CS Team Strats

[mistraele]

The Very Basic Counter-Strike War Strategy Guide
(Wiki Edition)

This is an introduction to Competitive Counter-Strike War Strategy & Tactics. It includes important definitions, terminology, keyboard binds, rcon alias / aliases, FAQs and other useful information about Counter Strike and the strategies you can employ. If you are completely new to Counter-Strike visit my Introduction to Counter-Strike page first.

Version 4.5.00

Last Update 08February2006


What this Guide is: This guide is meant to explain many of the common mistakes new and even experienced clans make, which can affect the outcomes of wars you play in, usually in the negative if you do not heed this advice. It also explains some basic buying strategies so clan leaders can call for something specific and after studying this guide, everybody will know what they are talking about. For the most part you require no skill whatsoever to execute the advice offered here, only a modicum of intelligence and concentration.

What this Guide is not: This is not a strategy guide that will walk you through how to play a war on any particular map, nor is it designed to teach you how to play wars if you have not experienced playing in them. It is not going to teach you where to stand, how to aim, shoot, or throw grenades. It does not claim to be the final word on the subject on the common mistakes that cost clans wars. These are just made up from my own experience, and I am sure that there is plenty more that can be added.
WARNING!!

Finding 5-6 committed players who want to play as often and as seriously as this guide suggests you need to if you want to do the best you can is extremely difficult.
The amount of practice and discipline required, can cause a lot of friction between team members who want to do the best they can and those that only want to play for fun or to mess about. I strongly suggest you assess exactly what sort of clan you wish to be or be in before attempting to follow or have people follow anything presented here.
Thank You.
Contents
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* 1 Definitions
* 2 War Strategy
o 2.1 Basics
o 2.2 Organisation
o 2.3 Money Management and Spawn
o 2.4 Communication, Sound and Movement
o 2.5 Terrorist Notes
o 2.6 Counter-Terrorist Notes
o 2.7 Source Notes
o 2.8 Other
* 3 Very Basic Buying Strats
o 3.1 1st Round
o 3.2 2nd Round
+ 3.2.1 1st Round Win (1-0)
+ 3.2.2 1st Round Loss (0-1)
o 3.3 3rd Round
+ 3.3.1 1st Rnd Win, 2nd Rnd Win (2-0)
+ 3.3.2 1st Rnd Loss, 2nd Rnd Loss (0-2)
+ 3.3.3 1st Rnd Loss, 2nd Rnd Win (1-1)
+ 3.3.4 1st Rnd Win, 2nd Rnd Loss (1-1)
o 3.4 4th Round
+ 3.4.1 1st Rnd Win, 2nd Rnd Win, 3rd Rnd Win (3-0)
+ 3.4.2 1st Rnd Win, 2nd Rnd Win, 3rd Rnd Loss (2-1)
+ 3.4.3 1st Rnd Win, 2nd Rnd Loss, 3rd Rnd Win (2-1)
+ 3.4.4 1st Rnd Win, 2nd Rnd Loss, 3rd Rnd Loss (1-2)
+ 3.4.5 1st Rnd Loss, 2nd Rnd Loss, 3rd Rnd Win (1-2)
+ 3.4.6 1st Rnd Loss, 2nd Rnd Loss, 3rd Rnd Loss (0-3)
+ 3.4.7 1st Rnd Loss, 2nd Rnd Win, 3rd Rnd Win (2-1)
+ 3.4.8 1st Rnd Loss, 2nd Rnd Win, 3rd Rnd Loss (1-2)
o 3.5 5th Round
* 4 Buy / Cost Matrix
* 5 Weapon Tables
o 5.1 Weapons Table for CS 1.6
o 5.2 Weapons Table for CS:Source
* 6 Server Bookings Settings
* 7 Common RCON Commands
o 7.1 Counter-Strike 1.6 RCON Commands
o 7.2 Counter-Strike Source RCON Commands
o 7.3 War Map Names
o 7.4 Other Server Settings
* 8 Common Binds
o 8.1 Waits
o 8.2 Buy Binds
o 8.3 Built-In Weapon Aliases
o 8.4 Grenade Scripts
o 8.5 Radio Binds
+ 8.5.1 Radio Bind Examples:
+ 8.5.2 Radio Binds as Aliases Example:
o 8.6 Built-In Radio Aliases
o 8.7 Other Useful Scripts
o 8.8 The Finished Config
* 9 Other Notes
o 9.1 TJ's Section for Pub n00bs:
o 9.2 Shak's List of Essential Peripherals for the Serious Gamer
o 9.3 Why this Guide was created:

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Definitions

ACE
A five-man - when one person kills the rest of the other team. See also TD.
AK RUSH
Buy AK and armour and rush hard.
BUY UP
Get rifle, full armour, HE grenade, kit/flash Grenade, partial primary ammo, flash, full primary ammo, smoke.
CHOKE POINT
A choke point is a point in the map where the action is concentrated into one small area, eg. On de_dust - the CT entrance to tunnel near the doors is a choke point. Also a point on the map where a whole team can be held by 1 or 2 opposition players only, or a point also know as a deathtrap, (the room between the 2 sets of double doors at long A on dust2 is a good example of a deathtrap) where if two or three HE Grenades come flying in, your whole team is dead or as good as, and the round is effectively over without even firing a shot.
CLUTCH
Winning the round when the odds are stacked against you. The more the odds are stacked against the player or the more important the round win, the bigger the clutch.
COVER
Cover means 2 things: You either stand right in front of the guy you are covering so you get shot first, or cover a point on the map so the enemy must engage you before they see the guy you are covering!
DE RUSH
The Desert Eagle rush where you buy Desert Eagle and armour, and rush if you think opponent is weak in a particular area, that might enable you to win a round back after loss of previous round.
ECO
DO NOT BUY ANYTHING, ESPECIALLY GUNS!! Short for economy, used to save money for the next round so you can afford better weapons.
ECO RUSH
DO NOT BUY ANYTHING, ESPECIALLY GUNS!! RUSH HARD.
FAKE
Terrorists creating a diversion to make it appear that a particular bombsite is the primary objective. Against bad teams the FAKE bomb site often becomes the primary, after your 1 or 2 players annihilates the opposition. Also used by Counter-Terrorists to make it appear that they are holding a particular area of the map strongly.
GG
"Good Game". General courtesy extended to the opposition at the end of the war for playing against you. Also used to indicate that the war has ended and the player/clan intends on leaving the server, because a result has been achieved. Teams and players who do not say GG at the end of a war (no matter how bad or good they did) are considered impolite and poor losers.
GH
"Good Half". General courtesy extended to the opposition at the end of the first half of a war.
GOBLIN
Sneaking your way in for a bomb plant or a bomb defuse. Also used in the context of outflanking the opposition in a manner that is wholly unexpected, usually due to stealth, eg. Hiding while all opposition runs past you, then shooting them in the arse. Also referred to as "NINJA"
GL HF
"Good Luck, Have Fun". General courtesy extended to the opposition at the beginning of the war for playing against you.
LO3
Live On Three. The typical method used to commence a war, where the round will restart three times. The war begins after the third restart.
MP5
Buy MP5, full armour, HE grenade, kit/flash Grenade, partial primary ammo, flash, full primary ammo, smoke grenade.
MR12
Maximum Rounds Twelve: Twelve rounds maximum will be played per half before you change sides.
MR15
Maximum Rounds Fifteen: Fifteen rounds maximum will be played per half before you change sides.
NL
No Live/Not Live: Quick way to indicate that the current round is not live. If you have an AFK on your team, you'd type out NL to make sure the other team doesn't try and LO3, for example.
OT
Over-Time. If the combined total of both halves results in a draw, then Over-Time is played. This usually consists of Max Rounds Three, mp_startmoney $10,000 rules.
PCW
European equivalent of the word SCRIM, standing for Practice Clan War, means a game which does not mean anything but is played for practice or to test out tactics.
PICK
The art of picking off your opponents one at a time who are camping in high probable positions with a pre-aimed shot, or camping a spot waiting for the opposition to appear in a very tightly defined kill zone.
POINT
The guy at the front.
PUSH
Moving into an offensive position rather than a defensive position. Usually used to describe Counter-Terrorists who have moved out of the normal defensive position in an attempt to out flank the opposition.
ROTATE
How Counter-Terrorists reposition their team mates in an attempt to redress a perceived or actual tactical disadvantage. eg. Losing a player in a key position will cause the Counter-Terrorists to rotate a player from a less key position, to fill the void left by the dead team mate. The definition also applies to terrorists. For example, if while moving towards one site you encounter a lot of enemies, you may choose to rotate to the other site where you hope to face less resistance.
STACK
Stack means you put all your eggs in one basket and place most, if not all your players in the one area of the map, either as in a Terrorist RUSH or protecting one bomb site only as Counter-Terrorist. It can also mean having multiple players stand on each others heads, usually with 2 or 3 players, as in the famous de_dust2 double door CT NOA stack. Stacking is great for situations where your team is saving (for example, after losing the previous round), since you will often find yourself with poor guns (USP/Glock) vs. the more powerful weapons of your opponents.
TD or TEAM DOWN
When one player kills the entire opposition in a single round. A TD in a CLUTCH situation on the round that decides the map in a final, is about as impressive as you can get.

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War Strategy
[edit]
Basics

* Kill the enemy. Do not shoot, grenade or flash your own team.
* Ego is possibly the biggest down fall of many a clan. For some reason, many people think they are so much better than everybody else, and don't have to do a lot of the simple things it takes to win. Get over yourself, you will learn quicker and be more successful, if you treat the opposition with respect.
* Don't rely on having faster reflexes and aim than your opposition to win wars. Far too many clans think this is all they need and quite often this is all they have got. Clans that over-rely on the AWP tend to have too many of these types of players.
* Learn the maps, the choke points and how long it takes to get to them. Know the camping spots, the bomb planting and defusal positions, and how to navigate the map without actually having to see where you are going.
* Learn what the various choke points on each map you play on are. Learn how to gain control of them early and how to hold them. Learn the timings for moving to and through them are and the time it then takes to reach a bombsite once the choke point has been breached. Also know how to take a choke point back if you need to with more than just superior reflexes and aim.
* Learn how to use your radar (see description below) to determine position of teammates and the enemy. You know where the enemy is when you see a dot disappear off your screen.


