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.