This is the way I tend to see it and agree with this procedure wholeheartedly.

I'm not in favour of regrouping off-board (Aside from end phase rallying) because it does feel wrong and has the potential for abuse.  In the case of necrons, if they have been beaten up, they can choose to stay where they are and Marshall (Like everyone else) Or move offboard and spend the rest of the turn in safety, rallying in the end phase.  If they then wish to Marshall they must enter play by moving onto the board and marshalling, the same as everyone else.  This still brings benefits to the necron player because he can ensure his unit takes no further damage that turn and can teleport to a more advantageous position but at the cost of not being to contribute for the rest of the turn (Which it may not have been able to do anyway - depends how badly beaten up it was).  It's a decision that must be weighed up by the Necron player and the pros and cons assessed - which surely is the mark of a good rule.

Surely you can see how being able to teleport to safety and marshall in the same turn and then entering play the next turn, fully charged up and having spent the previous turn unassailable ready for more is abusive, Chroma?  There's no downside as the unit would have spent the previous turn marshalling anyway and had little to no effect on the game.  With marshalling off table they get this in addition to being immune to further damage, immune to rallying modifiers AND getting to teleport wherever they please.  It is having your cake and eating it - as the list designer so succinctly put it.

[quote="stompzilla,Jan. 21 2010, 17:07 "]Except that a formation may not "Choose", it *MUST* activate under 1.6.1 if it can - so under #3 it *MUST* attempt to get onto the table.

This is a separate but related issue to Necrons rebuilding off-table. If we have to do anything (which I am still unconvinced), please can we do this from the PoV that off-table marshalling is a legitimate action in principle.

They get to fix themselves. They aren't wasting turn like the enemy which cannot do the same.

Surely you can see how being able to teleport to safety and marshall in the same turn and then entering play the next turn, fully charged up and having spent the previous turn unassailable ready for more is abusive, Chroma?  

There's no downside as the unit would have spent the previous turn marshalling anyway and had little to no effect on the game.  With marshalling off table they get this in addition to being immune to further damage, immune to rallying modifiers

AND getting to teleport wherever they please.

1.6 THE ACTION PHASE
In the action phase, the players take it in turns to carry out actions with their unbroken formations. Each unbroken formation can take one action per turn. The player that won the strategy roll can choose whether to go first or second.

The player going first then carries out an action with one formation, and then their opponent does likewise, and so on until all formations have taken an action. If one player runs out of formations to activate, then the opposing player may keep on activating formations one after the other until all of his formations have taken an action. There are three steps to carrying out an action:
I – Nominate a formation.
II – Declare which action it will carry out.
III – The formation must then pass an action test to see if
it carries out the action successfully.

Each of these steps is explained in more detail below. Note that you must declare both the formation and the action it will carry out before taking the Action test. If you fail to do these things, then the formation chosen automatically fails the Action test without the dice being rolled (we can imagine this is due to a communications
failure). If you failed to even nominate the formation then your opponent may nominate the formation for you.

1.6.1 Actions
To carry out an action, first nominate an unbroken formation and then choose an action for it to carry out. The actions that can be chosen are listed as follows. Note that you must activate a formation if you can, you can’t choose to ‘pass’ unless you have no choice in the matter. Also note that a formation may only be activated once per Action phase.

There's no requirement to activate on off-board formation that I've ever seen.  The only requirement is that if you do choose to activate them, then that activation MUST include a move to take them onto the board.

Q: Do troops held off board in an aircraft Transport have to be deployed on the first turn? Or can they come on whatever turn you wish?
A: They can be deployed on any turn.