* Have scoreboard bound close by your movement keys so you can easily check team and enemy numbers quickly, without having to take your hand off movement keys.
* As Terrorists you should be skin 2 (L337 Krew) as Counter-Terrorists its skin 4 (French GIGN) in order to cover your numbers. 5 guys popping in and out 1 at a time will look like the 1 guy if you all have the same skin. L337 Krew is the skinniest and hardest to see model most of the time; French GIGN has the smallest head for Counter-Terrorists and a head similar to the Phoenix Connektion Terrorist skin.
* Some maps allow you to determine early what the other team's defence and offence strat is going to be. Figure out which maps these are and how to do it.
* Don't pick up enemy guns if somebody else in your team needs it. If you pick up enemy gun, do not drop it again, because you will keep all the bullets, and the gun is practically useless to whoever else picks it up, because the gun won't have any spare ammo.
* Do pick up guns that the enemy drops, if none of your team needs the gun. If you have time, empty and drop them to deny enemy a gun with bullets if they pick it up, since all ammo stays with the person who drops the gun, so long as they are alive when they do it.
* Do pick up guns of dead people to top up your own ammo, but make sure you reload first. Very important on wall spam maps like de_nuke.
* Know which guns share ammunition to maximise the benefit of the previous points. eg. (Colt, Clarion, Defender, AUG, Para) (USP, UMP) (Glock, MP5) etc.
* Don't stand in front of AWP'ers, crouch or get out of the friggin' way.
* You absolutely must learn how to use ALL grenades, I cannot stress this strongly enough. Most good teams base their whole strategies around placing specific grenades into specific locations at specific times, they hardly ever rely on just being a better shot than the opposition players. Just about everybody in a half decent clan can aim and shoot when they are supposed to. If you don't throw a HE/Flash Grenade(s) to make them move, or Smoke Grenades to obscure their vision, they will have you pre-lined up for a headshot, and you will lose the majority of these encounters.
* Learn how to throw the various grenades so they land where you want them from various positions on the map. This includes knowing what angle you need to use to achieve a certain effect, as in banking off a wall or throwing them at a certain angle so they land where you want it to. You ought to know how to put a grenade where you want it without putting yourself in danger.
* Practice selections of various weapon combinations via the keyboard or mouse scroll wheel, so you are used to going from gun to flashbang to HE, back to gun, then pistol, then gun, to smoke, to gun, to pistol to gun again for example, relatively smoothly. Do it with and without the bomb if you use the mouse wheel to scroll through weapons. Do not use scripts to do this for you, they are not flexible, and you cannot use them at LAN events, so you better just get used to not relying on them.
* Keep your crosshairs pointed at head height. Many good players get a lot of kills merely by holding their crosshairs in the correct position. Remember, it takes time to move your mouse, the less time you have to spend moving your mouse the quicker your shots will be and subsequently your kills as well.
* If you are relying on being a better shot and out-aiming the opposition players, then you have missed the whole purpose of why this page has been written.
* Not dying is a skill too! Learn how to get yourself out of no-win situations, or better yet, not place yourself in no-win situations in the first place. 1 live player on 1 health is eminently more useful than a dead player!
* If you are a really good player trying to offer advice to your not so experienced team mates, don't just yell at them and call them a n00b when they do something stupid or wrong. Tell them what they did wrong, what you would have done differently, and exactly why you would have done it the way you described. Point them here if you have to! If you do not know exactly why you would have done something a certain way, then that is worth investigating and integrating into your playing technique. The whole raisons d'etre for this guide, was to map out exactly the things to do or not do to improve me and my clans playing.

[edit]
Organisation

* Get a plan and stick to it. Practice that damn plan, and test it to exhaustion in practice wars to see if it actually works and has the outcome you expect. Have alternate plans if it is obvious that your original plan is never going to work. Like finding out 1 site has 3 AWP's in it and you have no smoke grenades.
* Don't be afraid to dump a plan if it doesn't work for your clan, so long as you give the plan a real chance to work. Remember the goal of having a plan is to win rounds with the minimum of casualties to your team, thereby winning you the war. It is very hard to win wars, if your team constantly dies, even if you happen to win the round. The money system will eventually grind you down.
* Get organised. Its no use having the best strats on the face of the planet, or the best players in the world, if you are a disorganised rabble, with everybody doing their own thing. Practicing your strats is the easiest way to do this. Everybody knowing the order things should be done is good, since if you have to use a substitute, you reduce the amount of explaining you have to do, and any re-organisation you have to do, won't upset things too much.
* Timing is everything. A simple strategy executed with precision is always going to be more effective than any strategy that is poorly executed, no matter how good that strategy is.
* Start simple and work your way up. Just do simple flashbang pushes, where you smoke to cover you and then put 1 flashbang in after another at selected locations, all the while making sure you have team mates with guns out, in position, ready to take advantage of where the flashbang has been thrown.
* Have somebody call the play. Really good clans will already know what it is they have to do, but it still requires that somebody call at the start of the round what it is your clan is going to do that round. Have back up callers in case your main strat caller dies. I've seen clans fall apart because the main strat guy dies and then nobody knows what it is they are supposed to be doing.
* Some strats for both Counter-Terrorist and Terrorist depend upon where you spawn. Learn what the obvious strat will be depending upon where you spawn on each map. Examples are: Dust, Dust2 and Prodigy for both Terrorist and Counter-Terrorist, Train for Terrorist, etc.
* Instead of assigning specific roles to specific players, get used to assigning roles by player position instead. eg. 1st player goes back left, 2nd player goes right, 3rd plants bomb, 4th backs up player 2 and 5th hangs back to cover the rear etc. etc. Then if one or two of you die, your strategy does not fall into a complete mess. The same principles work for both Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists and helps to avoid situations like there only being 3 of you left as Counter-Terrorist on dust2 and all trying to retake B through the double doors.
* While you are dead and at the start of the round, discuss with your team, the location and disposition of the enemy and start working on game plans to defeat what the enemy is doing. eg. Where are the Counter-Terrorists camping the bombsite. Have they done the same the same thing 2 times in a row? What plans in your arsenal do you have to defeat their defences? etc.
* Learn to use smoke grenades to provide COVER from AWP's or to just cover your movements and numbers. Learn where you need to place them to be effective. Learn where not to place them, so you do not screw up your own team. In Counter-Strike 1.6, the smoke is not as thick as it used to be and runs out quicker, but starts up a hell of a lot faster, you usually need 2 smoke grenades to provide the same thickness of smoke you used to get in previous versions of Counter-Strike.

[edit]
Money Management and Spawn

* Do not buy immediately, wait for the call from the person calling the strats and listen to the call. The worst thing you can do is have a gun when the rest of your team has pistols, or vice versa.
* Person calling the strats needs to call quickly whether you are ECO or BUY UP ASAP.
* Have buy binds for things like all grenades, defuse kit (since it swaps positions on the buy menu), usual guns, and the 2 different levels of armour.
* Do not replenish your armour at the start of each round. 50% armour is just as effective as 100% armour. Only re-buy your armour if you get down below 30% (because at this level or lower, you may actually run out of armour before you die) or you weren't able to afford full armour with a helmet (something I believe is a failure in the game, as you should be able to buy a helmet separately, without having to buy a new vest as well).
* If you win a MP5 round and intend to buy a rifle the next round and none of your team requires your MP5, drop it at end of the round so the gun cannot be retrieved the next round.
* You can increase the teams ammo capacity if you swap guns and buy ammo at start of round for guns that do not share ammo. eg. Colt, AK and AWP.
* BUY UP on last rounds or sudden death rounds regardless.
* Request Rifle while dead or ASAP in spawn if you die and your team is winning. You need the cash to buy armour and grenades, and not having to buy rifle gives you the spare cash to do so.
* State your cash in Team Chat ASAP and at start of each round, so the person calling the strats will know how much you all have and be able to make an informed decision.
* If you have $4,500 or less, ask your team for a gun at the start of the round so you can afford full armour, grenades and a defuse kit. There is no excuse to not be fully kitted out if your team is winning, and you will be more useful to your team.
* If you have over $5,000 and are already fully geared up, offer to buy Rifles for rest of team, ask "Who needs a gun?" You are a lot better off with team mates that have weapons that actually damage and kill the enemy.
* If you have over $10,000 and are already fully geared up, it is very important that you buy Rifles for anybody who has only $7,000 or less. You cannot save more than $16,000, therefore it is better for the teams total cash reserves that you buy a gun for somebody else, rather than have somebody deplete their personal cash reserves when you have so much cash in hand. Feel free to ignore this if you all have over $10,000.
* Learn to calculate the enemies cash position by paying attention to what weapons they had and how difficult or easy it was to kill them. i.e. Did they just lose after ECO for 2 rounds? If so, then its likely they will ECO the next round.
* Always pick up dropped AWP's if you are winning round or have won it. At respawn drop picked up AWP for your clans AWP'er (DO NOT BUY GUN, unless of course you have a lot of cash) Unless they are low on cash, Clan Awper Buys Rifle for the person who drops AWP.
* It can be advantageous to not buy full ammo for guns until you have ensured you have a Defuse Kit, a full complement of Grenades and Armour. Its a real pain in the arse to come up $50 short for full armour just to have 90 Rounds of AK ammo in reserve when you can easily get away with 60 and even 30 can be enough, or to not being able to buy that Smoke Grenade you know you are going to need. Do you really need 30 rounds of spare AWP ammunition?
* If it is the last round of the half and you have lots of cash, buy a Desert Eagle for your pistol, unless you are a Counter-Terrorist who thinks the USP is a better gun.

[edit]
Communication, Sound and Movement

* Get your Microphone working. You can be the best player in the world, but unless you can communicate where the enemy is and in what numbers, you are only half useful, and you are dead when the rest of your team gets annihilated because you didn't tell them the enemy was coming and you are left all by yourself.
* When communicating enemy positions, be precise, and give numbers of players, and weapons when possible.
* Count off dead enemies, start off with 5 Terrorists/Counter-Terrorists, when one dies count one off to yourself, if you are not under pressure announce number of opponents over voice comms, by saying "4 Terrorists", "3 Counter-Terrorists" etc.
* Bind a Radio key, preferably something like; "Enemy Spotted" or "Need Backup" close to your movement keys, so your team mates radar will highlight your current position.
* Pay attention to who kills who with what sort of weapon. Use this information to your advantage. Also if you know where your team mate was shot from with a particular weapon, tell your team the location of that opposition player.
* Call your status out, eg. "Reload", "Throwing Grenade", "Throwing Flash", "Throwing Smoke", "Blind", "I have X Health" etc.
* Other than what I have stated above and below, keep voice and radio chat to an absolute minimum, so your team can pick up enemy sounds as early as possible.
* Have your team agree the names of map positions so everybody knows what you are talking about in the previous points. Even go so far as labelling a map (as shown in the example below) and put it on a web site or transfer it to each of your members some how. You don't even have to agree with the names I given to these locations (dust2 if you're not aware), just as long as everybody on your team knows wtf you are talking about. I may even make some for the war maps later if hassled enough, but don't expect anything to grand.


