I am not sure this particular objection is valid; history seems to be littered with occasions where formations wnet into battle understrength by design or by accident.

Also, the Eldar in particular are poorly suited to air-assault. The Vampire is constrained by being included in the spacecraft limitation and is also the weakest air-transport, prone to destruction on the ground if not in the air. Flying onto the table risks destruction by AA and lowers the activation count, while planetfalling to avoid these issues only makes things worse:- In a 3K game Rug would only be able to use one vampire in this fashion which would need to arrive as late as possible to minimse retaliation ~9th activation. If Rug uses more Vampires, they would have to arrive earlier giving the opponent ample opportunity to counterattack and destroy the Eldar piecemeal.

Rather than prohibiting this, I would suggest following Napoleon's advice:- it is rude to interupt an opponent when he is making a mistake!

First please don't call me stupid because you wouldn't do it to my face so don't do it over the internet. Also, some people have openly called you a cheater in this thread and you're only getting back at me? WTF?
Second you're wrong. The reason armed forces around the world train for combat in urban environment is because they often don't have the political backing to just raze cities with all the civilian casualties and property damage that would imply. There are other reasons, like preserving real estate for later use or just destroying certain people who may or may not be hiding in that urban environment so visual confirmation is important. As for the firepower to do it, of course, it's no big deal. It's WWII tech - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_bomb
If you want to apply contemporary warfare common sense why don't you go play a contemporary warfare game?

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ok carlos, easy there, let's keep it civil.

The Eldar example provided by Rug is a good one to use to look at this. Normally, if you take Guardians in a Vampire, you have a 350pt activation that can pick on something squishy (manticore fm for example), kill it and then die horribly afterwards. Main problem - Guardians have no armour save, so die like flies in assaults and out of cover. So, as a one shot "what the hell" assault, they're pretty cheap and throw away. I'd personally rather take a 4 strong warpspider fm (I play EA Ulthwe) as they'll take fewer return shots, have armour and inspiring for 50pts extra.

Now, if you can drop 3 squishy Guardian stands and take 3 Wraithguard stands , you can, for 150pts extra (say, one activation give or take) dump a fm with 3 fearless 4+RA +1EA MW wielding scary things up front to soak up hits onto something relatively hard and still win. On top of that, due to the fearless 4+RA scary things, that fm (or the wraithguard at least) is going to hang around and possibly even be combat effective for far longer.

So, for the price of one activation and dropping 3 fairly worthless Guardians, you now have an air assault monster. A couple of those dropped in on turn 2 will do a lot of damage and stick around to contest objectives in turn 3, something that simply will not happen with plain guardians. I think that all of the above makes that a significant bonus to the Eldar player with no pressing disadvantages that I can see (I can get another activation from somewhere and Guardians I do not care about).

And I wouldn't bother bringing the fragility of the Vampire into the equation as that will be the same for both scenarios and it's a given for Eldar.

Because all of the examples so far appear to be attempts to get around restrictions in the army lists for a gamer's benefit.

Obviously someone is doing this to gain some advantage. And just as obviously people shouldn't be allowed to game with the rules to give themselves an advantage.

why do people always say what I want to say AND use fewer words? Grumble grumble

Do not make this personal.

Discussion of removing units before a game is a valid topic, blaming one person for it is not.
Likewise people should be able to disagree with this tactic in general terms without it being taken as a personal insult.

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AFK with real life, still checking PMs

breaking the rules is cheating. no two ways about it. doing something that you are not allowed to do is cheating.

if everyone was allowed to do it, then it would be included in the rules, and the marine list would not need a special rule to allow them to do so. but it isnt, and they do.

it's really terribly simple. the rules dont let you do it, so you cannot do it. beyond simply your wish that it was otherwise, i don't understand how this is even a question

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

If a formation uses the Marshall order, it could move, leave some units out of coherency, take BM's, roll to remove those BM's, and then later an aircraft could pick up the now-smaller BM-free formation for a turn 2 air assault.

Risky business, but you'd achieve the end effect Rug wants: a BM-free powerful air assault.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Well, there was that time that Rug brought big gun formations in Landas to a tournament... ;-p

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Actually, I am not sure that we have established that players are supposed not to leave stuff behind at the start of the game; Marines can certainly do it, leaving behind Rhinos that are included in their cost to use Drop Pods. Given that precedent, I do not see why other races cannot do likewise.

I would also contend that this is *not* contravening army list restrictions: the player has purchased a legal army under those constraints and has then elected to leave out some units that have been purchased in order to comply with the *transport* restrictions. As E&C has pointed out, it is possible to engineer this position, and it is certainly true that weakened formations can be picked up later in the game.

In E-UK tournaments we allow Marine players to decide their transport options before each game, which turns this into a 'strategic' decision that is made before any troops are put on the table. As such, the 'defender' knows the opposing strategy, and can set up his forces accordingly.

To my mind, this is totally balanced approach to the question, and I cannot see why the same principle cannot be extended to all such situations for all races.