How does one play the Russians?

[Dog Soldier]

The Russians in any PzC game are sandpaper. They get worn away. By rubbing the enemy you wear him down too! Remember the Soviet symbol. Hammer and sickle. No rapiers here! Smash and scythe!

#3 Digging in. - It is always best to leave open ground for the enemy to cross. In some cases you can "cluster" your fortifications rather than dig in in a linear fashion. This helps if your have (as the Russians do) many units so the flanks of the "cluster" have some bite and are not easily dislodged.

As a general rule, in the _alt scenarios think in terms of strong points with flank guards / counter attack reserves. Think carefully where to commit to a strong point. Terrain is everything with good interlocking fields of fire for you. Minimize hexes the enemy can reach you from more than one hex away.
If the enemy tries to flank your strong point have a force ready to counter attack him so your strong point is not surrounded and isolated.
Lacking sufficient strength to conduct counter attacks? Then place many interlocking ZOC as you can muster and make the enemy wade through your forces to flank the strong point. That will delay the inevitable a little longer so you can wear down the enemy. Work him over with all the artillery you can muster, as others have said. Katiusha rockets fired over open sights (as was done at Kursk) will hurt those German soft units. Unfortunately in the _alt series, firing large caliber artillery over open sights at armor from a fortified village position is no where near as effective as it was historically. Save your artillery for fatiguing the German foot soldiers. It can be very hard for the Germans to take a VP village with tanks alone by assault if you stack the combination of armor, ATG, and infantry there in the later part of the game. (Just beware of those Flame PzkIIIs! in other K43 _alt scenarios. They can clear a hex like nothing else.)

When using VM's sloth / rock tactic, try to shuffle your defenders around a bit or have a small reserve you can shove into the stack in your turn just when you think the enemy is done softening you up and is ready to assault. You only need one C morale unit to make that stack of E and F units become heroes of the Soviet Union (posthumously of course)! :)

Do all the things VM and Aetius suggest above!

Dog Soldier