Guide for New Teams by dannyG

[G r | m N]

Hey all, well some guys from sentient approached me a while ago because i'd been helping subnoize little brother imaGe and yeah he wanted me to help his team as well.

With CSS growing and more and more teams coming into the game, I thought i'd edit slightly the word document i wrote for sentient and just make it a general guide for new teams, these sorts of things have been done before. I just thought i'd contribute what I have learnt over the years and my outlook on team development and preparation so here it is.

A Guide for Clan preparation and Development
By Danny ‘GrimN’ Mather

The Basics
CORE 5
First thing a new clan needs to do is figure out their core 5 for counter-strike. The core 5 must always be the most active players in the team; You may some-times get a player who is heaps better than a member in the core 5. Sometimes you have to let these players go if they cannot commit to regular team practice, It may not make sense in the long-run but a Team-player can vastly improve your matches over a player who is just simply good and does his own thing.

Chemistry
New teams initially will have no chemistry; do not get disheartened, Chemistry comes from team bonding. Team bonding will occur with more practice scrims and the team just chilling out talking to each other, getting to know each other better. It generally helps if players know each other in Real-life as well as playing the game, however many professional teams have built chemistry, through being together for a long-time and knowing each other’s game-play.


Back 2 Basics
Ok Back 2 Basics, In this section I will discuss the basics which a new team will require to organize and then develop themselves.
1. Developing a Practice Schedule
2. The Captain
3. The Awper
4. The Riflers
5. Team Communication
6. Team Positions
7. Strat Development, Pistol Rounds, Gun Rounds, Anti-Eco rounds, Eco-Rounds, Retake Roles.
8. Confidence
9. Keeping your heads up
10. Team Analysis
11. Winning Situations

1. Developing a Practice Schedule.
Organizing your team’s practice schedule is paramount to developing a higher sense of organization in the further aspects of Counter-Strike. For example, most new teams will just simply get onto Mirc, Spam for a 5v5 war and play when-ever they have 5. This is not productive to improving your team, as some weeks you may play 20 hrs of practice, other weeks five.

Much like in High-school you have a schedule of subjects you have each day, so must you organize with your team, what days can all 5 of the core play and what times.

2. The Captain
The Team must have a Captain, The Captain’s role in the team is calling the Teams Strategies, keeping tabs on the team’s money situation and ensuring the team Eco’s together, Buy’s together or in desperate situations buys what they can. The captain is generally the most experienced in the team in calling. It is his job to work out the other team’s weak spots in maps or work out your team’s strengths and use these in calling the correct strategy.

More experienced Captains, not only will be able to call team strategies, but be able to predict what the enemy will do and will have run his team through various set-ups most advantageous in countering the enemy’s movement. For example on de_nuke, your team may be playing a team that has a really efficient top-site take on the upper site. An Experienced Captain may call for a Retake Top setup and the players would move to their new positions, the other Team would take top not killing anyone, to be flashed in upper site from 3 directions and then wiped out.

The captain should be the most mature person on the team, It’s the captain the core will look too when they are struggling against a team to hold them together, maintain confidence and start winning some rounds back. A Captain should have a good image, The captain should not rage at other teams (Unless they are blatantly hacking then it’s a waste of time) but pretty much it’s the captain that the core 5 will look too, to say “come on guys focus on the game don’t rage at what they are doing lets get into this match ok”

3. The AwperIn Most Maps, the AWP Rifle is used at the top level of Counter-Strike, for to put it simply, in the hands of a skilled player, being a 1-shot weapon which can fire pretty much every two seconds it can change the round dramatically.

In the same way a team must have a captain, So must the team designate an AWPER. The AWPER must be the player that is willing to either try for the initial pick at a bomb site you wish to work, or be willing to sit back and cover enemy Rotation areas when a Site is being taken. Conversely as CT the Awper should be skilled in locking down certain areas of the map where distance is their advantage such as Mid on Dust2 or Long on Dust2.

Zeke is probably one of australia's only full-time awpers and I'll say it he does his role well (when he's not burning about his internet) he makes his picks ct, and T that help his team, If you would like info on becoming a decent team-awper i would suggest going to zeke.

