I want to want to use this in 1v1 because of those sweet, sweet radio intercepts. I just can't bring myself to pick something that doesn't give me either Shock Troops or Guards. I imagine NKVD could be useful in 2v2 or 3v3. Anyone have any good experiences with it there?
Also, I must be an exception to the "all Soviet players float muni" rule because I often spend munitions as fast as I can get them. All of the various grenades, plus mines, flares, and mortar precision strikes... it gets expensive fast. I posit that if you're floating tons of munitions as Soviets, you're not playing the faction to its fullest. Anyway, that's just another reason for me to avoid this doctrine and its wonderful, beautiful maphacks radio intercepts.
Disagree, I can make radio intercepts viable in a 1v1 game and its damn good. You do not need Shocks/Guards if you have solid combined arms micro with T2-T3 based play.
What I do is get 4 conscripts and play a flanking based style of play with molotovs. After you finish your T2 tech at this point you can generally get radio intercepts and see what you should build next whether you need an immediate ZiS-3 (FHT), mortar(heavy T1) or maxim (PG). Once you get the fuel for to T3, get a couple of T34/76 tanks and hold out til you can get an IS-2. Do not go T4, because my personal opinion is that T4 is utterly useless now without Guards. SU-85 are over nerfed and to easy to avoid or kill.
I am using Armoured Assault to do this and not NKVD though. I shall test with NKVD in the future. However, since flanking was reintroduced these two doctrines have become x5 time more better to play with.