How not to be clutched

How not to be clutched

In my previous guide I explained what clutching is and how as an individual player to achieve this.  Now in this Guide I am going to explain how as a team you can avoid being clutched. This is an important thing to understand as a team, as losing a round when you have an advantage can be very demoralising and sometimes can lead to a team falling apart.

Fortunately it is not too hard to put your team in a good position to finish a round once you have put your opponent in a clutch situation; it all revolves around doing your best to put your opponents in impossible situations.

There are 2 elements which you can use to force your opponents into impossible situations:
1) Teamwork
2) Using the time.

1) Teamwork

Teamwork is the most important element in not being clutched. Now I’m going to give an example of how poor team work can lose a round for a team from a war I played quite a while ago on inferno.

We were playing an eco and decided to rush up banana, in the process of taking the site everyone died to the solo awper except Pred. in this 1v4 situation he was able to awp the quick rotator coming from CT, he had enough time pick up the bomb before killing a person pushing banana, then he had enough time to plant the bomb before the next guy came from banana after this it was still a couple of seconds before the last guy came into the site.

So what did they do wrong here? Well if you remember in my guide on how to clutch I said that one of the most important things was breaking the other team into smaller groups. Well in the above situation the opposition effectively did that themselves for Pred, they presumed they had won the round so went chasing the kill. But what would have happened if they had waited to retake the site as a team? Pred would have been in the middle of a cross fire of 4 people from 3 directions and as good as Pred was, it would have taken some divine intervention for him to have won that round, he would have been in an impossible situation.

What you should be doing in any situation is using your advantage to push the opponent into unwinnable situations, what is key is that when possible you should be playing so that you can cover and create crossfires with your teammates at all times. This does not mean that you should play right next to them in fact that would be a bad idea as it would allow a well aim spray to take you both out. You want to be playing where you can watch your spot but still be able to quickly put yourself in a position to assist your teammate.

As a Counter Terrorist:
As a counter terrorist there are going to be three situations, the terrorist’s still have the bomb, the bomb has been dropped or the bomb has been planted. When the terrorist’s still have the bomb you have a number of options on how to play depending on how many players are left on your team, I am going to focus on when there are 2 or 3 players left on your team as these are the most common rounds and also the most challenging.

If it is a 2v1 and you do not know where the last terrorist is with the bomb there are two options to choose from, you can either play one person per site or both play the same site. If you choose to both play the same site, which I would recommend in most cases as you will not be splitting your team, make sure that you are both playing in positions which allow you to support each other. This option is especially advantageous on the maps where the bomb sites are close together such as nuke, however you need to be careful on maps such as train which have a large number of hiding spots as well as maps where the bomb sites are spread quite far apart such as season and inferno as this will prove a hindrance when it comes to retaking the other site should the bomb get planted there.

If you choose to play one person per site, which can be preferable on some maps and in some situations, both players must play passively as the objective of playing like this is to get a faster rotate so that you can use your advantage in numbers. You should be playing either in a position where it would be hard for the terrorist to kill you before your teammate can rotate to help you, such as at the back of the trains at the inside bombsite on train, or you could try and play in a hiding spot inside the site in an attempt to get the terrorist as he plants the bomb, this may be risky against experienced player because generally they will tend check all of the hiding spots before starting to plant the bomb. No matter which style to choose to play try not to get into a standing fire fight with the enemy before your teammate has rotated, the last thing you want is to turn your 2v1 advantage into a 1v1.

If you are in a 3v1 situation generally your best course of actions is to have 2 players working together at one of the sites with the third person playing a passive role at the other site. For example on nuke it would be preferable to have two people playing the top site and one person the vents watching the lower site.

If you have killed the bomber you are probably in the best position to win the round, generally the bomb will have been dropped either in a site or around a choke point where a push was stopped. Almost always in this situation there is only one thing you should do, have everyone cover the bomb; treat it as if it is the only bomb site in the map. Everyone should be in a position such that all the possible locations that the terrorist could come from are covered and if the terrorist is coming from someone else’s position they can quickly move to create a crossfire.

