The Nightgaunt moves you to the closest gate if u miss the combat check

Say there is a monster on the closest gate. Do you have to fight/evade before getting sucked in?

IF so, can u decline to use your weapons and try to fail the combat check for the purpose of bypassing a strongly guarded gate?

The Milk of Shub-Nigguret move "all monsters in play" to your location.

Does "in play" include monsters in the outskirts? If so can this be used to reshuffle which monsters are on the board and which are in the Outskirts (as you presumable reinforce the monster limit after using the Milk)

On a similar note, say the Arkham board is at the monster limit. If monsters from an expansion board are moved with the Milk, do you choose which monsters to send to the outskirts when enforcing the limit (or must it be the monsters from the other boards. or random selection?)

If anyone has some guidelines/rulings to share it would be much appreciated

The Nightgaunt immediately sends you to the OW as indicated on the nearest gate (drawn through). Therefore, there is no further combat/evasion involved with monsters on the board.

Milk of Shub does not move monsters in the Outskirts, I believe. While I understand that the term "in play" is not descriptive enough, the clarification "even in the Outskirts" should be included otherwise.

When moving monsters from Dunwich, Kingsport and/or Innsmouth to Arkham town via Milk, Lure Monster or any other such effects, you should probably treat them as though you're moving monsters to the Sky from these other towns. That is, all monsters which move from another town into Arkham are immediately subject to the monster limit, and if so exceeding, would be moved to the Outskirt.

If only one or two monsters can move into Arkham, the other monsters get thrown into the Outskirts. The first player should decide which monsters are dumped into Outskirts.

That said, I'm sorry for not quoting from the rulebook. I'm not sure if there are any specific paragraphs to support what I've mentioned. Maybe Dam, Avi or Tibs can clarify.

That all sounds right, though I'd be pressed to say that the Outskirts does count as "in play." The reason I say this is that there are a number of Mythos cards that say, "all Dimensional Shamblers in Arkham are returned to the cup" or similar. It has been determined that the Outskirts count as "in Arkham." So, logically, if something is "in Arkham," then it must be "in play."

That said, I don't know how to handle the issue if you exceed the monster limit. Do you just move every monster to the Milk location and then determine which ones go to the Outskirts? That's the way I've played it.... but most often I bring the Milk to Kingsport and lure the monsters there. Usually they don't worry me again. Of course, if rift activity starts to get hairy, it can be a real issue trying to send someone to Kingsport to patch things up...