Ok, following Campaign 2016 a few sessions have been observed by Bolokov as his troops tickled various Germans.
The issue is inability to handle enemy infantry, the list eats armour for breakfast with just the troops and the tools they have thus it is important to do nothing that will hamper this.
So the core of the army must remain two Strelkovy companies, who must have attached pioneers, flame throwers and anti tank rifles, so this is considered the core of the army.
To give the infantry more punch, specifically to be able to pin enemy troops without outside help, and to be able to punish infantry that are falling back, hence we upgrade to Rifle/MG from just the rifle teams, so able to actually hurt dug in, GtG veterans while still moving. We then upgrade one platoon to have SMG to provide a much higher level of close range punch when on the move, while still able to use the rifle/mg teams for warm bodies defensively.
Large artillery is dropped to be replaced with the more efficient 120mm mortars, a more accurate option that the artillery and useful for blowing a hole.
the regimental guns are a 6th platoon that is useful but will normally be hidden away as being highly fragile.
Final addition is to add four SU-85, fragile but good guns, aiming to use them as I would fragile panzers - i.e. out of sight until there is a specific target for them, they can hurt panthers, or at least scare them. The purpose here is to bring in something that can hurt armour beyond 4”
We end up thus:
HQ, 9x pioneer teams and supply cart
Strelkovy, 2x rifle/mg & 1x SMG platoon, commissar
Strelkovy, 2x rifle/mg & 1x SMG platoon, commissar
12x PTRD to combat attach to the above
4x flame throwers to combat attach
6x 120mm mortar
4x regimental guns
4x SU-85
Note this army lacks the previous “auto attacks” and “infiltration” tools, the former is less useful than imagined, though fun to force panthers to defend, we go back to having the dice off or defending against armour, we can of course still mount an aggressive defence which may even be more of a surprise. Half off is only the Strelkovy on the table, the rest in reserve which works nicely to keep them safe.
Infiltration needs the ‘Always attacks’ option to make it work, so its removal saved 100pts for other things.
This puts two full sized platoons down, they lack HMG support, it would be possible to drop the regimental guns (down to four platoons) and to embed HMG, this may be considered.
More importantly this list has a good chance to defend against its previous nemesis, veteran infantry, who will seriously struggle attacking this lot. Its also not that easy to score points from
This does means assembling some more SU-85, or using SU-100 in a proxy role as I have six of them.