rifle squads

[Crusher_Bob]

I've found that the main ability of a rifle squad (on the defense) is to pin the other guys rifle squad long enough for your artillery to arrive. The rifle squad needs some reach so that the other sides guys are pinned outside the 'danger close' area of your own arty.

Once the momentum of the other sides attack is broken up, you are hopefully getting close range firefights against a few advancing troops as they come in through the smoke and artillery fire.

As for destroying a rifle company with tankettes, you pin the rifle company with light artillery and then roll your tankettes up to 2 or 3 hexes away and grind squads up with close range MG fire. It helps if there is enough terrain to keyhole your tankettes so that they are not taking fire from the whole company at once (or just fire a mix of smoke and HE).