Creating Your Own Smoke Strats and How to Use Them

Introduction

Creating a strat can be very straightforward. As long as you have imagination and the thought process of a seasoned player, you should be able to think one up. There are a few steps you need to follow in order to get the strat to perfection and it's a cycle of rinsing and repeating ideas until you end up getting it right. You may come up with a strat that you think is the best one ever made but in the end it's terrible and doesn't work at all. This is the way that good strats are made, though. If something doesn't work, tweak it and practice it until it ends up working. It's all about practice and fine tuning. The first step I will be looking into is the thought process.

Creating and envisioning your strat

Honestly, this is probably the hardest part about coming up with your own strat. In order to create a strategy that will work for you and your team, you will have to think of it first. If you are an 'in-game leader', this should come naturally to you, because of your in-game knowledge and thought processes. Sometimes it may come to you anywhere, in the toilet, when you're sleeping or maybe on a long car journey. That one magnificent idea may work in-game and win you round after round on your Terrorist side. It's all about thinking and imagination. If you can imagine a strat working, you can bet yourself that it will work. Then, once you've thought of your strategy and have it envisioned in your brain, create a physical or digital copy of it. Another good method is to start up the game and start throwing smokes randomly until you come up with an idea of what you want to do. This takes time and patience, but it is another good method.

An example of an A take on 'Tacnet'

If you want to go old school, get yourself a pen and paper. Draw out the site that you want to take or where you're rolling the strat and draw where every player stands, what grenade he throws and where he throws it. But, if you like to use up-to-date methods, then there are websites out there that can help you with this. A really good website for this is a website called 'Tacnet'. This website has multiple different games and maps for you to choose from and has visualisations of the grenades that you're going to be throwing on said map. There's a useful tutorial as well when you enter the site to get you familiar with it. For in-game leaders, this tool is priceless but free! Once you've done all of these steps, move onto the next process.

Positioning the smokes

Now we are on to the fun part of the guide. First thing you're going to want to do is get a practice executable. You can find one on many different websites or tailor one to your liking. However, for ease, I have one on pastebin. With this you want to create a .cfg file and paste the config into it. Save the cfg file to 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo\cfg' and rename it how you like. Now you're going to want to start the game up, open up your console and type in 'map "map name"' and it will load you into a private server with the map you typed into the console. Now once in game, open your console again and type in 'exec "cfg filename"'. Once this is done, you will be ready to start throwing grenades around for hours on end.

 A smoke strategy on the A site of 'Overpass'

Because you already have the visualisation of your strat on 'Tacnet' or on your paper, you should know whereabouts you want to throw your smokes. Bear in mind that this part is very tedious and takes a lot of time to get right. Start with lining up your smokes so you can remember them for later, it makes it much easier if you line up your smoke, flash or molotov with a wall or a prop on the map. Now just keep throwing those grenades until you get them in the place that you previously envisioned. Once you do, it's an amazing feeling of success when you hit it in the perfect spot. Once you do get it right, keep throwing and throwing the same grenade until you get it perfect every time you line it up. Keep yourself consistent so once you're in-game you know exactly what you're doing. Invite your team to play on a private server too, show them their grenades and keep throwing your grenades together until you all know what grenade you're going to be throwing off by heart. The next part is going to be the deal breaker though.

Rolling the strat

You've practiced and practiced with your team, you have the strat down, you all know what you're going to be doing and when. But will it work? There's only one way to test it out and that's to roll the strat while playing against live opponents. There are of course many ways you can do this; a PUG, Matchmaking or a scrimmage. Running the strat in a PUG and Matchmaking is useless, people play for frags and it won't work because of the playstyle change. However, playing in a scrim is the best and most accurate way for you to run the strat through. There are many ways to join a scrim and I've previously wrote a guide on what service is the best for players. I included in that guide that I think CEVO has the best scrimmage service, I still go by this rule. It's up to you to decide which one you like best though. It's very simple to join a scrim on CEVO, just click on the scrim tab when the client is open and either challenge another team or create your own scrim. It does take a while to find an opponent but if you are dedicated it will be worth the wait.

CEVO scrimmage creation screen

Now you're in-game, you have the utilities and are ready to run the strat that you've worked ever so hard on. Throw those smokes like you've never thrown them before. If the strat works first time, great! If not, keep trying to get it right. Tweak it a bit mid-game! Do you need a flash here? A molotov there? It's all about fine tuning the strat to get it right. If it doesn't work, then don't fret. Go back into that private server and change it. Write down what the enemies were doing to counter the strat and create a counter to that. It's all about coming up with what's perfect for you and works perfectly in-game.

Conclusion

Coming up with a good strategy can be hard, but once you've done it perfectly the first time you'll be coming up with them in no time. If you go by these steps you should be able to come out with a successful outcome. If not, then try and use your own methods. It's all about trial and error.

I hope I've helped a little with this guide. Thanks for reading!

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