wire teams

hi

when the wire team is used it is removed from table, 2+ needed.
does communications last the entire game now or do we roll the next turns?
thx

It's one use.

That's the rule for sure but I never understood why someone would go to all the trouble of laying phone wire, put one call through then take it up again..............

Read Panzer Warfare on the Eastern Front, edited by Hans Schäufler. It's the personal recollections/experiences of German soldiers from the beginning of Barbarossa through to the end of the war.

One of the soldiers stories (forgive me, It's been a while since I read the book, and don't remember the specific author) details wire teams in action. Basically, they'd string lines late night/early morning, and by the following evening, the lines had been cut either intentionally or vehicles driving over them (and NO WAY were you gonna shimmy up a pole to string aerial lines in full view of anybody who might have ammo to send your way).

In this respect, I think Battlegroup represents the situation fairly well.

If you really want ongoing line communications, you may want to add a house rule: roll a die each time the wire team is used, maybe against the teams experience, and if the roll fails, the line is cut and can't be used for the remainder of the battle. Maybe even add a secondary that off-board mortars/artillery can't be called in the following turn as on-board units try and reestablish radio communications.

Y'know that is not a bad idea! Some clod drives his T.34 over your mortar battery phone line so someone has to go out there,find the break and splice it

A special/optional/house rule is that if signals is by wire communications, the first time the comms check fails the wire is considered cut, and can't be used again until a wire team is "used up" to replace it (by rolling the wire team's 2+ as for comms check). Same if the contacting team moves, for example, if a Fwd HQ is the artillery spotter, and moves for whatever reason, it can't do a comms check to request artillery until a wire team is "used up" to re-lay the wire. If the wire team fails, it's still used up, but comms are lost permanently.

If you want to complicate it further, give a field phone comms check a -1 if the calling team was under indirect or direct HE fire (supressing or aimed) at any time since the last successful comms check.

Wired field phone comms can only be placed originally pre-game by a non-mobile unit. Further option is to allow units with established field defences better wire comms (2+ for comms check) to allow for prepared defences comms to be better dug in.