iLLusioN's Guide to Beating the AWP

Over the past several months, playing on the amazing servers that we call TPG, I have noticed that there is one thing that very few people here do well. That one thing, is beating the AWP. A lot of people start bellyaching the second it's been bought, and a couple of rounds later it's banned because they consider it an unfair weapon, or it completely destroys the game, or it's wrong... or maybe they just don't like it because it's obnoxiously loud.

[**WARNING**] This article is for the experienced CS:S player and uses terminology beginners may not know.

Well folks, I'm here to show you that there's nothing to be afraid of. All it takes to beat it is a little bit of thinking.

Keys to think of when you think the other team might be AWPing:

Where is he most likely to be? Which approaches run into that choke point? Will that affect the strat? If so, how can you get to where you can disrupt his play without dying? How difficult of a shot is he going to have? If it's a hard shot, you can probably get some people through if you send more than one.

The easiest way to make an AWPer useless is smoke grenades. There are tons of nifty smoke spots you can find in CS:S and I'll show you a few of them here. I'm sure that you will have seen some of these before, but most of you probably haven't seen some of the others. Most of these are smokes that I learned/found/used playing competitively with Unkind Gaming in CAL/CEVO.

Today we're going to go over de_dust2, its common AWPing spots, some good smokes and flashes to counter those spots, and I'll throw in a few freebie general tips along the way.

de_dust2:

Common AWPing spots for this map are mid/dd, A platform, Pit, and the ledge on B platform.

We'll start with the first one you encounter: Mid/DD

The easiest smoke for this is straight from T spawn. Whenever possible, I like to line up my smoke with the corner as shown in the SS (below), because doing so will make sure that smoke ALWAYS bounces of the right door and blooms directly between the DD's.

Thrown from:


Effects:


The next, and more effective smoke, is from lower b tunnels onto the mid box. This smoke takes a little longer to set up, but a CT AWPer trying to pick mid becomes completely useless with this smoke. They can't see anything past the doors, even if they are on the rock, CT side.

Thrown from:


Effects:


Next I'll show some smokes for B, starting with 2 smokes from T spawn that are great for rushes – they block off pretty much every effective AWPing spot in B site.

This smoke blocks of the back of B site, and getting it at the right angle will also block the ledge. Make sure you throw this as you are jumping over the ledge on your way to B, or this one won't make it.

Throw from:


Effect:


This next smoke will block off B plat and anyone trying to play crate whore. Make sure you are running when you throw it or it won't make it:

Thrown from:


Effect:


This next smoke does the same thing as the last one but from inside B tunnels....this works well for a delayed rush or if you recently called a B rush and used the smokes I mentioned previously:

Thrown from:


Since we're on B, I'll show the 2 flashes that I recommend to use when taking B. The basic goal of these 2 flashes is to get a flash to back of B plat without exposing yourself and then to bounce the 2nd flash off the top of the big box on B plat. This flash sequence blinds everybody in B site. Make sure you turn from the first one to avoid flashing yourself:



Moving on to A. The 2 major spots people have to worry about an AWPer are while to take long with an AWPer on A platform, and crossing from long to A platform with AWPs watching mid. I'm not going to show the obvious throw smokes over long; everyone does that whether there are AWPs or not. One thing you can do that I don't see very often, is smoke up the entrance to CT spawn from mid. This either makes the AWPer go around to short or long, or makes them push into CT spawn, which is easy to flash out.

CT spawn from mid:


Effect:


This coupled with the long crossover smokes (which I won't show because it's obvious) works pretty well. The smoke here forces the opposing team to either go around or push through the smoke into an easy kill for you (assuming you have someone drop to CT spawn).

The other place to worry about at A is an AWP on A plat. Make sure that, along with the smokes down here, you throw flashes over as well. A running-jumping flash over that wall blinds anyone on site and can also get people trying to play aggressively at crossover:

Left side of plat:


Effect:



Right side of plat:


Effect:


Those 2 smokes and just throwing flashes over the wall should clear out any AWP's for you. Of course, the most effective way to clear plat is to pinch it from short and long, with short throwing flashes over the wall to clear site and bouncing a flash off the back wall to land somewhere in site. That's pretty much all the effect smokes for dust2. As I mentioned, you can pretty much make an AWP useless on any strat, provided you have a couple people drop smokes in the proper places. If you are doing an A split, think of the other half of the team; flashing over the wall of short can make the people at long have a much easier time pushing up; if you are at long those 2 smokes over the wall give anyone going short a TON of cover, and then, of course, you have your crossover smokes.

