Unusual strategies in CS:GO

If you’ve ever tried to be more serious when playing Counter-Strike then you have probably heard of Strats, or strategies. Strats can be anything from simple executes onto a Bombsite with Smoke, Molotov and Flash grenades being used, to complex multi-phase fakes where you force rotates and take alternate approaches to capturing a Bombsite. This article takes a look into some of CS:GO’s most unique and less well known strategies such as Smoke-Paths, Firewalling and Firebombing.

 

Smoke-Paths

Now technically, Smoke-Paths were first used way back in 1.6 by a team called WeMade FOX. They created a Strat on the original De_Dust2 where all five Terrorists would stack up on A-Short Stairs, throw four Smoke grenades that covered all of A-Short and allowed the Terrorists to run up to Bombsite and plant the Bomb without ever being seen by the Counter-Terrorists. Now up until recently, no team had really created anything similar to this, that was until Luminosity executed something similar on De_Cache and used it in the Semi-Final of the recent MLG Columbus Major.

I’ll briefly break down Luminosity’s use of a Smoke-Path for you here.

A visual representation of the Smokes and positioning used by Luminosity.

First, Taco from Luminosity makes his way into Squeaky where he opens the Door and lines up a Smoke that lands just outside the Door. At the same time, his team mate Fer is in A-Main lining up a Smoke that lands a few meters deeper than Taco’s, essentially chaining the 2 Smokes together. This enables Taco to use the Smokes to sneak out of Squeaky and around to Quad where he surprised Nitro and was able to get the kill. As you can see, a Smoke-Path is an incredibly simple yet effective way to surprise the CT’s and attack a Bombsite from an alternate angle. There really isn't any map in the Active duty map pool, that doesn’t have at least one Bombsite or area where this could be a useful and even viable strategy. In the future it would be awesome to see some more Pro Teams try Smoke-Paths out, let me know in the comments if you have any ideas about where this could be used!

 

Firewalling

Ok, this isn’t so much a “strategy” as it is a useful idea, that is geared more towards Counter-Strating the enemy team rather than being a “Strat” itself. Counter-Strating being where you pro-actively react to the enemy team trying to execute a Strat against you instead of just letting the Strat roll out and trying your best to deal with it.. Firewalling was first used by, Sean 'sgares' Gares back in his Cloud9 days, and the term “Firewalling” was coined by the famous caster, Anders Blume in his TheoryCraft Youtube series.

Firewalling, simply put, is using a Molotov grenade to cancel a Smoke mid-flight towards its set destination. This could be super useful as both CT’s and T’s in any given round. Using the A Bombsite on De_Cache as an example, many of the Smoke grenades the Terrorists use when executing on the Bombsite bounce several times before arriving at there destination. The most common one being the Smoke that lands in between Forklift and Redbox that obscures any CT’s playing the Truck and Highway position from seeing into the Bombsite. As shown in the image below

The trajectory of the “Truck” Smoke that shows where it bounces.

This Smoke bounces several times before reaching its destination, and as an added benefit the Smokes normally thrown onto the A Bombsite have a long air time and are incredibly easy to spot, which means you as a Counter-Terrorist have plenty of time to pull out your Molotov grenade and throw it on the ground where the Smoke is going to bounce first. The result is that you have cancelled the effectiveness of their Smoke and when the Terrorists eventually push the Bombsite, they will expect that angle to be covered by the Smoke and be looking elsewhere, chances are, in the heat of the moment they won't even notice their Smoke has missed its mark. This leaves you with a powerful and unexpected angle to hold against the incoming Terrorists.

The gap allows you to see the crossing Terrorist’s entire bodies.

Firebombing.

This is probably the most well known of the three strategies I am talking about, but is still generally one of the least used and lesser known strategies out there. Made famous by current Ninjas in Pyjamas Coach, Bjorn “Threat” Pers back on his days on Team Acer. Firebombing is when you throw multiple Molotov grenades that cover portions of, or the entirety of the Bombsite in fire forcing CT’s out of position and possibly dealing massive damage. This is a really unique Strat and one that is incredibly hard for CT’s to deal with as teams don't often practice how to respond to a situation like it.

In the famous execution done by Team Acer, they actually managed to kill 2 Counter-Terrorists with the fire alone, before they had even began to push the Bombsite. A great example of where you can use Firebombing is De_Cache. Both Bombsites are perfect to be Firebombed and if you need ideas or help with the grenade line ups, there are plenty of tutorials to be found online. Pro Teams have adapted this Strat to other maps like Team EnVyUs using it on the B Bombsite of De_Inferno but I would love to see this tried on other maps like De_Overpass, De_Dust 2 or maybe elsewhere that I can’t even think of.

A representation of Team Acer’s infamous Firebomb on the A Bombsite on De_Cache.

There you have it, three of the most unique strategies in CS:GO that I hope give you some ideas that you can try out with your team, or just by yourself as an individual player in Matchmaking. Whilst organising the Firebombing of a Bombsite could be difficult without prior planning, Smoke-Paths or Firewalling could easily be made up on the fly between random players and be used to catch that enemy team by surprise. If you have any ideas of some even more unique strategies or situations where the ones I’ve listed could be effective, feel free to let me know in the comments!

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