* The overview images for the warmaps can be downloaded from here. (1.4MB File)
* The overview images for the Counter Strike Source warmaps can be downloaded from here. (2.3MB File)
* Unless rushing in a group, good players when they come around a corner only reveal the absolute minimum of themselves for the shortest time possible, to pick off the next likely camping position. Map knowledge is crucial in this regard and a skill that requires constant practice.
* Don't run behind each other, fan out in as widespread a pattern as possible, so you can't get owned by a single player. You may want to disobey this deliberately if you have a specific flash rush strat, but I think it will be rare.
* Don't block your team mates in, the guy in the line of fire has right of way.
* Do stay as close as possible to your team mates when attacking without blocking your team mates.
* Don't run with your knife out, at least have a pistol out.
* Do run from spawn at the start of round with your knife out when it is your intention to get to a choke point as soon as possible.
* Don't make any noise whatsoever unless you really really have to, (This applies equally to Counter-Terrorists, as it does to Terrorists) one foot step, zoom sound, or weapon switch is all it can take to alert the enemy to your position. This includes throwing grenades, shooting, and switching weapons unnecessarily.
* You can move quickly when there is a lot of gun fire and grenades going off as the sound of Gun Fire, Especially AK's, which will cover the sounds of your footsteps. It is one of the reasons why people use silenced Colts in wars.
* Another reason to use a silenced Colt, is so you can hear the thud of your bullets hitting the enemy when you are shooting through walls, etc.
* Do make a lot of noise if it is your intention to act as a decoy or create a diversion.
* Learn to tell the number of opponents by the sounds of their footsteps. Its easy to pick a lone opponent versus 2 sets of running footsteps, which in turn can usually be differentiated from 3 or more, at which point you are going to be able to say, "there are at least 3 enemy at location X".
* Don't break Windows and Vents when you are close to them, or you need them intact to alert you to possible enemy movement.
* Do break Windows and Vents when you are far away from them and its to your advantage that they punched out. Punching the top vents on de_nuke as Counter-Terrorist, the bottom vents of de_nuke before you plant in the bottom site as a Terrorist, the Vent in the Counter-Terrorists Sniper nest on de_inferno as Terrorists are good examples of these. Don't punch the bottom vents as Terrorists on de_nuke, if there is only 1-2 of you left, since you do not have the player numbers to COVER like you would if you had 4 or 5 players left alive.
* It can be advantageous to pick up other teams guns, so if you are a Terrorist you have a Colt or if you are a Counter-Terrorist you have an AK, since you may get a slight delay in response because opponents cannot tell your gun sound from their own teams gun sound. This slight delay in response time can make all the difference.
* Don't allow yourself to get picked off from obvious camping spots. Learn to know where these camping spots are and avoid them when possible.
* Don't stand still to take on a camped enemy. You will just get spammed to death along with the rest of you team. The entrance to site B on dust2 from the tunnels is a classic example of why you don't stop to take the guys camped outside B double doors. You will die and cause the rest of your team to die as the get stuck behind your lifeless body.
* POINT should be a guy with a rifle excepting special places on maps where an AWP'er should go first. In which case the point man should act as a fast moving decoy to attract fire from snipers, and let your snipers have a free shot.
* POINT always watches the front, and sweeps all corners as you move around map, rest of team watches spots opposition can appear from once the point guy has swept that spot, UNLESS
* Whoever is last in line, looks backward to COVER your backs and should also have a Rifle, unless you are going to hang right back with a AWP.
* Pair up, and make sure you pair up a strong players with a weak players. The weak players should be the point and act as decoy for strong players.
* Don't bait your teammates. That is to say, if you are rushing out, don't let your teammate run out on their own without backup and don't run straight for cover at the first sign of gun fire. This principal is very important when dealing with an opposition AWP, because if you don't move out together, you will get picked off one at a time, when you should be able to go 1 for 1.
* Don't rambo, at least not against good teams/players. If your teammate(s) are 10 meters behind you, they are not really going to be able to give you very good support? If they have just shot a whole clip of ammo, they are going to be reloading right? Why weren't you out there shooting at the opposition as well in the first place? If they have bought grenades, they are going to want to use them at appropriate locations, right? You running out like a headless chicken is not going to help one bit, and ruins the perfectly good flash they were going to throw, because you are now in the way, AND they have to also switch back to a real gun!
* Baiting is a legitimate tactic in wars if done deliberately, especially if it enables your team to eliminate the best player on the opposing team for the loss of only one of your own and preferably weakest players. Done often enough, it destroys the confidence of the good player and demoralises the opposition. Just remember if you are the bait, to give the exact location of the opposition player, don't just run without looking.
* When working in pairs, the front guy should be crouched while the guy right behind him stands. Guys in front should generally be crouched when working their way quietly around a map. Feel free to ignore this if your location is well and truly known to opposition.
* When working in pairs approaching a single sided corner, learn to work out the correct distance you need to be so the inside guy and far side guy reveal themselves at the same time. The inside guy needs to be at the front.
* When approaching entrances with 2 sides, the left hand guy looks right, the right hand guy looks left. I know this sounds like really basic stuff, but I've seen this screwed up often.
* Do shoot close and far corners of walls, doors and boxes as you move around the map, to push opposition players out of position. Practiced enough, you can even get kills this way.
* Do spam walls and boxes of likely camping positions of enemy players as you move around the map.
* When spamming, do not have the whole team doing it at once, learn to alternate between yourselves and only empty half a clip at a time, then reload. This ensures that somebody has a gun out with ammo, and you can cancel your reload sequence if the opposition comes, and not be entirely defenceless.
* You must learn what the good positions on a map are, and what the bad positions on a map are, and you must learn not to get caught out of position that leaves you in a situation where you are going to die for little or no value. eg. Dying without getting a shot off = bad. Dying and killing 3 of the enemy = good. M'kay?
* Know what positions on the map are DeathTraps! Move through these positions as quickly as possible. As soon as the enemy knows you are there, you will be wearing several HE Grenades and that can effectively end the round for you team. Do not be afraid to surrender these positions and fall back. It is often advantageous to cause the enemy to think you are moving into ones of these locations to get them to use up their supply of HE Grenades.
* Crouch when moving up and down ladders, it is slower, but it does not make noise.

[edit]

[mistraele]

Terrorist Notes

* When spawning as Terrorists, everybody should be COVERing entrances to make sure you don't get rushed while you decide what to do.
* Do not buy Glock Ammo EVER!!.
* If the Counter-Terrorists ECO stacks 1 bomb site, don't take them on. Plant the bomb at the other bombsite, then kill them.
* The teams AWP'er(s) NEVER carries the bomb! Unless of course you all have AWP's.
* By rights, your weakest player ought to be the bomb planter, since your better players ought to have their guns out shooting people and not be out of action planting the bomb. Don't feel bad, I'm my clans bomb planter, since the rest of the clan are better shots than I am.
* Decoys and players COVERing away from main body of attack should constantly communicate their position and the position, numbers and disposition (are they pushing up, rushing or holding back) of the enemy.
* If you are hard rushing, only the first 2 guys should be throwing Flashes/Smoke and HE, otherwise you just end up screwing your own team up.
* Drop the bomb in a safe location if you are not 100% sure you will be proceeding in a certain direction.
* If your team drops the bomb, and you need to pick it up, when you get close to the bomb, throw your gun down and pick it up to make the pick up sound to draw camped Counter-Terrorists out of their hiding place.
* The bomb carrier does not lead the charge nor should they be last, they should be the 3rd or 4th person in, so bomb does not get dropped in a heavily defended position, or gets there too late or taken out in back play. If you lose 4 guys without taking out at least 3 Counter-Terrorists or damaging them severely, you are probably going to lose the round no matter what.
* If you are not hard rushing, the bomb carrier should be doing the flashing. As I have explained before, he can't be the decoy, and most likely not have an AWP either. He should be 3rd or 4th in line, which is where you want the Flash guy to be.
* With the new money system in 1.6, it is important that Terrorists plant the bomb, especially in the early rounds. Actually its important to plant the bomb every round, and almost equally important that Counter-Terrorists now stop this from happening. As it is now not the complete disaster for Terrorists it used to be, if they lose the round after planting the bomb.
* The new money system works like this:
o If the round timer runs out you get nothing (Never do this if you only have a pistol, let the CTs kill you)
o If the round timer runs out and you die, you get nothing and lose whatever weapons you are holding (be careful about your cash position when letting the round timer run out, the gun you are trying to save had better be worth it.)
o If you die without planting the bomb, you get $1400 (which increases by $500 per round for every subsequent round lost, to a maximum of $2900) + $300 per kill
o If you plant bomb, die, and Counter-Terrorists defuse and lose, you get $2200 + $300 per kill
o If you plant bomb, die, and win with bomb exploding, you get $3500 + $300 per Kill
o If you plant bomb, die due to the bomb's explosion, and win, you get $3500 + $300 per kill
o If you plant bomb and live you get $3500 + $300 per kill
o If kill all Counter-Terrorists without planting the bomb you get $3250 + $300 per Kill
o If you plant bomb, live and kill all Counter-Terrorists BEFORE bomb goes off you get $3250 + $300 per kill
o If you plant bomb, live and kill all Counter-Terrorists AFTER bomb goes off you get $3500 + $300 per Kill
+ Please let me know if I have got any of those numbers incorrect.
* Don't run to the bomb site with the bomb in your hands and your back to the likely spots the Counter-Terrorists will appear from or where they maybe camped. Bombsite B on de_cbble is a good example of where this happens a lot.
* Protect the bomb planter at all costs. Don't run off leaving them all alone or with no COVER.
* Plant the bomb as wide out in the open as possible. Or previously specified points as per map tactics.
* Do plant the bomb in a hidden spot when you are the last man and you know the opposition is closing in quickly and/or its a 1 v 1 or 1 v 2 situation. You have to make a judgement call here, as to how much time you have to plant.
* Know where to absolutely NOT plant the bomb. There are certain spots on particular maps that you should avoid planting the bomb at all costs. de_train is a good example of having specific parts of the bombsite where you should avoid planting the bomb, since it is possible for the Counter-Terrorists to defuse under almost complete cover with no visual clues that the bomb is being defused. This also includes avoiding bomb planting positions which result in silent planting of the bomb, which will cause your clan to forfeit a war in the GameArena Counter-Strike Ladder
* Be very circumspect about planting the bomb if you have not killed any Counter-Terrorists and you are pretty sure they haven't ECO'ed. Again, make sure the bomb planter is well COVERED while they are planting the bomb.
* Announce bomb plant position. Eg. Dust2 site A you can plant for Long A or Stairs defence.
* Once the bomb is planted, the aim of the game is to delay! delay! delay! Do not engage the enemy if at all possible, just do everything you can to delay the Counter-Terrorists from trying to defuse the bomb. Try not to die doing this.
* Know where the hell you should be once the bomb is planted. Do you really need to be standing next to the Bomb carrier when they plant the bomb? Is there a better position near the bombsite you ought to be in an attempt to stop the opposition retaking the bombsite?
* Check scoreboard and announce enemy numbers and likely incoming locations.
* Use flashbangs as Terrorists to defend planted bomb.
* Use unused smoke grenades to defend planted bomb by throwing them in direction enemy will come from, but in such a way that it doesn't affect your view of the incoming enemy. Do this if for no other reason than to drop the fps and lag out incoming opposition.
* Shoot the corners of walls, boxes and doors of the likely incoming direction of the Counter-Terrorists, as this will delay their approach and likely to damage or possibly kill them. In any case, it will delay the Counter-Terrorists re-taking of the bombsite. On de_dust2, shooting the crates at bomb site A stairs, from the bomb site is a good example of this.
* Don't defend the planted bomb, when you can do it from a safe location. Snipers should COVER long range, rifles should COVER short-range attack. eg. bomb site A plant on de_dust2, sniper takes care of Bomb, AK guy COVERs T Double Doors, split team evenly with emphasis on protecting planted bomb. eg. If we have 3 players left, 2 watch the bomb, 1 watches their backs at double doors.
* When you cannot defend from a safe distance, the guy with the least to lose and/or the most money, should stay near the bomb until the last possible second to ensure the bomb does not get sneakily defused.

