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I've seen several posts (mainly in Tactica) that seem to suggest that players hold Reserve units in reserve until late in the game, then bring them in to cap objectives, or whatever.

My reading of the Reserve rules is that you can't do this.

Turn 2, roll d6 per Reserve unit, and on 3+ the unit arrives that turn.
Turn 3, roll d6 per Reserve unit, and on 3+ the unit arrives that turn.
Turn 4, remaining Reserve units arrive

The way I read p124, you don't get to vote whether to bring the unit in or not - have I read it correctly? If that's the case, "holding" units in Reserve can't happen.

You've read it correctly. You can't reliably hold Reserves past turn 2, barring special rules like GK Psychic Communion (which allows you to add +1 or -1 to Reserve rolls), or your opponent having an IG Master of the Fleet, or the Warlord trait which gives you -1 to Reserve rolls. If you combine any of those factors with either the Warlord trait which allows you to re-roll any Reserve roll (failed or successful), or with a Communications Relay on an Aegis or Bastion (does the same), then you could actually reliably hold units off.

Of course, even without any of that, a unit which is held in Reserve is much easier to hide from enemy fire and use to grab objectives late game. Turn 1 it cannot be hurt at all. Turn 2, if you went second, again it cannot be hurt at all. Whenever it does show up, you can move it on from anywhere along your table edge, and deliberately move it on FAR away from enemy forces, and out of LOS of some or all of them if there's any decent terrain on the table. If your plan was to have a cheap fragile scoring unit (like CSM Cultists, Ork Grots, or what have you) do this, then when objectives were set up, of course you spread out as many as you could relatively near your own table edge and near to solid terrain for hiding behind; or failing that, in or behind area terrain or an Aegis line in/behind which your cheap scorer can Go to Ground against enemy shooting to vastly improve their durability.

Bear in mind also, that while a 3+ Reserve roll means that 67% of the time a given Reserved unit will arrive on turn 2, and 89% chance it will arrive by turn 3, that still leaves 33% and 11% of the time that it DOESN'T, and you get a game where said cheap scorer is then immune to attack for an additional turn or two.

That effect is compounded when you have multiple cheap scorers like this. If I have three cheap units of grots, on average one of them is going to wait to show up until turn 3, and the odds of one waiting until turn 4 get substantially greater.

So while the Reserve rolls DO force you to bring the units on, and while a 3+ roll means any given unit WILL usually arrive on turn 2, that still allows them to avoid attack for a certain percentage of the game, and the flexibility of entering anywhere along your table edge allows you to capitalize on the late entry to move them on far from the enemy. Unless he's blanketing your deployment zone, and/or has very fast units, it is indeed a reliable way to protect some units.

Thanks Mannahnin. I just got the impression that some people might be using the Reserve roll as "can bring", rather than "must bring".

You have it right.

You *MUST* roll for every unit that you have held in reserve, and if a 3+ is rolled then that unit *MUST* come onto the board.

Now, I've seen people intentionally DS mishap and hope for "Delayed," but that is a dangerous proposition indeed.