Grenade Management: The Basics to Not Wasting Your Nades

Grenade management is one of the most important skills to master. The purpose of the grenade is defined by its type, and therefore each grenade has a special purpose to use in specific situations. Here are the types of grenades and their most common uses.

HE Grenade:

The purpose of this grenade is primarily to do burst damage to a large amount of area. Often times this is one of the most wasted grenades because people think the purpose for this grenade is to get a kill. Unless you throw this directly at a damaged enemy's feet you probably are not going to get a kill soley with this grenade. There are many situations to use this grenade, starting with stopping a rush. Predicting a rush comes with gamesense. For such example I'm going to use B site on Dust II. Many times after the pistol round enemy Terrorists like to go B tuns and either get stuck there or rush onto the site. If you are the B player, the HE grenade is perfect for helping you in this rush.

If you or a teammate throw a smoke to cover tunnels, DO NOT throw the grenade into the smoke. You are wasting this grenade because you have a 50/50 chance of the grenade doing damage to anyone on the other team. Instead, wait for information to see if they are pushing tunnels then use the grenade for maximum impact. If you do not have that information, hang onto it until the rush comes or for later in the round. Especially in higher rank Matchmaking games, people are not going to sit around the smoke for the reasons of grenades and enemies shooting through it. Another purpose of the grenade is to check spots before you peek them. A good example of this is Inferno around the top of bananna. As a Terrorist, using a grenade to clear the corner next to Sandbags and the corner next to CT can either do a lot of damage to that player or completely remove him from that position giving you the oppurtunity to take the next position. As a CT, you can do the opposite with stopping the push with a HE and checking around car by doing damages to enemies there with that grenade. As I said before, the HE grenade is an important one so make sure when you are throwing it, it is in a situation you know will do damage.

 

Flashbang:

The almighty and infamous flashbang. The purpose of the flashbang is self-explanatory; blind the enemy. However, the use is actually more complicated. What makes it complex is the fact that you can blind your own teammates and completely flip the round's advantage to the opposing team. A good motto for the flash is; "When in doubt, don't throw it." There is no advantage to the flash if you blind your entire team with it. The only exclusion to that motto is if you are playing on a well-organized team that everyone knows your specific call outs and have played with your style before and can get a sense of when you and when you dont flashbang a position. Other than that, use with extreme caution. To blind an enemy, you have three main types of flashes. The regular flash, the pop flash and the fake flash. I am going to cover each seperately in more detail.

 

Regular flash: This one is the standard flash for positions you are rushing to take. The key to this one, more so than the others, is timing. Assume your enemy knows you are coming out with this flash and you need to time it perfectly so you beat his peek on your position giving you the perfect oppurtunity for the kill. Like taking A site on Mirage, coming out in perfect timing with the flash does not blind you but blinds your enemy so you can advance onto your next position. What is crucial about this flash is that you actually get to the next position. A flash without a peek or advancement is a wasted flash. Flashes are crucial for site takes and site retakes, so do not waste them. On these types of flashes for taking positions, call them out. Let your team know you are flashing a certain position like Pit on Dust II so that they can either wait to push or turn away to not get blind. Unlike the pop or fake flash, it is ok for this one to not blind the enemy completely. Obvsiously it would be ideal for it to but it is not necessary because you are either using it to bait a re-peek or taking a position to give your team the advantage in the round. Just because you did not get a kill from it does not make it a wasted flash, as long as you advanced like I stated before.

Pop-flash: These types of flashes are designed for the kill. The enemy is not supposed to see it coming or where it came from, simply blind them. The best example of this is around Car on Inferno.

When at Sandbags, throwing a flash off this door gives it the perfect timing to flash Car without the enemy seeing it coming. When you hear footsteps rushing bananna, wait a second or 2 then throw. If timed right, they will be totally blind. Keep in mind, however, that strategies against this meta are being implemented. One that I have seen is pre-aiming sandbags just to the right of it so when you peek it, you are firing. Even though you may be blind, the prefire will beat your fire thus rendering the flashbang useless. In other words, have multiple popflashes at each position to keep your enemy on their toes. Changing it up breaks up predictability and can cause them to move slower to each position. That is a good thing for you as a CT. 