[edit]
Counter-Terrorist Notes

* Buy defuse kits, otherwise pick up defuse kits off the ground if you don't have one.
* If you move from your assigned spot as a Counter-Terrorist, communicate your location as you move around the map.
* Don't completely abandon your assigned bombsite when you hear that the other bombsite is under attack until the bomb is planted. The attack on the other bombsite may just be a fake. So leave at least 1 man in or near the bombsite to keep an eye on it in case that was the Terrorist plans all along, or they just change their minds on a map that allows them to do so easily. eg. de_inferno. Listening to your teams calls are crucial. Forget all that if your team has been wiped out from the other bombsite, since it will be highly probable that is where the Terrorists will end up planting.
* If you are a Counter-Terrorist and the bomb is dropped, inform your team immediately. If the bomb is dropped in your favour, everybody on the Counter-Terrorist side needs to converge on that area via the safest possible path as quickly as possible and camp the bomb from the best positions available in that area.
* As Counter-Terrorist, relay to your team the bomb carriers location if you know where they are, or the fact that you have spotted the Terrorists but do not see the bomb carrier.
* Don't defend the bombsites as Counter-Terrorists exactly the same way, every round. You need some variety to your defence, or the Terrorists will wise up (if they even remotely clever) and you will get picked off with grenades, or shot through a wall.
* If you get rushed, use flashes to buy yourself time for re-enforcement's to arrive, or to allow you time to escape. Throw in front of rushing enemy to slow the rush down, or to thin their numbers out, to reduce the numbers that you have to deal with at any one time.
* Don't die to 4-5 man Terrorist rushes, unless you have a really good spot, its better to fall back and have 5 Counter-Terrorists to take back the bombsite than to die needlessly.
* If you cannot defuse the bomb in time, or even get close enough to the bomb in time, stake the bomb site out to pick off fleeing Terrorists. At the very least, and this is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, try to make as many of Terrorists as possible buy again the next round.
* This piece of advice is for both sides, if it is not possible to win the round, make the other team suffer as much as possible by killing as many enemy as you can, or have them die to an exploding bomb, to try to ruin their economy as much as possible. This can make or break clans in wars. eg. If a Clan wins a round and BUY UP and wins again, their players might have around $3000. If they win again without dying, each player on the winning team will have over $6000, if they win the round but die, they will now use up most of the $6000 they had, restocking guns, grenades and armour.
* If you have ECO'ed and are completely out gunned, but still have 5 people left, and the bombsite permits this type of strat, don't even attempt to defuse the bomb as a Counter-Terrorist, but attempt to keep the Terrorists boxed into the bombsite so the bomb explosion kills them. You were most likely going to lose the round anyway, but having all the Terrorists die, forces them to rebuy from scratch, therefore forcing the Terrorists into a likely ECO round if you win the next round after this one. Of course don't do this if its the last round of the half or sudden death round.
* If its 2 v 5, and bomb in planted don't try to defuse, unless it is the last round of the half or sudden death and you have nothing to lose, meet up and camp a position outside bomb site to pick off as many Terrorists as possible.
* If there 1v5, unless it is the last round of the half or sudden death and you have nothing to lose, and you have a good gun and/or armour, run away and hide, or pick safe camping spot to pick off fleeing Terrorists.
* The fastest beeping sounds of the bomb timer means you have approx 7 seconds left to defuse, don't even bother if you don't have a defuse kit. It takes 5 second to defuse with a defuse kit, 10 seconds to defuse without a defuse kit. The defuse timer has to be over 1/3 the way along before the fast beeps start if you are defusing without a kit, otherwise you die.
* If the bomb is planted, as a Counter-Terrorist, don't try to enter the bombsite alone. Try to organise yourselves quickly, look up on scoreboard at how many Terrorists are left and announce via voice comms numbers and likely locations, then communicate what grenades you have, your entry point, and which direction you will head when you enter the bombsite. Grenade and Flash at the same time, and enter bomb site together, and head for your designated point to attack first, so you aren't all aiming for the 1 guy while rest of the opposition shoot you all in the back. This is difficult to do, unless you practise a lot, but it will be the difference between thinking you are good and actually being good, and can prove it. Really good clans have all this stuff prearranged with way points and entry timing and they are left only calling enemy positions. Most clans panic when the bomb has been planted. How quickly and smoothly you can retake a bomb site is an excellent demonstration of your clans skill level.
* Try to kill all Terrorists before you begin defusing.
* If you have time, check corners for hidden campers, waiting for you to start defusing.
* Announce the fact to your team that you have a defuse kit.
* Let the person with the defuse kit defuse the bomb no matter what. If they kill the bomb defuser the defuse kit will be on top of the bomb.
* If you are going to defuse, call out loudly that you are going to go for the defuse, to make sure you don't have 4 of your team running for the bomb and you all get shot in the back by the one hidden terrorist.
* Use Smoke Grenades to Cover the Bomb Defuser.
* Leave your defusing until the last second, so the Terrorists must stay near bomb site and even if they kill you, the bomb still goes off and kills them, forcing them to BUY UP.
* Crouch when defusing, you are a smaller target.
* COVER the bomb defuser, by surrounding him from points where he can be attacked. If there is no opposition left, run away in case he stuffs up, or it is close.
* Don't chase the last Terrorist(s) that are miles away from the bomb site, if the bomb has been planted. They will not usually be an immediate threat, so defuse the bomb or help COVER your bomb defuser. There is a good chance that this lone Terrorist will kill you and then kill the bomb defuser straight after they have defused the bomb, because the bomb defuser will be in a poor position if the bomb is planted correctly and/or just not ready to take on an opponent, so what should be an easy round win ends up being a round win that costs you more than it should have. An example of this is Counter-Terrorists chasing a Terrorist who is up the ladder in the Terrorist Sniper Nest or in the tunnel below it on Inferno after the bomb has been planted.
* Use your Smoke and Flashbang grenades for cover and to slow approaching Terrorists while you are trying to defuse.
* To summarise the order you should select personal (assuming you have time and options) to defuse:
1. Person closest to the bomb with Defuse Kit and most health and most money and weakest member of team
2. Person closest to the bomb with Defuse Kit and most health and most money
3. Person closest to the bomb with Defuse Kit and most health
4. Person closest to the bomb with Defuse Kit
5. Person closest to the bomb
* When faking a defuse, to lure out the final Terrorist protecting the bomb, it is important not to make any movement sounds, and to try to cover the most likely position the Terrorist will come from. Use advice from your dead team mates over voice comms for the likely location of the final Terrorist.

[edit]
Source Notes

* The maps are considerably more complex than they are for 1.6. The basic layouts have remained the same, but there are now a lot more nooks and crannies that have to be checked or taken into consideration when moving around the map, and objects strewn all over the place that restrict your movement and require avoiding.
* All Source Grenades follow a flatter trajectory than their 1.6 counterparts.
* All Source Grenades do not fly as far as they do in 1.6.
* All Source Grenades do not bounce anything like their 1.6 counterparts do when banking them off walls and objects. Sometimes they bounce more, sometimes they bounce less.
* HE Greandes do no damage if you hit somebody with them. They do damage people when they explode though.
* Flashbang Grenades do damage if you hit somebody with them.
* Smoke Grenades do damage to armour if you hit somebody with them.
* Flashbangs blind and deafen you and causes your screen to show a picture (an after image of what you were viewing at the time the flashbang went off) that does not accurately reflect reality.
* Turning away from FlashBangs doesn't do anything to avoid the FlashBang effect
* HE Grenades are more powerful, and also deafen you.
* HE Grenade blasts do not penetrate walls.
* Smoke Grenades are back to the older 1.3 version where they take longer to fully display the smoke, but is thicker than 1.6, and tactically more useful.
* You can see where to aim through smoke by aiming at the oppositions muzzle flashes. If you are spamming through smoke make sure you move after each volley, otherwise you will get picked off.
* Use the fact that Grenades deafen the opposition to cover your footsteps.
* Grenades will eliminate the momentum of a player who is in mid air if it hits them.
* Grenades can be recovered from dead players from either team, so it can be worthwhile keeping and eye out for them, even going so far as using your own supply up, so you can pick them up to deny the opposition access to them, otherwise you may find them being used against you!
* The recoil patterns are different to 1.6.
* Knifing is completely different to 1.6. Don't ask me how it is different, it just is.
* Footsteps are a lot quieter and very difficult to pick up.
* Shadows enabled allow you to see people well before you come around the corner, so be on the lookout for them. Left Hand Side, going down Dark Stairs on Dust2 is a classic example. Be aware that your good camping spot can be given away by your shadow, so know which spots cast shadows that will give your location away. Currently you will need your teammates to tell you what spots cast shadows that enable you to be seen and from where, as you cannot see your own shadow.
* Be aware of the locations and positions you are in, where shadow clipping bugs occur.
* There is no Bomb pick up noise currently. (Possibly Fixed now)
* Hold the fire button down outside the defuse area and the bomb will automatically arm as soon as you get within the bomb planting area. You really should know where you ought to be planting before you even play in a war, but its still useful.
* The Bomb Planted beeps now can be heard from a lot further away now.
* The defuse sound is no longer as audible as it used to be at distance. You have to be considerably closer than in 1.6 to use the defuse sound as a cue to engage the bomb defuser. In most cases you will see them, well before you can hear the defuse sound cue.
* The way people move through the air is different when they jump in 1.6. You need to be aware of this when trying to aim at people jumping around.
* Ambient Sounds which cannot be turned off in Source can cover your footsteps to a certain degree.
* Many walls cannot be shot through like they could in 1.6, although the edges of them usually can be. Don't waste ammo trying to spam people through the wall like you would in 1.6, it will get you killed.
* Most doors and boxes can still be shot through as in 1.6.
* Objects on the maps provide significant amounts of tactical uses, either for the benefit of blocking a choke point, making it more difficult to locate and defuse the bomb, showing that the opposition have passed through a particular area, used to fake the fact you have passed through a particular area.
* Many objects cannot be walked over or jumped on top of, even though normal visual inspection would cause you to assume otherwise, eg. Car Tire, Barrels.
* Doing a "crouch-jump-crouch" will enable you to get on top of boxes that a normal jump-crouch cannot reach.
* You currently cannot select your skin in Source, only the team.
* It is a lot more difficult to tell the 2 teams apart, especially at a distance compared to 1.6. You really need to learn to use your radar well!.
* The Netcode for Source is horribly broken and outside the scope of this article to explain it, the person you think is wall hacking probably is not. You just happen to appear to be on their screen even though you could not see them, and died because of it.
* The Ammo stays with the Gun in Source. If you buy a gun for a Team mate buy Ammo for it as well if you can afford to. It also has the effect that you cannot pick up extra ammo buy picking up and dropping guns.
* Don't camp hard up against thin walls on Source Maps, your models textures will clip straight through the wall and you are easily visible. Walls that are this thin are usually able to be shot through in Source.
* The knife and pistol has the same running speed (currently) in Source. Always run with pistol out rather than knife as opposed to CS 1.6. The Scout actually allows the fastest movement.
* The Galil & Famas has slower running speed (deliberately by Valve) than other rifles of the same class.

[edit]
Other

* All of the above might sound like a lot, but the more you practice, the better you will be at it, and the more you will be able to soak up the information and act accordingly.
* To practice your aim try http://www.missionred.com/ and choose Reflex_2 if you can get past level 10 then your aim won't be the reason you lose. Also you can play Quake 3 CPMA one of the fastest FPS there is. Both of these will improve your aim and reflexes.
* I acknowledge there are contradictions in this document, mainly due to the fact that what will work in one situation may not work in another. In the end you have to use your own judgement as to what you are going to do, depending upon the situation you are in, how many players are alive on your team, their condition and what weapons you have. Experience is your best guide.