The AWPER obviously would generally be the player who is best with the AWP in the team; This can lead to Team debates on who is the best awper. Try taking a mature attidude and thinking to yourself. Well were both really good AWPERS but who here is better with the AWP than with a Rifle. Play to your team’s strengths. There’s no Point Letting a better player be the AWPER if he could just as easily be the best RIFLER for your team. Balancing your team’s strengths is Key.

4. The Riflers

Generally by Gun-rounds most teams will have 4 Riflers and 1 Awper, Some teams opt on Some maps such as de_cbble de_train and de_dust2 due to its lockdown and long-distance structure to have Two AWPERS, this is Strongly not recommended for other maps. Having 4 Rifles gives you the ability on both Re-TAKE or taking a Sight for Versatility. If your team has two very strong awpers then of course part of your team’s strategy will involve the use of these players. There is nothing wrong with looking outside the box and creating your own strong offensive and defensive setups based on two awpers. Its just strongly not recommended, there’s so many situations a skilled rifler can do the same as what an awper can but be more mobile.

The Rifler’s jobs are to work bomb-sights and cover each other through communication. The Rifles are easily the most used weapons in the game, and the most efficient Riflers in the game are generally the best players for the team. Riflers can fire quick accurate rounds at opponents efficiently, shut-down multiple targets fast, and being able to fire generally on the strafe, be mobile.

5. Team Communication
Team Communication is the most important thing in a team. Due to the use of Ventrilo and the large amount of online cs most players play, Players in general have gotten slack in their communication skills, often calling AFTER they have done as much damage as they can, or when they have died they will call only then, where the player was when running into a sight.

Team Communication is easily the winning feature of many teams. A team of players all fully communicating can beat teams that are much better than them individually. How so? Well a team fully communicating correctly, as fast as they can, numbers of the enemy at a particular position, what weapons they have, can with experience ascertain faster the correct decision to win the round.

For example:

You’ve set-up on a default on Dust2 As Terrorist, You have 2 in Upper-Dark, 1 Spotting Mid with AWP and 2 playing Passive Long. You Just Wait a bit, All of a sudden you Hear 3 Nades At Long into the Hut. Your Long players call 3 Nades Long!!! Instantly your team knows that the enemy have sent two Long, with one player probably falling back to A-Site to watch short. Your team reacts accordingly the Long players join the player watching mid, you smoke up Mid, you Flash through and quickly efficiently you perform a Mid-Split on B with the 2 long players pushing up to B whilst the Awper stays in Mid watching Long & Short for Rotators, The upper-Dark players have pushed into B whilst the Players that were watching Long have gone Mid.

Using Superior numbers u’ve overwhelmed the defenders and taken the site and planted for a win.

This sort of example is textbook working a default, obviously things can go wrong, a player on their team can sometimes pull off a massive round and maybe slap 4 players or something. Its important to know these rounds do occur against good players, it’s a Learning-curve the more you practice your strategies the better your timing will be at attacking players with 2 players to every 1 they have.

Team Calling

Before even getting into a Practice Scrim, the team should run over a map they plan to practice and Label the map, Try be as specific as possible, If your team plans to attend Lan tournaments sometimes its useful to as a team to make random Labels. For example on Nuke “f4f” uses a random name For the Awp pick outside if a Terrorist gets past the Red-box and is Picking into Annex from outside. Another Example is f4f has the doors and vents labeled using a number system Left to Right when facing ramps as CT from the lower ramp. Ct-side Vents and Doors are both Door 1 and Vent 1 consecutively, Terrorist side vents and doors are Vent 2 and Door 2.
Another Example is on dust2, on the CT ramp where a CT can hide from Terrorists pushing Long to A-Ramp, we call it another random name, because it’s a random call that if we are playing close to another team we are versing, they won’t know we know their position. I think you get the drift now, its all preparation for the real thing LAN in the end, god I can’t wait for the next nationals!

Work through the maps with your team and make sure everyone knows the correct call for a position, fast efficient use of map labels can easily when taking a bombsite be the difference between a fast entry shot or a person dying from a player they haven’t seen.

Strat Development

Most New teams will initially have to develop strats based on other clans they have seen. This is fine, more experienced teams will develop their own Strategies they have developed on the play style of certain players and the strengths of players in their team, this will come in time.

