This article is going to be a lot shorter than most, because the subject is not very complicated, just something very overlooked. One thing that hardly any Counter-Strike teams do, on any level of play, is playing for the half, rather than the round. It is too much set into the mind frame of not only in-game leaders, but the players, that you are playing round for round and that is all that matters.

Basically what I am trying to get across is that there are a million things that you can do, just out of default tactics, to set you up for later rounds. These are a few simple things that you can do that will set you up for the last eight or nine rounds of the 15 round half.

Just think of this sort of strategizing like training a dog. The defense is your dog and you are going to train them to not do certain things. How will you do this? Grenades are your rolled up newspapers to hit the defense on the nose with, and they are also your best friends.

First, we'll start off with Dust2. This is an old modified zEx default tactic from ESWC 2003 that really works well. Basically, it kills two birds with one stone. It is at least two players faking a B rush every round, they do this by running into the B tunnels throwing one flash and one smoke out of the door, maybe firing an AK bullet or two and running straight down the stairs. On a lower level of play, you will most likely pull off the actual B fake and get the catwalk players to push up a lot, letting anyone in the middle pick them off suspect. But other than a low level, this is at least going to move the catwalk players to the stairs area. From here throw at LEAST two HE grenades onto the stairs from middle or lower B tunnels. Do this every round.

Why?

Just like I said, you are training a dog. If the defense sees two HE grenades here every round, are they ever going to sit there? Maybe, but not likely if they like having more than half of their health in a gunfight. Sometimes you can even go a little overkill and throw four HE grenades here. About 75% of teams play Dust2 with two players catwalk, and about 90% of those teams play with them somewhere on the catwalk. Whether it is the stairs or near the boxes, it is somewhere around here. This will ensure them being HE grenaded every round, but we don't want to kill them, we want to make them adjust.

A defensive team that is being HE grenaded by anywhere from two to four HE grenades every round will begin to refuse to play their normal spot. BINGO. You have just won. You have made the two catwalk players play very defensively and this is something they have not practiced. Once you can make a defense play in the middle of a match to something they have not practiced, you have practically won. And once they start playing far back, you smoke and flash them and get the bomb down and then you are right in their blind faces to take them down in their unpracticed positions.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

Many teams do the other situation I will go over now, but they don't really understand why they are doing it most of the time. This situation is played on Nuke and I first saw it done effectively by EG at EverLAN, but there are many teams doing this as of late. This is a spawn-based default that has to be done starting from the fourth round no matter what. It HAS to be the priority of the person with the best spawn to have a smoke grenade at least. The next person can have flashes, or the first person can. What you are going to do every round, whoever has the best spawn, is smoke/flash the door. Throw a smoke grenade at the door just to open it up, and then throw one flashbang to the outside entrance. From here you run out and pick the blinded floor player no matter what (I like to have the second best spawn go shed and distract the rafters player so that the door rush doesn't get shot in the back).

Once you do this every round you will cause the floor player to start going rafters and dropping down. That is what many teams are beginning to do because of this very tactic. If you can ensure that this player isn't going to come entrance ever again in your match you have completely eliminated a spot of the map. It now has their outside weaker, and their floor player doing things he has not practiced.

There are infinite possibilities on each map to do these sorts of tactics. It is just knowing what the most common spots are and making sure that the defense never wants to play them again while they are in a server with you. Even if it doesn't win you the first few rounds, it is deleting spots of the map that the opposing team is playing and that will eventually put the match in your favor.