From the few games I've played tonight (team games, mind you), I gather that Conspam/Maxim spam supported by a mass of ZiS guns and T-34s is about all you can do.
Panzergrenadiers absolutely roll everything in their path, yeah sure you can force them to retreat, but not until they've marched up to a few Cons in cover and nuked one with a derp grenade before gunning the rest down. These things eat shocks, cons, guards, anything that's on legs if it stands in front of them. Of course, PGs can equip Shrecks, so nothing has stopped EVERY player I've played tonight (6 games, a 3v3 and 5 4v4s) from building anywhere from 3 to 7 PGs and decking them out with G43s, Shrecks, and Ambush camo. Then they roll out nothing but panthers in short order, because it's pretty much impossible to dislodge them without having 9 squads of infantry on hand, arty out before your T3 is up, or the PGs fighting over kills and accidentally shooting each other.
Penals are...well, even at point blank with a flamer attached, they're not much to get excited about. They're better than Cons on paper, but because trying to close with the enemy is suicide (for the Soviets), their short range advantage really isn't all that useful. They also, still, lack any utility.
With the changes to grenades, the Gren's rifle grenade is basically an "F U" button to anything on legs--crew weapons are left with ~3 men or wiped out entirely.
Guards...well, I called them in a few times and even gave them DPs, and they managed to kill maybe two men before having to GTFO. Again, Grenadiers and PGs are able to simply march up to them and unload their weapons into the Guards' faces with minimal effort.
Guarding a sniper, or pair of them, can work, but they don't fire fast enough to cover your infantry, which quickly get the snot beaten out of them by hordes of Grenadiers and MG42s.
Quite a few players have told me that I'm just terrible etc etc, maybe that's the case (I'm sick as a dog for the third week in a row now), but when someone can charge four Grenadiers into a trio of Maxims and come out on top, something is off.