When an infantry squad assaults a hex containing a mortar crew does the mortar contribute any defence dice. My thoughts are that although the mortar itself would be unable to fire (minimum range of two hexes) the actual crew would. In this situation the crew would abandon the mortar and fight with their personal weapons. I think one defence dice per mortar figure would be correct in this situation. What do you think?

A mortar cannot contribute any defence dice when assaulted. If there are two mortars on a base they have no defence dice, if one mortar and two regular infantry the base gets two defence dice for the infantry only.

It's not unreasonable if you compare the armaments; a typical WW2 squad would have 1-2 SMGs, some sort of sustained fire weapon (mag or belt fed) and 6-9 magazine rifles for a total paper strength of 9-12.

The mortar crews numbered maybe 5-8 depending on country and organisation. They'd have a scattering of rifles and pistols; German motor/armoured grenadier mortar squads were pretty heavily armed, having access to an SMG along with some rifles.

They're pretty seriously outgunned once the enemy is inside mortar ranges.

I am playing ''The Meeting Engagement'' tomorrow and you have reminded me to ensure I have some back up near the mortar crews I will have placed in the woods. This will hopefully act as a deterrent to would be assaulters.

It actually seems like a fair trade off: combine two mortars on a single squad base and you have some awsome attack values (suppressive especially). The downside is you wouldn't get to roll any defense dice (I suppose one can just imagine they were surprised). If you do want to have some sort of defense, make sure you leave two regulars with each of the squad bases. Obviously another option would be to have a full squad or two help defend them or if you can spare it, a heavy vehicle as that would make an assault impossible. Then again, I think there are better uses for heavy vehicles…

A double mortar is just assumeness. Its penelty in defence is useually made of by the point that they have long range and dont need to be in line of sight to any units. Thus its a pure killing machine. A double mortar is even dangerous for tanks (maybe not the germans best tanks but versus all others). Its so fanaticly great that any time you only get a single mortar, it is just irritating.