[Orh LuLu]

wah lau uncle.. thats a veri long guide.. thanks for sharing.

I m sticking to GAME BOY.

[totoseow]

its a basic guide..but...in reality....most of the tactics dun work. u playing agst other thinking human beings....they change, adapt, make mistakes..get lucky etc....

[mistraele]

hey

that www.missionred.com game quite good practise.... wonder who here can get the highest score!

[gadaffi]

wow, so long ar...
good guide though

[mistraele]

Pumpin'J.Fry's Rantings
From Whisper's Wiki

Hello. This is Pumpin'J.Fry speaking.

No matter how good you think you are, I beat you without even breaking a sweat. I can go AFK and still be better than you. And I look better at it. So you better fucking listen up: I have not only spent the best part of my life playing and becoming GOD at this game, I have also gone to great lengths to understand why I am doing what I am doing, so I can explain it to worthless losers like you. In short: I am your fucking Messiah.

You might guess it at this point: this guide is not meant for the bloody beginner. I will not tell you how to start CS with the console or some shit. I will not give individual strategies for each map. I will not give you tactics for clan wars or pubs in specific. I will tell you stuff that you won't read anywhere else. This will be testament to much how more manly I am than you and everyone else.

This guide is also and invariably part rant with a very personal color: I will not only tell you how to play Valve's Counter-Strike, I will tell you how to play the game that will come after Counter-Strike. I will teach you about the basics of any computer game. I will teach you about life, because Counter-Strike is not just a fucking video game, it is a religion, and I am your fucking Messiah.

This is an advanced guide. If I tell you to rush B hard on Vertigo or some phony shit like that, I expect you to know what I mean. If you don't know what that means, read Whispers very basic War strategies or any other Counter-Strike strategy guide. There aren't many good ones because most people, that feel the need to get better, instead end up downloading cheats. In fact I expect you to read every damn guide on the whole stupid internet and save this one for last.

Most people are too fucking incompetent at getting better at anything. Most people are goddamn worthless at life. That is why they need guidance, a teacher that can beat some living sense into their stupid asses. You are here because you are such an idiot that wants an educational beating, and I have plenty of those available.

You are a player of middling skill. You sometimes own the map, you sometimes eat the dust, and you can't explain either. It just happens. Maybe you cannot cope with the terrible feeling of total worthlessness when you lose and have begun to download cheats so you hardly ever suck real bad.

This state of sometimes being shitty, and sometimes playing great is what all middling players have in common. You have not understand the more abstract underlying concepts of the game, not intuitively and not on an abstract level. Your aim should be to understand the game in both ways, with your intuition, your feelings, as well as your reasoning, that allows you to talk about this.

This guide, being in text form, invariably can only stimulate your abstract understanding of the game. In order to school your intuition, you would have to play against me, and experience true awesomeness with your own eyes and heart. But with abstract understanding, you can school your intuition to a level where it becomes more than just an useless waste of conflicting thoughts. You have to understand the game in every respect to become truly godlike at it. But this is far away. Right now, you swallow the cock. To become godlike, you will have to dedicate your very soul to the game - Anything less will make you merely another sucker of middling skill, cannon fodder for cheaters and awesome players.

Once you understand the game on a whole new level, you will manage to always rock. When you get the feeling "Oh I suck" only occasionally, you are not on this level yet. Keep this in mind the next time you play. And shut the fuck up while I'm talking.

...to be continued...
Contents
[hide]

* 1 First things first
* 2 Class basics
o 2.1 Snipers
o 2.2 Riflemen
o 2.3 CQB
+ 2.3.1 Submachine Gunner
+ 2.3.2 Shotgunner
* 3 Map basics
* 4 Movement
* 5 Teamwork
* 6 Skill Management
o 6.1 Food
o 6.2 Physical Health
o 6.3 Focus
* 7 Psychology
o 7.1 Dealing with losing
o 7.2 Social Dynamics
o 7.3 Dealing with winning
* 8 The next level
* 9 Review

[edit]
First things first

First a couple of things you need to set up because you otherwise unnecessarily limit your ascend to a manly and awesome playstyle.

1. Controls. I recommend WERD (on a QWERT* keyboard) because this allows you to keep the necessary keys under control while relaxing your hand. WASD always requires you to sort of keep your hand tight and will tire you out more quickly. Also the travel times to the numeric keys are shorter with WERD, reducing the time you need to pick a grenade or knife. Put slot1 and slot2 additionally on your mousewheel, allowing you to quickly switch to your secondary and back with the mouse.
2. Network settings. Find a good guide online to get you started with that. The CS engines have built in delays that will artificially inflate your reaction times. Most classically, interp should be as low as you can bare, but everyone seems to have their own preferences about that, and some leagues require you to set it to a specific value. Remember: interp of 0.1 means 100 ms extra delay. That is in addition to the 100ms of delay that is built into the engine, and your ping to the server, and your reaction times.
3. Frames per second. They are vital, you want constant max FPS. If your framerate dumps to 20 during a firefight, even for just a single frame, you are again losing precious reaction time. A good player will put a lethal bullet through your face in about 150-200 ms. Now recalculate your chances when a framerate of 20 means an additional delay of 50 ms from your computer to your eyes. Get decent hardware if necessary, tone down the details, but don't skimp on the screen resolution.
4. Buyscript, you want one of those. I suggest you write one yourself, because the ones downloadable are mostly toys that have no place in a real game. You want to be able to go from zero to go in at most two seconds, without picking the wrong weapon, without wasting unnecessary money, and with all the items that you want.

[edit]
Class basics

Now that you're already 5% less worthless than before, forget everything that you believe you know about the game, because it is wrong. Absolute shit. Forget everything that you've read somewhere else, forget every little dumb habit that you picked up while pwning noobs when you went pubbing or warring.

Counter-Strike is a class based shooter.

There are only 4 classes in the game, and while it is important to be at least somewhat proficient in all classes/types/styles, most players tend to gravitate towards one style. A big giveaway of what class someone is, is their mouse sensitivity in relation to their mouse DPI. Mouse acceleration being off, most players have a sensitivity of 3-10 at a mouse DPI of 800. With mouse acceleration being on, most players have a sensitivity of 2-4.
[edit]
Snipers

Mouse acceleration ON
Sensitivity 1-3 @ 800 DPI
Strong against
Rifles
Weak against
Submachine guns

Snipers are carrying, surprisingly, the sniper rifles. With the exception of the Scout, a sniper rifle makes its carrier invariably very slow. The long range a sniper takes his targets on is reasoned by his relative advantage: With the sniper scope and the powerful bullet, the sniper enjoys a considerable advantage against all rifles at a long range. But at the same time, the inability to quickly spray make him weak against the faster Submachine gunners, that can often pin him down at medium range with spray fire.

The autosnipers however are not so much designed to actually kill people, instead, they are meant to provide long range cover fire, meant to pin down an enemy advance.
[edit]
Riflemen

Mouse acceleration
OFF
Sensitivity 2-5 @ 800 DPI
Strong against
Submachines guns
Weak against
Snipers, Shotguns

The rifleman is the meat and potato soldier of Counter-Strike. Rifles are powerful and flexible, allowing a Rifleman to play like a sniper in one moment, like a submachine gunner the next, and like a true rifleman the very next moment. Rifles pay with their flexibility with a price - They are expensive and slow their user down considerably.

The classic way of using a rifle is the burst fire, that most newbies adapt to within a few days of training. More advanced players learn how to control the weapon going full auto at long range.
[edit]
CQB

Mouse acceleration
OFF
Sensitivity 5-10 @ 800 DPI

The Close Quarters Battle guy is divided into two subsections, the Shotgunner that almost invariably uses the M3 Pump gun, and the Submachine gunner.
[edit]
Submachine Gunner

Strong against
Snipers, Shotguns
Weak against
Rifles

The submachine gunner is the backbone of any CS army. The cheap guns mean they are available at basically any time in the game, sparing this player from ever having to miss a decent weapon after the first round.

Unfortunately for the submachine gunner, submachines are not very powerful to begin with, and become exceedingly useless at long or ultra long range. His fast speed allows him to often dodge Snipers' deadly payload but he does not stand a chance against a rifle unless in a head on surprise suicide rush.
[edit]
Shotgunner

Strong against
Rifles
Weak against
Submachine guns

An increasingly common sight in CS:Source, the shotgunner's supreme agility allows him to often dodge even concentrated rifle fire, and his supreme firepower in the close range can let him quickly dispatch anything not fast enough to evade his slow gunfire.

The task of a Shotgunner is to lead the pack, drawing fire onto him and dispatching suicide rushers as well as campers.
[edit]
Map basics

The general design of a Counter-Strike map is that there are two starting points, and there are 2-3 ways to get from one to the other. Some maps have up to 4 ways, giving the attacking team the advantage of forcing the defending team to greatly divide its powers to secure each entry point. A map with only 2 entrance points on the other hand is of great delight to the defending team, which can use grenade spamming or simple bullet spamming to deter the attacking team indefinitely.

Often two individual ways cross each other. These sections are tactically important because an individual defending this point is basically worth two people guarding the individual entry points. An example is classic dust, where the balcony above the tunnel on the CT side allows a man to guard both the tunnel as well as the central building. But this comes at a price: Alone in such a position, one can be easily compromised by coordinated enemy action.

All entry points can be judged in a wide range of aspects. What is going to be the range of an engagement there? How much cover is there? Camping spots? How many people can reasonably rush through there fast without blocking each other or crossing fire lines? Do you need more snipers or a shotgunner in front? What is the worst the other side can do in there?

It is of utmost important to learn all maps by heart. If you see an enemy move through a gate, you must already know where you can intercept him - if you can intercept him at all. You must know the timings: How long until he arrives at point X,Y? Using the silenced colt, what is the max range the enemy can hear you? Practice each map until you DREAM about it. One of the key unrealistic aspects of Counter-Strike is that you are playing through the same encounter time after time after time. In real life, you never get that second chance to do the exact same thing a bit differently. In real life, every situation is a new and different: not so in CS - Exploit it as much as you can. Future CS like games will be MMO and have huge worlds so every encounter will be in a different place. Thus it is important not only to learn each map by heart, but also to learn what all maps and all gameplay shares.
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Movement

Knowing how and when to move is the key skill of Counter-Strike. Most noobs and mongoloid retards believe "Skill" in CS would actually mean "how fast and how accurate can one put the crosshair onto another dude's head". While that latter notion should not be completely dismissed, as the game does require ones ability to hit someone's head quickly, ultimately it is only the most basic skill any computer mouse user has: Point and click. The level of complexity involved is exactly two figures: An X coordinate and an Y coordinate - or in spherical notation, two angles.

Movement on the other hand is infinitely more complex. Do you move into cover or do you exploit your agility in the open range? Do you move before, while, or after you throw a flashbang? Do you try to get close to the enemy or do you try to sneak up his back? To give you an idea of what really is skill in this game, consider this: Even the cheapest type of AI, the aimbot, can pull off insane headshots. But to date, and I dare to say, for a long time in the future, nobody has even managed to create an AI that can move as eloquently as a skilled human being.