To begin with Talk through your team-mates and work out a Pistol round for each map, just one to begin with, Then develop an Anti-Eco round, which is a round in which you have won the pistol and expect an aggressive push or rush from either a CT or Terrorist team. Also work out Eco-Rounds for your team, Rounds in which you have lost the pistol. These strategies are more about getting the bomb down and seeing what happens as opposed to winning the round.

Also work out a minimum of Three basic gun rounds, these generally will be a Split –A, Split-B, and a Fake-B or a Fake-A. Once these basics are down you can expand the strategies the team knows, such as a B-Hard Take.

An example of a full 5 Take on a site can be what some of us would call an ‘rpM’ Banana derived from a particular rpM rush they use to do back in the day, when they were in their prime it was a formidable and demoralizing experience being on the receiving end. Far from being a mere rush banana, the rpM strat involved spawn-based flashing. First Spawner upon entering banana would throw an “AWP” Flash to flash a potential AWPER peeking banana, his second flash would be thrown upon reaching the first step in the banana leading up to site, which he would throw towards coils in banana. The second and third spawners would throw their flashes using the steps as References Over the wall on the run, the fourth and fifth spawners would throw their flashes Towards CT-Truck at Banana.

This when dry-runned and used with a good spawn is to put simply devastating, due to the use of the steps the result of this spawned based strategy is a continuous motion of flashes entering the bombsite exploding one after the other increasing the flash-time of defenders in the sight.


Upon entering the sight the first two would push construction side taking out defenders there, whilst the last 3 would enter the site normally. This generally resulted in a efficient hold of the site depending on numbers lost whilst taking.

Hope you understood that, My explanation of how they took the site may differ as time elapses but generally they’ll storm the site in some fashion and shoot heads, you guys can work out how you would best do this sort of strategy in your own team.

Perfect Practice makes perfect.
Most teams out there neglect learning strats and prefer to just war. If your team is serious about improving, This is the poorest way to improve. Ensure that at least once a fortnight for about 45 minutes your team focuses on Dry-Runs. Dry runs are merely practicing more advanced strats such as spawn-based flashing strategies or Spawn-based top-site takes on nuke ETC. Dry-Runs help perfect the timing of a strategy without the frustration of enemy opponents, and ensure your team knows the strategy inside and out. This sort of practice is paramount to a top team’s performance. When a team has dry runned efficiently they can perform a strategy almost without thinking what they have to do as part of the strategy and focus more on where the enemy might be and how they intend to work the sight.

Younger teams lack the patience, to work on this side of the game, Trust me put in the ‘boring’ part of the game and your team will be rewarded in competition games, when the round counts for something and your not thinking about what you have to do, because you’ve practiced it so much, your just thinking about the enemy and making your shots.

ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS: JUST BECAUSE A STRAT DOESN’T WORK AGAINST A TEAM IN PRACTICE DOES NOT MEAN IT WON’T WORK COME GAME-TIME.

A lot of teams work out some great strategies and then play a slut-team and get hammered. You must be aware that when playing a Slut-team they will always be individualistic and play randomly. You might be preparing a nice default only to have 4 players run down banana at you in a GUN-ROUND and **** you up. That doesn’t mean the Default is crap or your team is crap. When you come Game-time and you have all your stuff worked out, you’ll be playing a team that is probably much like yourselves (unless vastly better than you) a little nervous. Those fakes that never work in practice, because slut-teams aren’t working as a team and just stay at their site, will work in a comp-game because the round counts for something and the players will react more accordingly.

Those Bomb-site takes worked out only to get slammed from some aggressive player who has run up-mid at you in a slut war won’t happen in a comp-game. Although it is nice to be wary, there are some really good teams out there that have Aggressive defence and Passive defence as their set-ups to keep you on your toes.

Building Confidence
This is generally the winning factor between two evenly matched teams. The team with more confidence in their abilities will win simply because they know what they are doing and are confident and have faith in their team-mates to pull through. Confidence comes with winning but can be helped along by Motivation of your team-mates. If a player enters the site and takes down the defenders with sharp shots, fire him up. when someone pulls off something big every player on my team just fires that guy up with “FKN NICE DANNY!” “HUGE ****” “EYE OF THE TIGER FIRE UP BOY LETS WIN THIS” this sort of motivation charges ur game with adrenaline and focus and will make you perform better.

