by Jason “Alchemist” Baker



The Art of The Scrim

If you play to win a scrim, you have already lost. Bragging about winning a scrim is like bragging about kissing your Mom. In a scrim, if you’re not working to improve your teams’ outlook on a map or your own knowledge of your position, you might as well be pubbing. Most teams let their skill carry them as far as they can, be it CAL M or even CAL I, but what sets apart the great teams from the good teams is teamwork and the ability to overcome an equally skilled team.

Ok so you’re the CS pimp you know everything about CS then explain to me why there are so many mediocre teams playing right now? A lot of players have the skill, but do not have the awareness or the teamwork needed to compete at the upper levels of this. My goal is to change a few people’s minds on how they think about playing the game. If you already know everything about CS, you don’t have to bother with reading any further as I will just interview you when you win the CPL.

An important note: Don’t leave a scrim early. Please make sure that you play all thirty rounds. It may just be a scrim and not count for anything, but leaving early is not only bad sportsmanship, but it hurts your chance of winning close matches in the future. So you’re getting your ass kicked in a scrim. Your first question should be asking why. Is it your strats, their strats or their skill vs. yours? Face it; no matter how good you are at CS, someone is always better. On some days, people are lucky and kill whatever they point at and, yeah, sometimes people cheat.

Figuring out why you’re losing rounds is the first step to being a better leader. The next step is the adjustment. The only way to adjust your tactics mid match is to have a deep background to draw from. Only through disappointment can you learn the limits of your team.

Communication

It works best to have just one strat caller in a scrim, but that doesn’t mean the regular players shouldn’t ask questions. This doesn’t mean asking “What are you doing?” but this is asking “Hey, what went wrong?” Did they push on us, were they stacked, what was their set up, are examples of things players should be asking. Gather as much information as you can about a teams set up and tendencies. Some teams have a neat trick and try it round after round. Figure out the weakness of it and take them out. Focus less on the excuse of lag, sunspots, and 16bit and more on what they did to beat you.

Although this may be obvious to some, it’s interesting to see many teams have problems distinguishing between buy and save rounds during the buy time, and it hurts them throughout the match. The caller should always make sure to keep track of your team’s money. It doesn’t matter if your team types out their money or if each guy types simply buy or save. The key here is to get your players in the habit of not buying when everyone else has to save. If your team becomes used to this in a scrim, it will become second nature in a match.