Those are all the smokes I have, but finding new smokes isn't too hard. Create your own server or play on a private server with sv_cheats 1 on so you can give yourself more smokes and use noclip to follow the smoke and see the path it takes to get there. You would actually be amazed at some of the funky paths some of these things take.

That being said, smokes are not the only way to beat the AWP. There are several other ways: flashes, prefires, baiting (not baiting a teammate; barely showing yourself to make them shoot and then pushing them after), 'nading them (most awpers will move if they take any serious damage), and lastly: AWPing the bastard back.

Generally speaking, if you think an AWP might be somewhere, prefire it. A couple of really great places to use a prefire is as a T on season coming from lower A. Any time I'm coming from lower A, I'll prefire CT upper – it's an easy kill and the angle is almost always the same. Same thing for Z awpers on train. Pick up an AWP, Scout, or AK and jump prefire the dumpster there...it's an easy kill that I can make 80% of the time. If you can out shoot whoever is AWPing, it can make the rest of your strats much easier to come up with.

Another good way to beat it is with a quick flash push. If you want the perfect example of this go watch the Madster. Him and that god damned P90 of his are amazing for this; I don't know how many times I've singled him out to flash somewhere that I knew an AWP would be, and to great effect. It works amazingly well in mid on D2, left side mid of Inferno(arch side), and Z connector on train. Actually, this works even better on inner train (b bombsite) than anywhere else in the game. Once you are in site, keep a steady stream of flashes going to the back of site and you'll make life difficult for anyone back there.

Strafing. DO NOT STAND STILL. If you run in a straight line against any halfway decent sniper, AWP or not you're going to die. There are also a lot of good places to do a quick air strafe to make it hard for an AWPer to get you – coming out of T mid on train. If you do a quick air strafe right coming out (not bunny hopping, 1 jump and that's it), Z AWPs can't see you and 6 track AWPers have a hard shot because you land behind the oil car. This also works well at horseshoe on season and jumping to woodpile down banana on inferno.

The 2 absolute biggest parts to beating an AWP, or anything that is giving you a hard time: Flanks, and being random. Flanking just means to get behind him or come from where he isn't looking. AWPer's tend to be behind the rest of the team (they are sniping after all), so if you leave 1 or 2 people to come back and push behind the CT rotation, you'll often find the AWPer there. Hell, you should be trying to get flanks no matter what, but I've always found that flanking an AWP is the best way to beat it. By random I mean be unpredictable; if you keep going in the same area, or if your strats continuously put people in one spot, good players will key in on it. Good players with an AWP will destroy it. Keep them guessing and keep them moving. Being random is great at any time. Trying to figure out what to do in a clutch situation? Be random. Do what they aren't expecting and when you show up there you have the upper hand. You'll notice all the people you see clutching over and over again do things you wouldn't expect them to. You can also do stuff like show your gun and “fake run” at a corner if you know an AWP is there, trying to bait out a shot and then immediately go for the kill.

AWP's can be game changing; they force the game to slow down, and for people to not run out in open spaces without some sort of cover, but they are by no means unbeatable. The biggest thing about the AWP is that you have to account for it on strats and take some more time to develop them. Not doing so leaves people exposed to easy shots. Smokes and flashes are your friends. Make the bastard move - AWPs playing mid on D2 rotate to B pretty quickly with some noise, 3 people hitting B can move him and let you execute an A split without having to worry about him.

If you have any problems tracking what I call things here are some overviews with what my team called everything on pretty much every map. Some are common, others I've never heard anywhere else but still use out of habit. If you have an suggestions of other idea's or things you would like to see in the future articles please feel free to pm me about it and we'll discuss it.

Next time we'll go over de_inferno, and hopefully show you a few things that you didn't know before.