Keep your heads up!
Conversely when your down 6-0 in a comp-game and your team is feeling like nothing is working, the worst thing you can do is criticize a team-mate as he fails a clutch or start yelling negative stuff when you die. You are doing the opposite of firing your team up; You are killing any confidence your team-mates have in their own game and in the team’s game. This breaks down organization of your team, your team-mates will stop calling all together and will result in ‘choking’ everything you do.

Instead of getting up your team-mates or arguing, Try be soothing and motivating,” OH MAN BL, I swear you made that shot, Next time you will I have faith in you!” as well as team motivating “COME ON BOYS THESE GUYS AREN’T ANYTHING SPECIAL WE ARE BETTER THAN THEM, FKN FIRE UP WE GOT THIS **** LETS, ECO THE NEXT THEN BUY WE’LL SMASH EM ON OUR NEXT GUN ROUND” obviously some games you will lose inevitably to a better team, but against more evenly matches teams you can easily make a huge come-back by getting your team-mates calling and communicating again.

Team Analysis

As your team gets better, it will also get harder and harder against better teams to be the best. To continue improving, more and more time must be spent on making alterations to existing set-ups, adding more strategies, and further analyzing your own team’s game. After comp-matches that you lose, ask your team-mates and collectively work-out why you guys lost. Was it simply , being outplayed? Was it unable to get into a bomb-site, were the rounds close? Could you have won some of the 1v2’s or 2v1’s your team lost?

These sorts of questions will stimulate counter-measures to prevent them happening in the future.

The road to the top
The road to the top is plagued with shortfalls, frustration, players being poached for better teams and much, much more. It’s a long road it takes years to get too. Maintaining a solid core 5 is always paramount to success, As your team gets better and better, You may feel one player is holding you back, by then your clan may have gained a decent reputation and new players with more experience and talent may replace other team-mates. This is the natural progression of good teams. These days the top teams stay on top by poaching from one another to maintain superiority. I have no experience of having to work to the top in today’s community, having crossed over from 1.6 and ending up in f4f many could say I was fortunate, I merely entered the top didn’t have to work for it. There are many potential young players now all striving to get their name known and enter the top so it’s harder on everyone to get there.

Know Your Game and ask what you want from it
If you make it to the top level, chances are you may have proved yourself valuable to your team, you may be confronted with the opportunity to join a better team, these sorts of decisions often involve ‘dogging’ team-mates you’ve played with over a year or more. They are hard but ultimately you have to ask yourself, what you want from your game. Do you want to be in the top echelon or do you want to be content to keep playing with a good team of mates, but not a great team. I have been the player that’s been dogged, and I have also been the player that has dogged on my way to the top. I count myself lucky that in f4f, not only do I have a GREAT team, We are simply GREAT mates as well, I would never leave this team for anything short of an opportunity to play internationally which is highly unlikely.

Winning Situations
Counter-Strike is a team-game. Ultimately when you get down to the ‘Nitti Gritty’ Its about the team that makes more shots than the other team in various situations.

If your team has successfully mastered communication and has a adequate number of drilled strategies and your playing a really good team, you will always find the game at the top level is either a complete shutdown of the enemy, or the situation of the round will come down to a 2v1 in your favor, a 2v1 in the enemy’s favor, a 2v3, 2v4, 2v2. Its these situations that make or break a team winning these rounds.

In a 2v1 against you, Ultimately it’ll come down to a various list of factors, Your current health, the enemy’s current health, the Weapon you have, whether you have a defuse kit, whether the bomb is planted or down etc. This is pretty much an Individual effort, you will win or save for your team accordingly, and winning these situations comes down to experience and in-game smarts developed from experience from previous 1vX situations.

However if the 2v1 or 3v1 Situation is in your favor, There is ultimately No reason you should lose that round, it’s a numbers game, he could be the best player in the world, but if you act as a team and take him as a team, not presenting him with 3 “1v1” situations you SHOULD win.