The final situation, when the bomb has been planted essentially is the most dependant on team work. The most important thing is that unless there is not much time left on the bomb timer, nobody should hit the site by themselves. You want to enter the site as a team and if possible from multiple locations so that the terrorist’s must split their firepower. The first thing you want to do is see where the bomb is, what you do next depends on whether it is an open plant or a covered plant. If it is an open plant with many places the terrorist could be hiding it is more important that you find him while if it is a covered plant or there are only a few places the terrorist could cover the bomb from you can have one person defuse while the others watch the potential spots the terrorist could be. If you have not in a position to engage the terrorist the first thing you should do before starting the defuse is if possible have someone throw a smoke on the bomb to cover the defuser, next any other smokes should be put in places to hinder the terrorist.

If you are not in a position to fully cover the defuser there are a couple of tricks that can be used to finish the defuse, the first is to use your body as a shield while the defuse finishes, this will only work if there are only a couple of seconds left on the defuse and the terrorist is not close, otherwise you will just both end up dying. The second will only work if there is a position which is hidden from the terrorist the first person start the defuse from behind cover while the second person pretends to be defusing in the open. The terrorist will peak and kill the fake defuser and hopefully assume that he stopped the defuse allowing the defuse to finish. Both of these techniques should only be used in the most desperate of cases as you are sacrificing a player for the round when you could have saved the money and possibly killed the terrorist.

2) Using the time

The other important element in putting your opponent in an impossible situation is using the time. Essentially there is only one time when you are going to be able to use the time effectively to put the opponent into an impossible situation.

As a Terrorist:
your main objective as a terrorist is to plant the bomb and in a round where you have put your opponent in a clutch situation doing so will give you a further advantage, you have just given the counter terrorist’s a very tight time constraint to take the site and defuse the bomb.

The first thing to consider in this situation is where to plant the bomb, you want to make sure that it is in a position that can be covered from as many angles as possible. This will allow you to spread out and still cover the bomb from multiple angles. For example say you have taken the top site on nuke and it’s a 1v3 or even a 2v3 with the bomb planted on the annex side of the boxes. If you had one person playing snipers/rafters, one playing hut and the last person playing outside annex, as long as nobody peeks until they hear the defuse the counter terrorist’s will not have time to find everyone, kill them and then defuse the bomb. In doing this you have effectively put the counter terrorist’s in an unwinnable situation simply by utilising the tight time limit

Essentially proper teamwork and making sure that your team does not become overconfident as well as an understanding of what can make you vulnerable to losing this type of round is generally enough to prevent the majority of people from clutching.

Guide to Clutching: outgunned and outnumbered… but not outplayed!

Guide to Clutching: outgunned and outnumbered… but not outplayed!

Before I go into how to clutch I should first explain what it is. Clutching for the purpose of this guide and in my opinion is where your team is able to win a round against the odds, whether it is a 1v2 or a 2 v 5.

The ability to be able to clutch is an important element of being a good player. This is because on top of the standard benefits of winning a round it has an added benefit, Psychology. This effect is on two fronts.

1) clutching a round especially a 2 v 5 or a 1 v 5 can give your team a big boost and inspire the whole team to play better.
2)losing a round where your team has a big advantage such as a 1v4 can be very demoralising and in some cases can cause a team to fall apart as they start blaming each other etc.

The ability to clutch well can be broken down into 3 things.
1) knowledge of the map and how the opponent likes to play.
2) Time management
3) ability to split the opponent’s team.

1) Knowledge.

Knowledge is the first part of being able to clutch, first you need to have a good knowledge of the map, most importantly where the strong points are, where the common holding places are and how long it takes to get to places both running and walking. Second is knowledge of the opponent, what I mean by this is, how do they like to play, what guns are they using, how aggressive are they, where do they commonly play from. With this information when it comes down to a 1v3 you should be able to have a good guess on where they are and how they will rotate.  Then you can use this to your advantage. E.g. In the second half of war on inferno a while back I was in a 1v1 on CT side and the bomb was planted at B, I rotated through library and from the first half I knew that the opponent liked to play from graveyard so after walking along graveyard checking the site i threw a flash into graveyard and came around the corner to graveyard stairs almost pre-firing and killed him. The point of this, when you know what your opponent likes to do you can use that to get the upper hand.

