This week we will be covering Overpass, a map characterised by its diverse range of aggressive Counter-Terrorist positions and wide array of Terrorist tactics. Throughout this guide we hope to offer teams a few basic strategies and philosophies to apply when playing this map. All smokes, flashes, and Molotovs will be shown in short videos throughout this guide. This week's videos may be slightly laggy, due to my graphics card blowing up, but rest assured the usual quality will return for next week.

The Counter-Terrorist Side



Firstly, a strong Counter-Terrorist pistol round involves sending your player with the best spawn for mid to the balloons to peek the T Spawn Tunnels, after having bought armour. He should only stay there for a few seconds to see if the Terrorists are rushing Playground and no matter whether he sees anyone or not, he must quickly fall back to Toilets to avoid being rushed from Connector. If he feels like he is being rushed, he should call for a rotate and fall back via Long, as any fights he will find himself in will favour his USP-S over the Terrorists' Glocks. Your weakest pistol player should buy two flashes and a defuse kit, before running to Heaven at the start of the round. When called to do so, he should throw the popflash shown for Monster to allow the other three players to peek and then hold B short from Heaven. He should save his final flashbang for a retake on either bombsite. The final 3 players should buy armour and rush towards Monster, calling for the popflash and then simultaneously peeking Monster while keeping lots of room between them. If you see nobody, then the Heaven player should head back up to the A site, one B player should watch Monster from an off-angle and the last two players should boost on the sandbags to watch B Short. I suggest that your strongest pistol player on B holds the Monster tunnel.

When playing an anti-eco round on Overpass, it is very easy to keep your distance from the Terrorist pistols and utilise your utility to delay bomb plants, weaken the Terrorists and flush them out of afterplant positions. I suggest you play a “Retake B” set-up, with your strongest rifler in Graffiti, who holds angles to prevent the Terrorists taking Water control. Then you have one player to his left outside the CT tunnels, who attempts to kill Terrorists as they rush the bombsite and spams smokes to output as much damage as possible. A third player plays in Heaven with a full utility set of a Molotov, nade, flash and smoke - his aim being to delay the bomb plant for as long as possible with his Molotov and nade, then using his smoke and flashbang on the retake. The A players play as normal, saving as much utility as possible and avoiding Connector due to the close range angles it offers to the Terrorists. It is important that these two players play in close proximity of one another and when in doubt fall back to the safety of the bombsite.

On gun rounds, Overpass is an AWPer’s playground. There are so many pixel angles, boosts and aggressive peeks that can let your AWPer get an opening pick that you should always prioritise the big green gun when planning your economy. It is also imperative that they watch plenty of top AWPer's demos to see all the angles they use and analyse the routes they take. When playing A, it is important that the players never sit back and hold on the bombsite from the beginning of the round, as it gives the Terrorists far too much map control for free and heavily limits the amount of information that you can collect. As such, your AWPer and rifler should play around the Toilets, focusing on playing off one another and getting picks while staying alive. One set-up they can play in Toilets includes having the rifler hold long from long Toilets and the AWPer watch Balloons and Mid from Banana or short Toilets. The AWPer may also self-boost on top of the flowerbed at Long and attempt to pick off any Terrrorists while the rifler plays defensively in Toilets. If put under too much pressure, they should attempt to fall back to the A bombsite with the AWPer watching Long and the rifler watching Short. If he doesn’t have an AWP, then he can jump spot Long from behind SWAT.

Towards B, you have one rifler play Heaven whose job is to be able to quickly rotate between the bombsites and otherwise prioritises watching for a Terrorist boost on B and holding a push out of B Short. They should also smoke Monster for the B players from CT Spawn every round. One player on the B site is the anchor, he is often the most fundamentally sound player on the team with a similar playstyle to that of “body” or “krimz”. He should not rotate to A unless the bomb is seen and often plays around the Barrels and Pillar positions on B, focusing predominantly on Monster. The second B player should Molotov and nade B Short often, but unpredictably, to hassle the Terrorists as they do their default. His focus is primarily on holding B Short and should regularly jump spot or peek B Short in order to gain information on the Terrorists' whereabouts. The HE nade shown requires you to press both mouse buttons down, till the viewmodel's arm is still and then when releasing the nade, you let go of your right mouse button a fraction of a second earlier than the left mouse button.

