Gaming
Pros are just as deadly without a rifle in their hands, and you can be too with a bit of planning.
If you’ve been paying attention to the outcomes of the last couple of CS:GO tournaments, you might notice pro players are pretty handy with a pistol. Whether it’s Flusha holding off a site rush with his USP-S or Happy nailing the entire enemy team with a Deagle, they’re lethal even without an automatic in hand.
So what are the best ways to emulate this godlike skill? A lot more goes into the first round of each half than just “try to click on the heads of the other team” – although it does always help if you can land a few cheeky headshots. And of course, the old adage of practice makes perfect does always apply. But there are better ways to win than to brute force your way through mid, dual Berettas blazing. Here are the best tips to get your game started off right.
Money matters
A lot of the importance of winning a pistol round hinges on the impact it will have on your own and your opponent’s economy. You’ll see pro teams on CT-sided maps making very fast and aggressive pushes in the first Terrorist round as they have a chance to catch their opponent off-guard, but also a chance to plant the bomb. A round loss with a plant for your team earns more than a tense, close-fought round that you eventually lose in a 1v1 anyway. Getting that extra money in the bank helps mitigate the two-three round snowball that pistol round winners are afforded.
Speaking of your money, you walk into each game with a meagre amount in your bank accounts. Spend it. There’s no awards for austerity, and your bank has a shockingly low zero percent APR interest rate, so you won’t get anything back for keeping your money in there. Sure you can hold onto it for the next round, but there’s no point signing your own death warrant just so you only lose the first two rounds instead of possibly winning the first three. Make the most of it.
Buyer beware
Now, as for what to spend that cash on, there’s not a whole lot of choice. There are basically three universal options: armour, grenades or shiny new pistol (and for CTs a defuse kit). It might look like personal preference rules the roost here, but your choices are influenced by where you are going to play. The three main choices offer survivability (armour), tactical superiority (smokes and flashes) and lethality (better weapons). Due to everyone needing to cover certain routes on each map, they’ll need one of these things more than the others.
For example, a CT looking to hold an essential choke point from a rushing T side might feel they need smokes and flashes more than anything else, especially when there’s plenty of cover for them to play the ducking game behind. So holding B tunnels on Dust 2 is an obvious made choice. For mid, it’s a question of whether you are CT or T.
The CT mid will more likely need to be rotating to one bombsite or the other if it is lost, and if it’s lost there’s a good chance there’ll be a bomb planted. The defuse kit is best on the mid player because even if they die before rotating, the kit is at least on the way for a rotating defender from the held site to pick up. For a Terrorist on mid, it depends on your strategy. Smokes to prevent rotation, decent pistol to bully the CT with, or armour if you need to survive long enough to reposition for another push, or defend site from a retake.
For the man on Long, you’ve got the option of taking armour and going close, then falling back when you’ve taken a few hits and are waiting for rotating support. Or taking armour and sitting right away at the far end of that long straight and being basically invincible from chip damage save for some godlike long-range headshots.
Of course, you could always opt for a decent pistol at long range for that option, too, like a Desert Eagle, but you will need the aim to justify that. In general, if you’re about to be the first line of defence/attack on a site, you’ll want a good gun in your hands to make the most of your entry-fragging aim. For CTs, picking up a Five-seveN is a good shout for mid-to-close range encounters, and Ts can always Tec-9 up and go in all guns blazing.
Show me your moves
When it does come down to the actual action, there’s a bit more to it than “all guns blazing” though. Your choice of weapon will have its own pattern of recoil cooldown, so it’s best to use a gun you are familiar with. USP-S is a good long-range headfinder, massively accurate, but has almost literally no bullets so don’t use it for cover fire. Deagles are your other option for dealing damage from range, but that kick is hefty, and takes a while to recover accuracy after firing – unless you do a quick swap by tapping Q twice to switch weapons after every shot, just as Happy did against TSM.
For every other weapon, you’re likely to be getting up close and personal to your targets, and that means learning how to dance. The Two-step Tango looks a bit stupid, but it could save your life if you do it right. The curious way Counter-Strike’s accuracy model works means shots are only driven to the crosshair when your velocity is zero, so no run ‘n’ gunnin’ like the Call of Duty glory days. But instead of standing still and making a nice, statuesque target of yourself, you can reset your velocity by changing direction during a strafe.
Take a couple of steps to the right, let go of D and tap A to begin moving left. In that moment in which you are “shifting your weight” you are standing perfectly still, with zero velocity. Loose a shot, ideally somewhere near your dance partner’s head, then go back to moving right (or left) again. Throw in a couple of crouches to keep your head out of the firing line and you’re the hottest shaker on the dancefloor.
Once you’ve mastered it, you can start throwing in some more advanced fakeouts, like this strange knife dance Flusha got into with NBK- at ESL Cologne. Managing your own ammo count as well as paying attention to your opponent’s reload times will give you an advantage in pushing and positioning, something NBK- took to a thrilling conclusion.
There’s no guarantee you’ll start automatically hitting aces worthy of a caster meltdown, but a little bit of planning can push your game just as far as 12 hours on a headshot-only server. It really does help if you can click on other people’s heads though. Try and do that more often, too.
