You're right. I meant in terms of combat characteristics. These guys are expensive and take forever to reinforce. I got hard-countered by a soviet sniper start using these guys. It was not pretty. They simply couldn't close the distance against snipers and were a huge mp drain.
They are not supposed to be your backbone or anything. I think this is how call-ins should be in general, pretty bad but have its situational use and more than anything they should be fun. If you are going versus Soviet T1 you can probably suspect Snipers and Guards. I got some good training in automatch versus this guy that was pretty high rank, about 30-60 not quite sure and he would always go t1 on Semoisky.
This one game where I actually do some damage to him and challenge his snipers was a three assgren start into quick SC. Doing that, mainly you just want those assgrens spread out and avoid fighting him AT all. Sprint away if you have to or get inside houses. My SC managed to chase one sniper down to his base and nearly killed the second one before he could get his Guards out. After he had got like 3 of them it was pretty much GG though since I didn't have a follow-up. I went for an Ostwind but Guards are too strong and when he had the CPs he could get 4 t34/85s out.