember -  

The point here (and indeed in the "off-table" thread) is we have both arrived at the same conclusion that the formation may legitimately stay off-table, but by different mechanics.

The issue is that with your interpretation, the off-table Necrons would do nothing, whilst with mine they would be able to rally, (which others seem to consider OTT, though I remain unconvinced at present).

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Those are distinct issues.
Can an off board formation be forced to move?  No.  <--- you agree with this
Can a formation 'burn' an activation off board?  No.  <--- this is what you disagree with

I don't believe it makes sense to allow them to burn because the game mechanics are in direct relation to things that are on the board.  That is where the game is played.  While I'm skeptical of its potential for abuse, it doesn't fit with the feel of the game.  The turn sequence is used as an organizational tool to proximate simultaneous movement while maintaining a strategic environment that is fun for the players as well as being balanced.  Activations being burned off the board conveniently 'freezes time' at the discretion of the player doing so and as such warps the flow of the game unnaturally.

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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.

see my reply in the other thread, but in short, burning an activation is effectively the same as failing one, so I see no 'warping' of time flow as such - but then these are both subjective views.

Furthermore, in order to make this abusive, the Necrons would have to be able to 'burn' a large number of activations and still have sufficient to get a good number of formations on-table late in the turn - ie a "pop-corn" army, and I remain unconvinced that this would be viable at all.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

I've always played it with Eldar that formations off-board essentially do not exist until they are on-board. So, if a fm in the webway fails it's activation it can either move on-board with a BM or it stays off-board without BM until the next turn. It can't rally, regroup or anything like that as it doesn't exist. As fms in the webway don't "exist" they cannot be used to burn activations either as they can only move on-board (or not, if they fail to activate).

Anything else would make it all very complicated. Funnily enough, when I played against ron's son, he deployed as if off-board fms existed for deployment purposes (eg. thunderbolts were deployed off-board, therefore forcing me to deploy something on-board). Each to their own, but it felt pretty odd.

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numquam culum es

We've always played that on deployment the off board stuff counts as placement.  So armies like the Eldar, Necron, or anything that has a lot of things off board have an advantage.  However troops inside of transports (like Space Marines in a Thunderhawk) would have to be placed at the same time as the Thunderhawk.

You get the typical deployment like this:
SM player: "Okay, my T-Bolts are off board.  Your go."
Ork player: "Okay, my Fighta-Bommers are off board.  Go."
SM player: "My terminators are off board."
Ork player: "Uhm... Okay I guess I have to put something down.  Here's my stompa mob. Go."
SM player: "My Thunderhawk and tactical are off board."
Ork player: "Oh jeez, will you put something on the board you big genetically modified panzy.  Here are some bikes.  Go."
--long pause--
SM player: "My other Thunderhawk-"
Ork player: "COME ON!!"

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

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

To the 'off-table' deployment, this was tidied up many years ago in the SG boards, and it was decided not to allow that kind of meta-gaming; so basically you put all off-table reserves to one side, and then you start alternative deployment on-table.

Edit:- Amazing how we keep coming up with alternative views within seconds Mosc!

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Huh?   Really?  Is there anything on the NetERC sheet or the 2008 Errata on that?  I never knew and nobody I play with (from Maryland up to Massachusetts) plays that way.

I'm fine with changing it but I had no idea they made even an FAQ on it.

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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.

It's a part of 6.1.6.



Morgan Vening

Okay, it's not on the 2008 Errata.  Where did you find that?

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

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

I'm sure its either in the errata or the 2008 FAQ..... but I'll have to go look now!