2) Time management

Whenever you are in a clutch situation you should consider the clock with everything you do. On T side most important is that you don’t want to run out of time, but you also want to make the best use of the time you have left as well. When on CT side you want to be considering the time and what you think the opponent will be doing, using the time well on CT’s is just as important as on T’s especially when it comes to timing rotates just that couple of seconds you gained because you realised they had to be at the other site could be all you need to finish defusing the bomb and remember letting the time run out is still a win on CT’s. When on T’s if you have a lot of time left on the clock you should make use of it, if possible don’t just go plant the bomb straight away you are just creating a big beacon for the CT’s saying I’m here come gang up on me. Instead use the time to confuse them, make them guess where you are, this will force them to split their forces to guard both sites.  Turn an unwinnable situation into a winnable one. And this leads me to the main point of clutching

3)splitting the opponent’s team.

Whenever you have time your primary objective should be to break up the opponent’s team into smaller ‘killable’ chunks. Why? Because even if you’re playing a bad team it’s going to be easier to pick them off one by one then to take on three on more people at once. For this you need to take into account the knowledge I talked about in the first part and time management.  You want to use the map to split the team as best you can within the time you have left.  E.g. lets say that you are playing T’s on D2 and the strat called was a split, you are going short and the bomber is with you, your team begins to take the site and kills the 2 CT’s defending the site but all 4 team mates go down.  Now instead of running to plant the bomb you pick it up and walk to catwalk and wait for a few second to see if you can get a CT rotating too fast from lower or mid. Then you have an option you could quickly go to B and try to get the bomb down while they have rotated to A or you can try to fake them by hiding in short for 30 seconds before hitting A in the hope that they either think you went to B and start to rotate back or they split up to cover both sites as they realise they don’t know where you or the bomb is anymore.  What I was trying to demonstrate is the advantage of trying to do things that are unexpected, instead of always advancing to the bomb site try catching the opponent by surprise, try to kill the early rotators, occasionally fake a bomb site.

When on T’s the last part of clutching is often once you get the bomb down, and I’m going to break this down 2 situations.
1) when there are 3 or more CT’s left most of the time you are going to want to whittle down their numbers before they start the defuse otherwise they could have one defuse while the others can cover the few places you could be hiding( generally the only exception is in sites like inside on train where with a good plant there are more places to hide and peek the defuser then CT’s to cover them), often the best way to whittle the numbers is  to try and peek them as they rotate to the site.

2) when there are only one or 2 CT’s you have a much better chance you can attempt to hide then you can start your job of making it hard to defuse the bomb, do things like when you hear to defuse peek and kill the defuser, throw flashbangs, generally be an annoyance remember you don’t need to kill them all, you only need to make it hard enough that they can’t defuse the bomb in time.

In summary, to clutch: break up the opponent’s team into ‘killable chunks’ by making them guess where you are and forcing them to rotate to where you are not, within the time limit using what you know about how they play. When this is done well a 1v5 can quickly turn into a 1v1

The unwritten laws of warring

The unwritten laws of warring.

1. At the beginning of every round do not buy! Instead, type how much money you have (assuming the war mod does not do it for you). Then buy what the caller wants, if it’s an eco don’t buy it does not matter how much money you have unless you can buy for the rest of the team you will have some people with guns others without. Same goes for buys like deco and nade’s only

2. Always listen to the caller. It’s better to have a team working together then an unorganised rabble. Do not talk at the beginning of the round everyone needs to understand what the caller is saying. Also whatever happened previously does not matter now. Don’t yell at people in a war you need to be focused and Being negative will only harm the team. The next training is the time for bringing up improvements that can be made and practiced and even then be positive and don’t play the blame game. 

3. Gun>Defuse>nades>Armor. If you have a choice between a defuse kit or armor, get the kit.

4. When CT often the caller will not be in a position to see what is happening at each site so it is useful to have someone calling at each site. Also have a variety of different strategies at each site you don’t want the opponent to catch on to what you do. Note that these holds should be practiced beforehand. 

5. most important on CT side but also important with set strats on T side. Do not randomly push. Let people know first. While pushing at the right time can give your team a big advantage whether from killing a couple of opponents or from the information you can obtain (e.g. if mid CT pushed up mid on D2 and did not see a T behind long halls and someone holding long knows they are not at long already the team can be pretty sure they are in dark or backyard and can react accordingly.) Pushing is often risky and can open a gap that opponents can slip through. This means if your team mates are not prepared they could get shot from behind.