For example: The round has carried out, Resulting in a 2v1 against the enemy, both of you are in your 35-45 hp range he could be on 100 with a rifle, the bomber was killed in upper on nuke, you don’t know where he is.

The worst thing teams can do is separate in this situation. By separate I mean being in two random positions holding two random spots that doesn’t sufficiently cover each other. Obviously you’ll find yourselves in two areas of the map but communicate as best you can to stick together. For example One of you might be up ladder, the other player might be annex, communicate to each other and work out the best way to hold the bomb. One possibility is for the Annex player to go sit fork-truck protecting himself from having to watch multiple directions at annex, such as watching out-side, watching squeaky, watching hut. He has his team-mate up ladder watching the one spot he can’t watch. This is Fail-safe if the players react fast to the enemy. As they are both in a position to lay down fire once the enemy is spotted.

There are many ways the team could work this situation, one could even get in vents whilst the other sits up ladder just watching ladder. With the player in vents being wary of a under  vents to top possibility from the enemy and the player up ladder not moving but watching ladder they have both protected themselves, forcing the enemy to make the move to the bomb.

The key in these situations where the players aren’t that close to each other is working together, If the topsite player hears the enemy coming into top-site, instead of facing the enemy by himself he should call to his team-mate. “hey Mickos he’s in top-site he just picked up bomb” “Ok I’ve got vents if he tries to come vents, If we hear him planting danny, you come out ladder I’ll come out vents 2v1 we got this” “Yep yep” This sort of adapting to the situation game-plan wins rounds that you, definitely should not lose.

The same applies for 3v2 or 4v2 situations in your favor, so long as you maintain team communication, take your time as CT to let the enemy make the move, or as T work together to work the site where u think there are less numbers u can win the rounds.

There are many rounds we have won in 2v3 2v4 situations, because the remaining two players have communicated well and taken the enemy out efficiently. Its all down to team-communication, experience, in-game ability and chemistry which is developed through time.

Be modest players
It’s a team-game, There will be wars where every shot you fire, you get a hs, or when playing a sight with your team-mate you’ll do 75-95dmg to 3 of them but your team-mate will get all the kills. Don’t get angry at him and say “man you fkn stole those!” It’s a team-game. The kills you get should be the last thing from your mind. The only scoreboard you should be focused on is each and every round of play and how many you’ve won. I had the benefit of speaking to a guy kha0s in the UK who has played in a few top UK 1.6 teams and he was saying how many of them don’t even want to know who played big against who, or whatever. What they want to know is what team is beating Who etc. Try to break out of the Australian cs Mentality which is very individualistic and work together as a team. As I said before some rounds you’ll be the guy who gets 3 a round when they hit your position, other rounds you’ll be the guy that damages multiple enemies but gets no-one. If you can break out of the mentality that score = good player, you won’t be affected by having a small number of kills so long as your ensuring your team wins by doing lots a damage to enemies with your team-mate.

Of course if a team-mate pulls something big like a 1v4 or something then congratulate him and fire him up, as he outsmarted his opponents and won the round for you when you definitely should have lost. But try look at it this way in wars where you’re the guy doing lots of damage, If you’ve done 79 in 3, 85 in 2, 78 in 2 and 91 in 1 to a rush hitting your site, You’ve pretty much WON the round for your team, Your team-mates only have to put like 2 bullets into the chest of their targets to kill them. That’s how you should perceive it!

Hope this relatively long basics guide helps you future teams out! If needed I’m always in #f4f generally and If you’re a nice guy and chuck me a pm and organize with me a time I’m willing to run through various basics in-game at another point in time.

*edited this in last*
Money Management
Try to implement money management rules such as, If you have less than 3.5K i don't wanna see you dgling in an eco round as i want you to be able to full buy next round.

Learn with your team and know how much you need for Terrorist and CT.
EG. your a Rifler you need to know that the AK is 2500 dollars ur armor is 1000 dollars ur nades are 200, 300 dollars etc. know how much you need to buy for your role. Same goes with AWPERS, etc.

Get your team ecoing together, buying together and in some situations always monitoring the money of each player on a round by round basis, if someone just pulled a 1v2 off he's still got his gun from last roudn hasn't died in 3 rounds he can generally drop for other players who have been getting hit hard from the enemy, ensuring the team is fully equipped.

