The Art of Anti-Stratting Part III

Introduction:

Before reading this article, I suggest you read the first part of this guide. It is located here. This will give you a good sense of what anti-stratting is and a general overview that you can build on. In this portion of the Art of Anti-Stratting, I will be discussing anti-stratting CT players and exploiting their tendencies and patterns. I will be using pro player examples as well as what you may run into in a PUG or even an official match.

Anti-Stratting Where Players Play on Bomb Sites:

Becoming complacent when being a CT is very common. If a player is comfortable holding a certain spot, it is very likely they will hold it for most of the game. A good example of this for pro players would be NiP Friberg & GeT_RighT (GTR) and his play on Inferno CT side. Friberg & GTR during the summer of 2015 played Inferno in a very similar fashion in almost every match. It was a very simple setup where you can watch Friberg and GTR set up a pop flash and leave a single man out in the open to take a fight after a pop flash. You can view this setup at about 21:00 in the video below.

They use this pop flash to spot for players pushing banana. Although in the demo above, you can see that SK Gaming was very ineffective, however you can see what they did to anti-strat the opponents. They know that GTR plays up close on the cart peeking onto Banana. So what they begin to do is use a molotov to push him out of his position which allows them to gain information with little to no cost. From here however, GTR and Friberg almost always exclusively play first or second Oranges and Spools. SK did not appear to notice this pattern and they are quickly dispatched by Friberg taking first contact and GTR swinging out to get the unexpecting terrorists.

SK should have seen this coming because if you watch previous demos, NiP do almost the same exact set up every time with very little variation. Teams do not seem to pick up on this and hence during this time Friberg is coined the nickname “King of Banana.” What SK then does after this is they seem to give up on the idea of Banana control, which, during the meta at the time, was very important to gain control of since it kept CTs from rotating away to A site if they decided to do a set play on A site.

Anti-Stratting the Middle Player(s):

I think this is one of the most important things to note about a team on their CT side defense. Keep note of who is their most consistent middle player and what weapon they choose. Most teams place their AWPer there with the assistance of a rifler nearby. An example of this is on Mirage. The AWPer will sit in the left side of Window while there a rifler in connector or on catwalk. However, many teams like to switch this up. Many teams will push Mid with two riflers and an AWPer in Window that pop flashes them into top of mid. The image below is an example of this. This should be taken note of when your IGL is watching demos of the opposing team. He should be asking himself what is different whenever they do this and are there any indicators that can be observed before the team takes any contact from middle. Again, this portion comes to watching demos and being able to identify opposing team's patterns and tendencies.

Image Courtesy of CSGOBoard.com

Anti-Stratting Pistol Rounds:

I have found in my experience in lower tier leagues on CEVO and ESEA that teams very rarely change their pistol strategies. Even teams I’ve been on, we’ve ran one pistol strat on each map. Again, this is up to your IGL or other players to watch demos and identify how the opposing team's play. Many teams will stack a site on a pistol round and give up another site to retake later. You should be asking yourself if this is the case for the team you’re playing and exploit the open site and the fast rotating players and catching them off guard. Using Mirage as an example, again, many teams like to play retake. They have one player spotting from CT Spawn to A-Main. Once the Terrorists take the site, he falls off and waits for the rest of his team. From there the T’s can plant the bomb and take up very good post plant positions. However, a good thing to do here is the have a hard lurk that listens for players rotating and takes them out while they are rotating. View the image below for an example of this.

Courtesy of CSGOBoard.com

Courtesy of CSGOBoard.com

As you can see in the last image, your hard lurk is in a great position with a bunch of CTs’ backs to him. This is an easy way to get yourself an advantage. Many teams will not check the Underpass position. However, the player that is under there should always be wary of a push or flanker coming through B apartments.

Conclusion:

Anti-Stratting CT players can be done by watching demos like I explained in my first guide. Watch demos to place what I’ve said above into practice and allow for yourself to take advantage of the patterns and tendencies that the other team has. By doing this it allows for Terrorist teams to make it easier for themselves to win rounds which can sometimes be very hard to come by.

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