Aiming skill and movement skill influence each other. Someone who is faster at dispatching enemies even at the long range will not need to move as elegantly as someone who has no aim skill whatsoever to get similiar success. Vice versa, someone who dances through the levels like a ballerina on crack can get to almost point blank range to the most fearsome of enemies, where he does not require any great deal of aiming to quickly end his enemy's existence.

This goes without saying, some people are more adapt at movement, and some people are more adapt at aiming. This is the key factor that decides whether someone's talented for being a CQB guy or a sniper, for example.

The reason why movement is so underrated is cheating. Aimbots, and less obviously wallhacks. A skilled CQB man can often out-wit human aiming by moving erratically, exploiting even the tiniest advantages that the map offers to him, and using superb timing to evade the shots. Aimbots however do not make any mistakes, they cannot be confused, and most importantly, they do not get tired. A human player has to expend a great deal of mental energy in the form of concentration and focus to be able to hit a skilled CQB, which is why in the short run, the sniper often initially has the upper range, but as he gets tired, completely loses the ability to hit the broad side of a barn. With aimbots, this does not happen: The aimbot does not get tired. Similiarly, even a wallhack can allow a cheater to play much more relaxed as he has all the time in the world to prepare for shooting someone, not needing to keep up his guard to be able to shoot an enemy within the 0.1s that are often required.

Since most of you pussies are completely worthless at the game, and you cannot cope with its rough, brutal nature, many of you have begun to cheat to camouflage the fact that you are too much of a sissy to play this game like it was intended. There's so many pussies like that playing the game that the recognition of the importance of movement skill has completely eluded the mainstream gamers. "Skill" in the game means "How fast you get the crosshair on top of someone's head", reducing the wonderful, rich and complex game of CS into an opengl variant of clickity, where most of the players don't even do the mouse part themselves, or only with serious facilitation. Wankers.

Now, what's the secret to movement? I suggest you build a time machine and travel back to a time where not every other player in the game cheated, so you may actually experience the ability to skillfully evade bullets for yourself. Attempting to practice moves can be pretty hard if half the players in the game cheat one way or another, because one gets a false impression of what works and what does not. And most importantly, of course, it would mean that you would need to get your faggot ass to stop cheating, which, in my experience, you simply can't do because you're too much of a Vagina to play this game the manly way.
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Teamwork

Teams are great. In fact, that is the whole point of CS, that you have team objectives. The purpose of any war or soldier is never to kill another set of armed men. War is not fought to kill armed men, instead, war is about resources, and killing unarmed women and children.

The whole point of the game is that you can theoretically win the round without even shooting a single bullet, without killing a single individual. By just completing the team objectives. The only reason why you would ever engage in the dangerous and often fruitless work of killing other armed men is that they keep you from doing your objectives.

The purpose of the game is not to kill, or to survive, the purpose is only to complete the objective. Your life is worthless, so is the enemy's. And it is almost always easier to complete the objective than to kill every last man on the map. This has to be kept in mind when designing a team, because it is not good enough to design a team that can kill every enemy, if another design would less ably do that, but have a better chance at completing the objectives.

The first thing you have to learn about teamwork is to operate as a two man unit. This is the very first thing that you should practice: Find some guy that you can rely on and play with him. Stick together, move together, kill together, die together. You'll get the hang of it eventually.

Some retards will tell you teamwork would be where to distribute camping spots. Like, on italy, position two snipers in the house, one there, one here, one over there. That is bullshit and has about as much to do with teamwork as Sex: Everybody on his own is just a wanker that knows about other wankers. Only when people get together, it is a real orgy.

Furthermore, camping does not require any skill. Check out that day 1 noob and what he does in the game: He camps. Why? Because it does not require any skill whatsoever, except for being able to point and click, something which even my dear mother thanks to her years of Solitaire has mastered now. If you want to play Solitaire, go fucking play Solitaire, but leave CS to the pros. The only thing in the game that actually requires skill is attacking. Incidentally, this is also making it the only thing where you need actual teamwork.

So, first practice two-man teams. You will soon find that this can already teach you everything you need to know about teamwork, and that any increase of the number, 3 men, 4, 5, 6 men, is just that - an increase of quantity of teamwork, that does not change the quality in any way.

The first thing you'll learn is that it is advantageous to have different people in a team. Instead of everyone going rifles for example, you should rather combine a rifleman with a sniper, or a CQB man with a rifleman. The reason for this is that if you use different classes, the different classes can make up for the other's weaknesses and play out their individual strengths.

The different classes have different tasks in an advance, and most important is the order in which is advanced. Ideally, CQB guys should always be in the front. The reason for this is that the CQB guys, of all classes in the game, have the highest survivability of enemy fire: When unexpected contact is made, the CQB guy's task, before all others, is to draw fire onto him, away from his team. Riflemen and snipers can then dispatch the enemies while they are busy firing at the CQB man, something which would not be possible if the man in the front would be a rifleman or sniper, even.

If the riflemen and snipers are worth their salt, they can often neutralize the enemy threat before the CQB bites the dust. This is called covering: The man in front draws the fire, and the others save his ass while he is busy doing the Matrix thing to the other bullets.

Even when it happens that the man in front instantly dies, due to a particularly lucky sniper or headshot, this still means there is a time window for the backup guys to exploit: Whenever someone fires a weapon, he is not able to fire a similiarly accurate shot for a small amount of time, just below 1 second. SMGs often do not have enough lethality in their magazine for killing a second guy right away, rifles have ludicrous recoil, and snipers just fire very very slowly.

Within that time window, even when the front man is dead, the backup can exploit the situation and avenge his death before the enemy has realigned his aim. Any sort of hesitation will allow the enemy to realign, and will have made the sacrifice of the front man in vain. This is the reason why you should not only move in a certain order, with CQBs in front, followed by rifles, and lastly, snipers, this is the reason why you should have a certain distance to each other. Distance here should be measured in time: How long it takes for the guy #2 to pass the same point as guy #1. This ideal distance is about 0.5 to 1 seconds. Too close will reduce the agility of the front man and not give the backup man enough time to react soon enough. Too far away will not give the backup man the chance to retribute within the small timespan that the enemy's aim is unaligned. This is what requires the most practice, and what requires individual members of a team to get to know each others habits of movement and fire.
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Skill Management

Skill Management is one the key that differs average players from GREAT players. Skill management means essentially, play in top shape.

Most average players when they play pubs for a long time notice something weird: Sometimes, for a map's duration, they totally own, and at other times, they completely bite. This is no accident, there are many reasons for this happening. First and foremost, the most obvious is that team dynamics on pubs are, well, dynamic and change a lot. That shitty 3-12 player that you chuckled at before that has left might actually have been more beneficial to your team than the 15-5 player that's still in it. Or vice versa, when a map changes on a pub, the teams are usually rerolled more or less randomly. CS itself also has a few imbalanced mechanisms: The winning team gets more money than the losing team, making it have more likely better weapons, ammo, kevlar, grenades etc, further enhancing its advantage. This latter aspect can be verified if the initially losing team manages just to win long enough for the winning team to be broke - and then doesn't win again.

The game involves a lot of luck. Not just bullet luck, but also tactical luck. That tactical move you did there might have been, in retrospect, a rather dumb idea. Or it just didn't work out because the enemy happened to do something that crossed your plans. There are many reasons that people are aware of why they sometimes own and sometimes suck, but one of the reasons that most people, especially the average people are not aware of, is their own skill management.

Normally, for a normal adult's biological energy consumption, about 40% the nervous system can be accounted for. Now when you're playing a highly stressful video game like CS, that requires top notch levels of concentration, focus, reaction times etc, while at the same time leaving the entire rest of the body completely atrophied, that percentage may go up to well 70-90%. That means, 70-90% of the energy that your body consumes while you play CS is just for your nervous system.

People tend not to realize that they indeed can get mentally tired. Playing CS results in a lot of hormones being injected into your body, first and foremost, adrenaline, and endorphines. Both of these endogenic drugs make you less aware of your physical plights. You feel brightly awake when you are in fact totally tired. In addition to that, the ability to feel one's nervous system's exhaustion is only very limited: Muscles hurt when they're overused, brains do not.

So what happens is this, apart from the whole team / game dynamics: You, as a middling player, start playing and eventually you get into situations where you start using your top notch reactions. You get to be alive more often, missing the forced breaks due to death. Your nervous system completely exhausts its chemical energy over a short period of time, but you don't realize it because the hormones, mostly the adrenaline, keeps you alert. Eventually your nervous system is so totally exhausted that it stops to function properly - and you start to suck. During this phase of sucking, your nervous system ist trying to regenerate itself. And all of that happens without you consciously realizing it.

Now, what to do about it? The next thing that you have to realize is that you can train yourself, your nervous system. If you for example, limit yourself to a certain amount of ownage, you will not exhaust your nervous system as dramatically, and thus will not suck as heavily later on. This means that you need to practice playing calm and in a relaxed way for long periods of time - Eventually to the point where you play sloppy and relaxed constantly, without ever starting to suck real bad except for after really long periods of time, when hunger, sleep deprivation etc start to kick in.

If you are a clan warrior however, and need to participate in clan wars, what you want is to train yourself to be in the best shape possible for a period of about 30 minutes to 1 hour, which is approximately how long a clan war takes. So, you want to train for 30 minutes to 1 hour at a time, timing it, seeing how long you can keep up a certain niveau, figuring out what niveau you can keep up for the necessary time. In short, practice for like, 1 hour at a time AND THEN STOP. Take a break, at least one more hour, go watch some TV read comics, go masturbate. Might seem counter-productive to actually train less, but if you train your mind to play for 2 hours or more, you play more sloppily during a clan war that you actually would have to.

You also need to realize that you can actually improve your mental endurance, not just by improving technique (playing more relaxed, even sloppy, yet still achieving better results) but also by improving your mind's endurance. Think of your brains like of a marathon runner: You can run real fast for 100m, slightly slower for 800m, but if you want to run those 42 kilometers without getting an aneurisma, you need to jog slowly and relaxedly - And will be able to jog slightly faster with improved training.

Ultimately, playing CS on a high level is nothing different from any other sport: You need to manage your energy and your skills. You can't run a marathon like you would a 100m run. You can't knock out Will Smith's Muhammed Ali if your circulatory system makes you pass out after 2 rounds. You can't expect to win the Tour the France by spurting all the time - unless of course your blood consists of 90% dope which ironically makes your balls fall off.

This is also relevant for detecting cheaters: Every human player with some skill/talent can play like an aimbot, but no human player can keep up this level of concentration for more than 10 or 15 minutes - maybe 20 if he is world class, training 10 hours a day. Meaning, don't worry if you see someone play like an aimbot for 5 minutes. It doesn't mean much unless he does it in a really obvious way. If you see someone play just like an aimbot for an hour or so however... get his ass banned and torch his house, burning all evidence after you tortured him to death in a three day sadistic spree.
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Food

Food is also an important aspect of skill management. I recommend lots of raw meat. Its not exactly the wisest thing from a dietary point of view, but at least it'll make you grow some facial hair and give you the kind of balls that you need to play this game and not give everyone the impression of watching a little girl.

But more importantly of course is the drinks. Best thing is some sort of cola: It has lots of sugar (Energy for your nervous system) as well as caffeine (which helps you staying alert and awake). Beware of diabetis however.