Fake flashes: No, I am not talking about the famous Braxton "swag" Pierce fake flash with a pistol, this flash is designed to make an enemy think you are going a certain position to pull them away from the one you are actually taking. One of the best strategies to do as a T on Dust II that takes easy coordination is to fake flash Long and go Catwalk. After landing a smoke on Xbox by Middle Doors, throw two flashes over the Long doors toward Pit. Most likely the enemy will rotate one or two players from A site to help defend Long. This short window of opportunity is all you need to take Cat and A site while leaving the CTs exposed at Long. You can do this same thing again but actually take Long instead of faking because the enemy will defnitely think twice than for falling for it again.

Smoke grenade:

The main purpose of the smoke grenade is for map control. There are three main reasons on why to use a smoke, arguably the most useful grenade in the game. The first reason is for attacking a site. There are many ways you can use a smoke to aid in taking a site but it all breaks down into essentialy cutting as much vision from the CTs as possible. An example of this would be smoking the CT entrance from their spawn into B site on Cache.

The visibility of the CTs is now cut down to either coming into the site from Vents or through Heaven. You can also hug this smoke similar to a wall in order to clear the site because CTs will most likely not walk through the smoke.

The next reason is for stopping pushes and rushes. Smokes are very useful in haulting your opponent's movement to allow more time for your teammates to rotate. Let's use Cache again for this example. Smoking A main is a great way to stop enemy movement at the beginning and in the middle of a round. As long as you have Middle control, A-main becomes a choke point for Terrorist entry. As a teammate clears B, you can continue to confirm its going to be an A site execution. At this point, smoking A main again gives your team the sight advantage because if they do end up executing A then you will seem them through the smoke before they see you.

 

The last reason is similar to the fake flash. Throwing down smokes as a terrorist is probably the best clue for a CT for where you are going. It is easy to get CTs to rotate positions because once the call that smokes have popped in a certain area, players tendency will be to draw at least one other player to where the smokes are. Continuing with the Cache example, you can throw smokes over A-Main from T-spawn side to make the CTs think you are going A. As you rotate quickly to B, have flashes ready because most likely they will leave a guy at that site to prepare for the fake. Flash into site, then take it. Also like the flash fake, you don't want to use this continuously becaues your opponent will eventually pick up on when it is a fake an when it is not. Faking diffrent places is a good way of keeping the fake an unpredictable play. 

 

The last grenade is the Molotov/Incendiary:

The use for this grenade on the CT side is to either stop pushes similar to a smoke grenade or clear a spot before checking it. If you are playing CT on Inferno, you can use the Incendiary grenade to flush out any T hiding at Logs in Bananna. Similar in this situation, you can also use it to cut off any Ts trying to use Boiler around A site to take Aparment control for A site.

As a T, there is a new meta for how to use the Molotov. Similar to how a CT uses it, you can flush out enemies at certain places like Barrels at B site on Overpass

With this Molotov in place, you don't have to worry about that choke point while taking B site. You can also cut off rotations by the CT with a Molotov, like throwing one in Heaven on the B site of Cache, disabling that position from being used in the retake of the site. But there is also another use that has recently come about. You can prevent the bomb from being defused by throwing one on top of the planted bomb. Unless the CT has full health and has waited at least 3 seconds since the molotov was thrown, the CT player will not be able to defuse it while the fire is up. This creative twist can be especially helpful if you have low HP. Since a fight in this situation is going to end in a loss, a molotov on the bomb is a good way of giving your team a better chance at stalling long enough for the bomb to go off. On the CT side, I have also seen this meta form into a CT throwing an incendiary on top of a dropped, unplanted bomb preventing the Ts from picking it up which forces the fight instead of a T picking it up and rushing to a site to plant it. Although these situations are currently rare, I wouldn't be surprised to see this tactic used more often in the future. 

 

Grenades are important for map control, controlling the pace of the round and even preventing situations from happening. The best way to get a feel for the grenades and developing new ways of throwing them is to go into an empty server and practice throwing them. The console commands you can use to practice are:

sv_cheats 1
Infinite ammo: sv_infiniteammo 1
Show where the grenades are going: sv_grenade_trajectory 1
Make the round last 60 minutes: mp_roundtime_defuse 60
The only way of improving timings and placements of grenades is by practice so get out there and throw some 'nades!