If a Commander is going to activate several units to engage, how does summoning demons work? Can all the formations summon or just the activating one?

There is a similar question here.

So the steps are;
1) Declare Action
2) Declare Combined Assault
3) Place Summoned Daemons
4) Roll Action Test

As per 2.1.2 it is the Commander formation that declares the action and if successful, all 'commanded' formations move as a "single" formation. However, if the activation fails, only the Commander formation is deemed to have failed.

Because of this I believe that the Daemons may only be placed near the Commander formation.

Dave and Onyx, I believe this is another for the FAQ list.

Bookmarked.

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That is how I read it and though originally, but I was and am confused since the demons are summoned before an activation and if the commander succeeds, the other formations would have activated and should have been able to summon. At least by my logic. It is super gray, and I see both positions making sense.

The timing of the different steps is subtle, and potentially can be read different ways.

However, the point is that if the activation fails, the other formations are still free to activate and potentially summon daemons in their own right. Placing the 'commander' daemons near these other formations effectively doubles up the daemons summoned, which would be inappropriate.

There is another question which has not been raised AFAIK. :-
Q. Where a formation containing a Commander passes an assault activation, can other formations included by the commander summon their own daemons?

I suggest the answer might be the following, though it certainly raises other issues . . .
A. No, because the summoning of Daemons occurs before the other formations are 'commanded' through the commander passing the activation test.

The rule states Daemons are summoned before the formation roll it's activation dice.
6.11.3


In a combined assault only the commanders formation is taking an activation test so only that formation can summon Daemons.
If the other formations where allowed to summon daemons it could lead to silly situations especially if the activation test for the combined assault failed, you could end up with a formation summoning Daemons two or three times in 1 turn.



No, as with the answer above only the formation taking an activation roll can summon Daemons. Also as the activation roll had already been made it would be to late to roll for Daemons.

Thanks - so we agree then.

The question / difficulty that this raises is that the formations commanded by the successful activation of the commander end up forgoing the chance to summon daemons of their own. So what, if anything, can be done to redress this slight issue?

I cannot see any issue with a formation in that situation not being able to summon daemons. It's the players choice to drag them along and they get any bonus' the extra troops bring (inspiring, outnumbering, extra attacks possibly better armour saves and so forth).
If players want their formations to have more daemons when assaulting they can take Icon Bearers and keep daemons summoned from previous turns for the combined assaults.

Why not allow them to summon them, but only allow on summoning a turn? Chaos has commanders in almost every formation, so to use them effectively, you would at times have to sacrifice the ability to summon demons which a chaos player has to pay for. Therefore you lose one of the things that makes Chaos unique and suffer for having units off the table.

Agreed, though as NoTurtlesAllowed just posted, using commander to include other formations means that the chaos player is unable to summon daemons for those formations in the turn they assault - thus potentially being prevented from using the stuff he has paid for.

Yes, it is a choice (command more units from other formations, or assault separately and boost numbers with Daemons), and equally the player may have set up the army accordingly (icon bearers, daemon pool etc) to cater for this situation in the way you describe.

However the rules as they stand here are a little awkward in that once a combined assault is completed, the other formations remain naked of daemons until the following turn, which obviously can be a significant disadvantage, unless the player has been able to retain daemons from earlier. This is obviously impossible on turn #1, and may be impractical in other turns / formations.

I see this as dptdexys has outlined above and I don't really see a need for change here.

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I agree Onyx, as I said here when raising the question as a suggestion for the FAQ list. Just thought it might be worth discussing the ramifications in case there were any dissenting views or alternatives. . . . .

. . . . . "Moving on" as they say (whoever "They" are)