Low-tech Comms (was: Re: SG Great War)

Tomb wrote:
> 
> Brendan replied to me and said:
> 
> > Versus Modern: No comms will get through for the low-techs. Period.
In
> > fact, fake orders can probably be easily substituted/created.
> 
> Depends on the comms method.	If it's physical land-lines laid out
> between
> fixed defensive positions, I'd still allow a comms roll (it's not
direct
> comms though) unless the enemy managed to cut the lines.
> 
> [Tomb] I stand corrected! I think of comms as "over air" but you are
> correct. Though I still think a roll should be required given the
> quality of these lines... and yes, they should be strung and cuttable.
> And would ultramodern guys have EM technologies which could stop the
use
> of such baseband landlines? Maybe, dunno.

At the last ECC Stuart Murray ran a spontaneous SGII game set in
the Vietnam era. Looking for a pick-up game to get in on, I got
to be one of the baddies. Our VC commander had a single land line
comm connection to two mortar teams and that was it for us. We
were not allowed to communicate with each other unless we sent
runners between platoons, or two platoons were within a defined
distance from each other and could shout. The American guys had
radios and everything and could talk up a storm. It was very
interesting to play this out, trying to maintain our own objective(s)
without communicating with one another (and the mortar teams could
only talk with the commander, no one else, so if we saw a need on
the other side of the valley for an artillery strike, we had to
send a runner - who could be intercepted by the evil Americanskis
and thus prevented from delivering his message). 

It worked out pretty well. IIRC the Americans could do some limited
jamming of the phone line, but I don't rightly remember. I didn't
have the command platoon, being rather busy on the other side of
the valley trying to hold off an Americanski advance. I thought
there were a couple of opposed EW rolls on their side of the table,
but due to our communication restrictions, didn't get to pay as much
attention as I might have normally.