6. Call what you see, if they are rushing your site, call it, how many opponents you know are there (sound and sight), and most importantly if you see the bomb. If you rotate to help someone, say you are rotating just like pushing. Also be careful of rotating when the bomb has not been seen they may be playing a goblin. Conversely if the bomb is down or bomber has dedicated to a push everyone should rotate, if they take the other site it does not matter if they can’t plant and if the bomb is on the ground it forces them to take on your whole team or lose the round (note. If the t’s lose a round and don’t die they don’t get any money). Lastly Call before you are dead, not after.

7. When retaking a site, unless there is no time to group up wait for everyone to be ready to enter the site. Throw flash bangs and smoke, and then take the site together. If you start defusing, make sure someone is ready to cover you and if possible pop a smoke on the bomb with the latest updates it makes it a lot harder for the T’s to pick off the defuser. And as the defuser do not assume that others are covering you unless they say they are.

8. When throwing a flashbang near others on your team say you are throwing one. It means they can be prepared whether they were just about to peek and stop for that one second or you threw a bad flash.

9. As T, follow the strategy exactly as it was practiced. For example a 2-3 split on A if you need to go one way because you have the bomb or an awp let people know also be smart if you are heading towards short and 2 people are already there go back to long. In other words do not do whatever you want this is just like pushing and rule 2, let the caller know what you are doing, if they don’t like it don’t do it. If you are doing whatever you want it will lead to an unorganised team and most likely a lost round.

10. Once the bomb is planted, cover a specific spot. Call where you are covering, and listen to where others are covering. (Note: in a 1v1 do not peek wait for the defuse, and then you peek and kill them, or get them to stop defusing. This will be explained further in the how to clutch guide.)

11. Except for the very beginning of the round before the opponent can be in a position to hear you or where a strategy calls for it you should never run. It makes noise same goes for other noise making actions like switching weapons or jumping. Any opponent with half a clue will notice it. So always walk. Common exceptions are rushes, hitting a site and decoys.

12. When picking, pick as a group. Flash then peek as a team. Don't do it stupidly (i.e. leaving a flank exposed, line up), do something like have one jump out and the other strafe out.

13. DO NOT BAIT YOUR TEAMMATES.

14. The most common failing point of a rush when this is violated. When a rush is called RUSH do not stop, keep running. It does not matter if you are flashed or get binked. A) if you are flashed the other behind or infront of you probably are not stopping will block them. B) the strength of a rush is the overwhelming force and speed which it brings. Having 5 players in the site means 5 targets for the CT’s to shoot, if they kill you when you were blind it means one of your team mates who is not blind is still shooting accurately back/ killing the opponent. If it was done the other way with 2 rushing in 2 coming in after because they were flashed and 1 hiding back not only are they are just going to pick you off one by one but they will call it and now instead of something like a 5v2 for the site you end up with a 2v5 to try and get the bomb back. 

15. Very simple rule that I would hope would not be new to anyone. At the end of the round, do not shoot your teammates. If they need to buy armor because you damaged them they won’t be happy and your team is down $1000. If this kills them, they are going to be pissed. And your team is down $4500 – $7500.

16. Most probably your team does not care if you are lagging or if your dad was talking to you. They don't want to hear excuses. Either you made the shot or you didn't. If you made it excellent keep it up. If you didn't don’t worry about it and your team mates should not either. Just get it out of your mind and focus on getting that amazing shot next round. 

17. following on from 16 if someone on your team does something great, wins a 1v2 – 1v5, makes some great shots etc. even if the round was lost congratulate them. Positive thinking can go a long way.

17. Once you are dead, you do not talk on vent. Others need to hear what’s happening in game. And unless you’re the caller don’t go telling people what they should be doing, if they stuff up because they made a mistake it will stick in their head better and they won’t make the mistake again. If you still think you should say something take a note of it and bring it up at the next training.

18. Do not message mode one unless you are the team captain. It does not matter if they are E-thugs. Let them be they can lose by default in their next ladder war. (note: in most competitions anyone but captain using mm1 without a legitimate cause is a reason for dispute with penalties ranging from rounds over turned to match overturned and suspension. Its unsportsmanlike conduct.)