Generally people dropping for team-mates should be the personwith the most cash in hand, Therefore when his time comes around he can get dropped as others in the team will have replenished their money from being dropped.

Hope this relatively long guide has enlightened you in some way, This guide is aimed for the clans and players starting out. I have neglected getting such tools as ventrilo, IRC etc as If by now your making a clan you have probably discovered these yourself!

*last edit promise*
Having a Server
For aspiring new teams, it can get quite frustrating to practice alot of stuff, only to have to Book a Game Arena or various other Rental servers for a couple of hrs to get the practice in you need.

I'll tell you now having your own server is for the benefit of the team, whether you all chip in 5-25 dollars each a month or if you are lucky enough to get sponsored one will benefit your team greatly. Having your own server allows the team to practice, When they want, Whenever they want. Finding a good reliable server company is also important.

for example f4f is sponsored by #Dominance-Gaming. We chose Dominance-Gaming because they are primarily nsw based with some of the latest servers out (If curious suss out servers from Guide for New Teams by dannyG

I get 9-19 ping on our server and QLD players seem to get 35-45 ping which is more than play-able, therefore most teams that play on our server besides WA all get stable 15-45 ping ranges allowing for not too much differences therefore a more stable field of play.

It doesn't matter what server company you go with but scout around before buying one. For teams you probably will want a reliable minimum 66tick 12slot server which allows a sourcetv to be in-game as well. If you are REALLY serious about improving looking over the source-tv demo will allow you to see where the timing of players was off in a strategy, or how a strategy succeeded or failed etc.

GL, DannyGrim

[mONk.]

wow danny gives back! nice work dude

[f6fpv]

wow a mission statement and a half

nicee DANNG2GEE +rep

[emagine]

really wd danny, know he put lots of effort into this!

[Moj3]

ahh so thats how you play!

<3 DANNYG

[Pinto]

TL;DR :P haha nah will read later and edit in; but from the bit i did read i don't entirely agree with the core5 part. I think if a team is capable of building chemistry among their whole team, usually 6-7 players and get rid of the core5 idea, they have a bigger chance @ success as they have greater variation in their roster (could also be a negative) and they don't need to rely on the same 5 players, if that makes sense

thats just my2c

[G r | m N]

thats fair enough pinto and i agree wholeheartedly, but if your striving for the top, you want to have a core 5 that are all specialised in their particular roles in the team and the positions they play, having players sub in and out means sometimes they play with you sometimes they don't and they can't specialise for a certain position if they have to sub for someone holding another position. but thats my pov on getting to the top I agree with ur statement i've seen teams with 6-7 still break the top 4

[ox1]

Goodwrite up danny mate, that will defiantly give new teams an insight into what makes a good team, NoR will def be taking this stuff on board :P

RESPECT

edit; core5 is essential to reach the peak of communication and team work

[ot_]

nice work grimn

[Hucky]

Originally Posted by Pinto

TL;DR :P haha nah will read later and edit in; but from the bit i did read i don't entirely agree with the core5 part. I think if a team is capable of building chemistry among their whole team, usually 6-7 players and get rid of the core5 idea, they have a bigger chance @ success as they have greater variation in their roster (could also be a negative) and they don't need to rely on the same 5 players, if that makes sense

thats just my2c

I think it's ok for most amateur teams (which seem to be the target audience for this article) but pro teams really do need to have a core5.

Great writeup GrimN.

[Pinto]

Originally Posted by G r | m N

thats fair enough pinto and i agree wholeheartedly, but if your striving for the top, you want to have a core 5 that are all specialised in their particular roles in the team and the positions they play, having players sub in and out means sometimes they play with you sometimes they don't and they can't specialise for a certain position if they have to sub for someone holding another position. but thats my pov on getting to the top I agree with ur statement i've seen teams with 6-7 still break the top 4

xD like i said i don't disagree, i just think that having a "CORE 5" is not always the best for a team. but i value the points u put forward and do agree with most of them

[Ryu]

EXCELLENT READ DUDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well done

[storm1N]

Huge work and good read.

[ELiTEE]

awesome stuff danny