I know at this point I should probably say you shouldn't do alcohol. Alcohol makes you dumb, and worsens your reaction times, so it should definitely not be a beverage to regularly play CS on. But here's the thing: If you're a clan warrior or something and you're before an important match, and your spirits are low, meaning, you think you suck and have no chance, take a good nip of that 55% Russian spirit. Having slightly lower reaction times or being dumb is not as bad as being a dumb loser in your mind. A bit (I repeat: a BIT) of alcohol may be able to relieve your fears and make you play better overall.

Oh, and crack cocaine. I suggest you adopt that habit. Bit expensive but no drug is more adequate when you just need to get into the mindset of KILL KILL KILL.
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[mistraele]

cont'd

Physical Health

Two words: Work out. It is good for your mind if your body is in top shape as well, so you want keep your body in top shape, it'll also make you more confident in general, which is also good for the game. You don't need to hit the gym. That would involve you going outside and ruining your great gamer/monitor tan. Well, maybe not at night. You can do a lot of great physical exercise in the comfort of your house, and I am not talking about an eXtr3me masturbation Marathon.

Just keep your body in shape. You're going to be an unstoppable killing machine in the game, so why feel anyhow different when you go buy a new mouse because you've broken your old one again after only two months. Fucking cheap chinese mice. Oh, buy Logitech, they're the best. There's no point in becoming a bruiser or some such thing, but you want to have a circulatory system that doesn't pass out when you move your comp to a BYOPC Lan Party. Aluminium cases are for wimps and girlies. Are you a lady? Should I take that heavyweight steel big tower for you? Yeah? Thought so, faggot.

And for the love of god don't smoke. That is real hard, because as a professional CS faggot, you'll spend a lot of time in front of the computer, which invariably means a lot of time waiting for the computer to accomplish a certain task, which means you get a lof of opportunity just to smoke a cig and return to work. Cigarettes are bad. They make you dumber and slower, and less alert overall. And you don't want to get a craving in the middle of a freaking gunfight, do you? You wouldn't even notice it because of the adrenaline, but you still do. So, don't smoke.
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Focus

This is something you should be aware of but also your loved ones that aren't familiar with intensive computer gaming. When you play a highly addictive game like CS, you start to zone out. Your mind's focus is solely on the game, and when you've done it for years, your brain becomes very good at that technique. It is a good thing happening, because it'll allow you to faster get "warm" in the game and get overall better at it.

Now the problem is, when you stop playing the game, you can't be talked to for a while. Depending on what your training schedule is, that can be half an hour or a full hour that you need to recover and become a functional being in the real life again. Your mind needs to readapt to the real life thing for a while after you've stopped playing. During this time, you will not be able to talk a lot or do anything that wouldn't be mundane.

This is something that I first experienced when I was a kid living at my mom's place. My mom would go up me and tell me some bullshit while I was focused on gaming. My mind isn't able to even acknowledge her existence when I'm gaming, because I am zoned out. These days it happens with girlfriends rather than mothers, so its just women being oblivious to the finer details of being a CS addict.

When you've played a game for a while and you're zoned out, explain that to your girlfriend/wife/mother. Tell her to shut her filthy hole and make you some coffee, and if she doesn't, beat her. If you've learned one thing from CS, nothing expresses intimate love as much as physical violence.

This goes to you mothers, girlfriends and wifes: DO NOT TRY TO TALK TO THE GUY WHILE OR RIGHT AFTER HE'S BEEN GAMING. He will not be capable of conversing like a human being, because he didn't play WoW or some other graphical chatroom, he played a REAL, DEMANDING MANGAME. And he's probably good at it too. If there is something that you need to tell him real bad, write it down on a post it note, and stick it to the computer's monitor's side. He will read it in time, and understand it. Do not obfuscate his view or try to distract him, because if he isn't a lesbianized faggot he'll rightfully kick you in your stupid ovaries. He's busy. Get lost. If you're horny because you've watched your favorite soap opera's protagonist having promiscuous sex with a stranger, make him a note and go slap that monkey but LEAVE THE GUY IN PEACE. He'll take care of you when he's ready to refocus on you.

For a good transition from CS land/computer land back to the real world, I recommend TV. A talk show or something like that, that will allow you to realign with how humans interact with each other when they don't have fully automatic rifles.

All of this does not just apply to gaming, but also to hackers that are trying to code or fixing computer problems or some similiar shit. All of these activities require 100% focus on the problem and human interaction is merely distractive and has to be zoned out.
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Psychology

One of the most fascinating aspects of CS is the psychological aspect.

The first thing you have to understand in that respect is how CS is different from other games. In Counter-Strike, you actually fear for your life. In most games, you get blasted and can't do much about it, and respawn a few seconds later.

CS is somewhat realistic. Abstract and all that, but still somewhat realistic. In CS you can run. You can hide. At the same time, dying means you have to sit the end of the round out. Being pumped on adrenaline, those 1-2 minutes can easily appear like an eternity or two.

These two factors make CS the most thrilling game out there. Killing is fast and also unpredictable, random: Even a newb gamer can unconciously capitalize on the mistake of a seriously good player and quickly dispatch him with a lucky shot. So the only strategy that ensures a long survival is extremely defensive play.

But then there's the team objectives. They need to be taken in the first place, just hanging around the spawn is not going to help you very much, because ultimately, the team objectives are the only thing that matters. Killing folks is dangerous, unrewarding and often counterproductive when the team objective is taken into account.

The key difference between good players and seriously awesome players is not in their moves or skills, but purely in how they can psychologically manipulate their opponents.

Clan warfare is often done with more professional players than pubbing, but the same effects still apply. If you've been totally pwned in one place - Not just shot down, that is perfectly normal and part of the game, but instead, simply raped - you will probably not want to bring yourself into that situation right again, because you expect the exact same thing to happen again. This is your irrational fear.

Awesome players keep track of who they killed where and how badly. Within a few rounds, they know the psychological traits of their opponents as much as of their own teams. And then they can start to manipulate their opponents.

Control, domination, ownership of the map, means, you decide what happens where. You decided to kill that guy with the AWP, you decided to get shot in the back with an UMP by that lame ass camper. You decide what is going on on the map, and you have the force, the skills, to force feed it to your enemies.

The most important and obvious form of map control is manipulation of location. You can train your opponent to go into one direction, to camp in one spot or one set of spots. You can train your opponent as far fearing one place and preferring another.

The second thing you can manipulate is their choice of weapons, although there are more limitations. While regardless of you training them, people's weapon preference will still be much more powerful than their locational preferences. Someone who uses deagle/AK all the time will not be easily brought on to use the 552 instead. But there the game is again helpful to you: Because you can modify what sort of money the enemy can have access to, you can modifiy what sort of weapons the enemy has access to. If you use the game mechanics to keep your opponent stripped of money, you can control what weaponry he uses because you limit his options. This is why killing people isn't so bad: Dying costs money, you need to replace that kevlar, those grenades, and certainly the gun. If you frequently kill your opponent, he'll be notoriously cash stripped.

This is what the high level game is about: Domination. A player that truly dominates can control every aspect of his opponent. He decides - intuitively or expressively - where he moves, what he does and how good he does it. This is an advantage that is far greater than any other advantage in skill or whatever - but to get this advantage you do need skill.
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Dealing with losing

This is a point of utmost importance: Most people dont know how to properly deal with being on the losing end of the map. Their enemy dominates them, and they simply have no clue what is going on. They simply die over and over and over, and nothing that they seem to be able to do changes it.

What needs to be understood here? The enemy is controlling you. He dominates the map - depending on how good he knows to play his cards, he decides where you move, how fast, how good you aim, and what weapon you use. Of course a player skilled in these psychological aspects will then use this to kill you over and over. More team oriented players may try to make sure they can complete the team objective each time.

And if you continue to play as you just did (which led to your destruction) nothing will change. You can try a different place, a different gun, a different strategy. Nothing of this will work, because you are still under the psychological control of your enemy.

What you need to do is surprise him. Take control away from him - ignore team objectives if necessary, anything for that round or two, but you absolutely must shake off his control. There's several ways to do this, but in general, you can sum them up as you take his control away. Surprise him - Do something that he did not expect. This means you need to outsmart him. Disrupt him: If you can confuse the enemy's strategy for just once, you may have broken his mental lock on you. But the first thing you obviously need to do is to defeat your own fear of your enemy.

You are scared, which is why your enemy can drive you in the direction that he wants you to be, that is the primary way of how he can control you. All those attempts to get control back - to scare him of you - will fail if you are still scared.

My personal suggestion for beginners at psychological warfare is to suicide bumrush your enemy when you lose. If you're good at this, you can take down 1-2 people - but more importantly is, that by suicide rushing, you completely obliterate his control. If you suicide rush, you decide, consciously or intuitively, that you are going to die but so will the enemy, and there's nothing he can do about it if he doesn't expect it.

Rush as hard as possible, fast and ruthless. Now, in doing this successfully, you have gained back control. It suddenly allows you to train your enemy - If you'd be shot by a gun-crazy maniac in that one alley, you'll probably try something different the next round. Be agressive, and don't let anything scare you. If you run into 5 people at once - all the better, you don't even need to aim to hit them. Start to scare them. You can suicide bumrush people with the cheapest weaponry, but you definitely need skills.
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Social Dynamics

Most clans, teams, etc, only have one truly awesome player at best. More is unlikely because of social dynamics, one is the alpha male, the others follow. High level clans are not different in this than low level clans - someone will take the lead, in higher level clans, the weakest player is just way better than anyone in a weak clan. If you're up vs a clan or just on a pub, figure out who is having a spree - and then take all measures to disrupt that spree. Ignore everything else, it does not matter if you live or die, as long as you can take out the alpha male that is having his spree. If you can disrupt that, the entire enemy team will suffer psychologically: If their alpha cannot control you, who can?

If you kill the guy who is calling the shots, you will confuse and frustrate him. He will begin to make increasingly more mistakes, which will adversely affect his whole team. Which is why many good players, intuitively or not, try to attack the strongest player, rather than avoiding him.

Weak players on the other hand that are not familiar with psychology in CS, usually try to avoid the strong player, and instead try to get kills or complete team objectives while avoiding him. But, without them being aware of it, they are under his control, and will fail to defeat him because they already have decided, subconciously that they can not win against him, and that they can only survive for as long as they do not encounter him.
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Dealing with winning

Of course most people will assume that the only thing important is to win, and once you do that, everything else is just sugar on top. But even when winning, when you are in control of the game - even if for just a moment - there are things that you need to consider.

First of all, you will have to be aware of the counter-strategies and know how to counter them. The most important thing is to be unpredictable, even when you are winning: As soon as the enemy, even if he is losing, can predict your moves, he can find a way to counter them. If he cannot predict your moves, he cannot counter them, unless he purely gets lucky. If you're winning, never take the same route twice, and then take the same route three times in a row just to fuck with them. Just because you're winning doesn't mean that you are not losing control of the game when you become predictable. Be so unpredictable that you cannot even yourself predict your unpredictability.

Second, and this is probably more important, is the difference between pubbing and clan wars. On a pub, you play for relaxation or very simple training. In a clanwar, you want to win - for sheer sportsmanship, for the rewards, for your own glory and fame, whatever. Sportsmanship is important, the game does not work, its not interesting to anyone, not yourself, not for the enemy, not for GOD HIMSELF if you do not try to win. This is where it counts, and just because you seem to have all advantages over your enemy, you must abstain from letting your guard down for the added challenge.

But on a pub, there is no such thing as winning or losing, because you are in an essentially random team, vs another essentially random team, with members switching all the time. So on a pub, when you are really good and get to be in control of the game, especially your enemies, use this to practice stuff that you normally wouldn't. See how long you can keep control of the game with just a glock. Learn to train your enemies into rushing or camping certain spots. Learn how to use the damn psychology of CS.

Intuitively, most players, when winning too hard, start to make increasingly more mistakes as a type of handicap. If you are consciously aware of this, you can use it in pub games to practice, and prevent yourself from doing so in clan wars.
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The next level

Unfortunately, cheats have been in CS for a very long time, they cannot be stopped in online leagues, and the logical consequence is that by now, the cheater quota in the higher ranks of online leagues is approaching 100%.

It is possible to ensure a cheat free game in a LAN with policed, controlled and dedicated computers, but as the majority of the gameplay, practise as well as tournament, is online, and most lan parties do not even have the means to ensure a cheat free environment due to subtle aimbots, most people have never developed a "next level" gamestyle that does not base its foot on cheating.

Cheating changes the game in many ways. Not only is it a welcome excuse when you get killed in a weird way, it downright destroys the joy of gaming when even one cheater starts to mess up the whole game.

There's people arguing that the cheat suspicions and the accusations are worse than the cheats themselves. This is nonsense, in fact, it is so utter nonsense that you should immediately strangle to death anyone who spouts pure idiocy like that. Accusations and suspicions can be ignored, if necessary by removing the chat function of the game - cheats can not. The only ones who profit from perpetuating the notion of accusations being worse than the crime are those who commit the crime.

But I want to explain to you how the next level of CS looks like. Have you ever read top clan's strategy guides on how to win maps, rounds, general strategies, stuff like that? It is all nonsense. Usually these tactics revolve around camping certain spots, but there is little tactics in the attacks - they rely on the defense to make a mistake.

The reason for this is, that with cheats - which you are obliged to use when you want to compete in the top ranks - the game becomes fundamentally different.

Rather than rifles, shotguns, snipers and SMGs being somewhat balanced against each other, rifles become utterly overpowered because of their capability to kill an enemy with an instant headshot. The AWP, already in legit play an imbalanced weapon, becomes the end all weapon. Of the pistols, the deagle is the end-all because of its ability to kill instantly with a headshot. SMGs and pumpguns are completely useless, because movement skill and evading shots is pointless when going against an aimbot. The only thing that matters is that the enemy is sooner dead than you, because you both see each other through the walls and you both will instantly put dead-on headshots on each other the second you start shooting.

With aimbots, the only limit of your kill speed is your weapon's performance - accuracy and power. Because rifles are very inaccurate when moving, yet super accurate when crouching or at least standing still, the tactically most beneficial position is being immobile.

In comparison in legit play, because of the way the netcode works, the moving attacker always has an advantage over an immobile defender: The attacker, coming around visual obstruction, sees the defender easily a quarter second sooner than the defender sees him, giving him the advantage. But with wallhacks, combined with aimbots, this advantage is reduced to zero - it is possible to headshot someone the very instant he moved around the corner, giving the defender the advantage.

Teamplay becomes cheapened with cheats as well: Rather than moving together, giving each other cover, people sit together. The extremely complex action of attacking as a team, covering each other's backs while moving forward swiftly is reduced to observing different corners, helping each other taking camping spots and calling in backup should the enemy attack. When forced to attack, the fact that everyone has a wallhack removes any sort of surprise from the game. Instead, people practice shooting through walls to take out the incredibly predictable defenders.

In legit gameplay, this is all different, but few people know this because legit people never get anywhere in online dominated CS. Camping alone in a spot without a wallhack is essentially suicide - Noobs do it, because they are too scared to move anywhere. Any attacker will have up to a quarter second of timing advantage, giving him plenty of time to kill the camper. Also, camping makes the camper predictable, losing mental and effective control to the attacker. In legit gameplay, you must even attack when you are in the defending time, purely because the attacker is in control of the game and has advantages - impredictability, mental aspects, netcode, mobility for evading bullets - over the defender. Rather than one side camping and the other sneaking, it becomes two teams rushing against each other, constantly trying to outflank the other's side. Gameplay becomes rapid, interesting, fun, and fun to watch!

So I dare you: Pretend there's no cheaters in the game. And start attacking. Practice, as a team, to attack, 2 people, 3, 5 in one package of death, well organized, almost impossible to stop. Eventually the game becomes about what it is meant to be - Who is, more so than the other, capable of maintaining his control.

Because that is what the game is about. Control. If you leave your enemy the choice to do anything he likes, as you do when you defend, he is in control. But if you attack, you make the choice for your enemy - You decide he has to defend there, you decide he's being attacked - You take his control until he eventually, internally surrenders and leaves you victory. Never grant your enemy any choice on any matter, force him into positions that are unfavorable for him, and you will be invincible.
[edit]
Review

Ok, this is about stuff that is just plain unrealistic/dumb in CS. There's a lot of people that shout "Gameplay! Gameplay" whenever one tries to argue about realism in video games.

Here's the thing: Counter-Strike is a realism-based shooter. If you don't want a realism-based shooter, go play Quake. Pick up the red armor! Win the game! GAMEPLAY!

I don't like the game to be about who controls the red armor. I want to control my enemy, not items that periodically respawn. I don't want to shoot retards only to have them respawn seconds later like in BF. If I kill an enemy, I want them to fucking stay dead and out of my way. That is gameplay.

And I want to play video games that let me do amazing stuff that I can't or won't do in real life, like pimpin' da ho's, or overthrow a medium-sized dictatorship. And sometimes, just once in a while, I want to chop people's head off with a light saber.

What is gameplay? What is a game in the first place? Why do we want to play games? It is because games allow us to measure ourselves with others, which tells you something about yourself, and more importantly because we learn skills that we can use in real life. Tetris is a fun game. The challenge is only to beat a highscore. The best games are those that you directly have to defeat someone else, where you have complex ways to interact with your brothers, have fun, measure, and learn. That is gameplay.

Realism is gameplay. What people usually confuse with lack of gameplay are in fact just bad interfaces. Consider Operation Flashpoint 1985: A good simulation that lets you play everything, from helicopter pilots down to infantry soldiers. But the interface was horrible. Controlling your guy or the guns, and also the vehicles, felt more like playing a flight simulator where you have to learn at least 300 keyboard combos by heart just to get anywhere.

The quake series of games has a big advantage there. They're made by id, who are truly gamers, and not just masters of OpenGL, but also, masters of interface. Sadly however they have absolutely no creative energy when it comes to actual gameplay, and in a quake game, you still emulate PacMan: Pick up the item, win the game.

CS is a giant leap forward from this scheme, and it is unsurprising that the game industry, which is increasingly plagued by lack of creative ideas, simply recycles the pre CS concepts rather than to move on. But Quake or BF cannot dethrone CS, they both are dated concepts now that we have had CS for 7 years.

I believe that the gameplay of CS can only be improved in two ways. That is to say, the gameplay does not refer to the graphics or the interface. The gameplay just refers to what is being played, not how. These two points are:

Large world with natural places where combat occurs rather than preset maps that are played over and over. This means the next generation of CS will be MMORPG style, except for the RPG part. MMORPGs suck, all, without exception, and if they don't they aren't mmorpgs. MMORPGs have to be the worst gameplay principle that anyone could have ever thought of: Grind, then abuse players who have grinded less than you, no skill involved whatsoever. I think it's time to make a MMO FPS that has all the qualities that make CS outstanding, but does not have to rely on "maps" or "map rotations" and makes every fighting action meaningful and unique. I don't want to go into much detail about this right now.

A real wounding system. So far we still have the quake style damage system. But in real life, you don't get shot 11 times in the foot with a 9mm and suddenly drop dead. In fact, firearms are a very poor way of killing people, we only use them nowadays because the alternative is melee, and melee fighters get shot before they are in range. Melee fighters, with a sword for example, can chop arms and heads off in a split second, if needed, and can actually disable and incapacitate an enemy within that timeframe. Handguns are very poor weapons when it comes to actually wounding/killing someone. I would like to elaborate this a bit.

Fun fact
Only 5% of people hit by gunfire in the US actually die, and only 15% need serious medical assistance. [1]

First of all, the absofuckinglutely only thing that can really stop someone dead in their tracks is a *sufficiently large* wound to specific parts of the head or neck, the CNS. All other wounds do not disable an opponent immediately - Even a shot to the brain may fail to incapacitate an opponent if the shot fails to destroy the *vital* parts of it: The forehead's lobes are for higher math and understanding Rembrandt and shit like that which is turned off during a firefight anyway.

Fun fact
The average number of bullets that struck per slain suspect by the police in the US is about 10.

Handguns can incapacitate and kill, but they are bad at this. According to the FBI, someone who is shot in the heart may remain fully effective for 10 seconds, even when he collapses dead after that. It is not the shot to the heart that killed/incapacitated him, it is the lack of fresh blood in his head. Conversely, someone shot in the arm may actually die mere minutes later if an artery was ruptured and the bleeding isn't stopped.

Fun fact
The average hit probability of police in the US is 15-25%, and two thirds of the time the police fires, the distance to the target is less than 3 meters.

So, what we need is a wounding system that actually shows how bullets and bullet wounds work (or don't). Shoot someone in the shoulder and if you're very lucky, you'll hit the nerve strain, causing the weapon to be dropped or at least unable to be used in an useful manner. Shoot someone in the knee to slow him down. Then again: Incidents are known where people basically jogged around happily with two broken legs, because the muscles were able to keep the leg stabilized. Because of movies, and because most people are worthless dumbass pussies, many people on the other hand, faint even when a shot misses them.

Fun fact
2/3 of the time the police in the US shoots, the suspects are unarmed, about 1/3 the time they are innocent. Go figure.

But the real way bullets kill is blood loss. Blood is the elementary juice of life. About 8% of someone's weight or volume is blood, makes about 6.4 liters for an 80 kilo male. Losing one quarter can cause fainting, although this is unlikely to happen under the influence of adrenaline. Losing half of the blood - or more - usually means death.

More than 80% of police officers that are slain, are killed before they can draw their weapon.

It cannot be too hard to get some halfway decent data - nothing complicated, just a basic terminal ballistics system in place, that calculates how big the wound is, how much blood was lost, and how much damage to vital organs was done. Why is 99% of the calculation power nowadays used on fucking useless glitz? I want fucking terminal ballistics in place, complete with blood pressure simulation and vital organs! NOW!1

Fun fact
In the real world, the 5.56mm round basically doesn't penetrate fly shit, because the lightweight supersonic bullet explodes (fragments) the first chance it gets to cause maximum damage - and as such it does much more damage than e.g. the .338 Lapua. The FBI for example recommends to use handguns, rather than 5.56mm rifles, to be used against suspects behind cover. In Sovjet Russia, the 5.56mm round penetrates 6 feet of concrete, while notorious penetrators like the 9mm or the shotgun buckshot don't penetrate a delicate pair of naughty underwear, and the .338 lapua kills you with a shot to your left hand.

[emile]

BRO!!!
Too long man. no time to read......

[MRSpyder]

Woah.. Bible of CS!!