Simple aggressive double pushes are possible across the map with rudimentary flashes, such as through Monster and down Long A. However, a more coordinated push is possible towards Connector and B Short, which is especially effective when your team is forcebuying but this also works well on gun rounds. Three players head towards B and two players rush Middle and Connector. If a player has an AWP, they should head towards B and hold Monster from Barrels or Water. The other two B players should rush B Short, with one player acting as the support player for the entire push. He should smoke Short Tunnel as shown and then throw the demonstrated flash after delaying for just a second or two. The two players who head towards A should rush towards Connector and smoke Mid on their way. When down Connector, they should bounce a smoke and flash off of the wall to deter any Terrorists coming down Connector and swing wide out of the Connector door on to Short B, when the support player throws his flash. After the push, three players from A should return back to the A site via the CT Tunnels, leaving one player watching Monster on B and the other towards Short B.

The Terrorist Side

A simple and effective Terrorist pistol strategy involves 4 players buying armour and rushing Connector towards the Toilets and A bombsite. If the early fights go the way of the Terrorists and they manage to retain numbers, then they should also push past the A bombsite to take Stairs and Bank control. One of the players with Kevlar should be designated the role of calling whether or not to push past the site to avoid confusion mid-round. The weakest pistol player buys two flashes and a smoke, he should then flash the Counter-Terrorists out of Connector as shown before smoking Stairs and flashing the A site as his teammates push. After using his utility, he should aim to watch his team's Connector flank by playing an off-angle towards Middle or Balloons.

On anti-eco rounds, you must avoid the B Short and Connector areas due to the close range and chaotic battles that often take place in these locations. A strong anti-eco strategy is to have your dedicated lurk player throw a Molotov for B Short, smoke the middle of B site and flash over Monster twice to draw the attention of the Counter-Terrorists. He then can simply wait outside Monster for any aggressive Counter-Terrorists and lurk for the rest of the round. The rest of the team slowly takes Middle, Long A and Toilets control, using few smokes as these offer good hiding spots for Counter-Terrorists with pistols. They may then simply push onto the A site, using a Mac-10 player as a scout to see whether the site is stacked and where the Counter-Terrorists are located. Once you have run this anti-eco a couple times, you can simply five man rush B through Monster with the lurk player throwing the same utility as before. This works as a good anti-eco as by now the Counter-Terrorists will have come to expect you to run the same anti-eco as described above and will allow your team to push out of Monster and effectively trade as there is unlikely to be a stack on B.

In order to be successful on the Terrorist side of Overpass, you must be able to take control of the Connector, Toilet and B Short areas of the map. Obtaining this map control as frequently as possible is highly important for three reasons.

It greatly restricts the information that the Counter-Terrorists can obtain about the Terrorists' positioning.

The process of taking map control allows your team to get easy opening kills on the Terrorist side.

These areas of the map allow for the Terrorists to quickly rotate from A to B and thus run effective fake strategies.

As such your Terrorist default should be built around taking this map control. One default involves your lurk player throwing a Molotov for B Short, before holding outside of Monster. He can then flash over B Short once told to do so. Your two entry fraggers can rush Connector and the player with the better spawn can throw a Molotov for the bottom of the Connector stairs as soon as possible while his partner throws a nade for it. They then push quickly and aggressively behind the nade to take Connector control. Once Connector is clear, they ask the lurk player to throw his flash and explode out onto B Short. Then they can help the last two players taking Mid control from Connector. Finally, the last two players head towards Middle with your AWPer smoking Toilets off before attempting to pick Middle and Long with the help of flashes from the rifler in Middle with him. They may also throw a Molotov for Bench in order to push a Counter-Terrorist AWPer off Middle. An alternative default could be having your two Connector players Molotov, flash, and push B Short from Monster and having an AWPer pick Connector for any aggressive Counter-Terrorists. The final two players push Middle aggressively and attempt to flash and rush an aggressive AWPer as he picks Middle. Otherwise, they smoke off Toilets, throw a Molotov for Bench, and take Balloons control.

Large set smoke executes on Overpass are uncommon in the common meta. This is due to the close proximity that players often are to the bombsite when lining up their smokes. This leaves them as very easy targets for inquisitive Counter-Terrorists pushing for information due to not having their gun out as they line up the grenade. Therefore, the majority of Terrorist rounds are either very default based or are simplistic rushes to either bombsite with little utility usage. However, one set strategy that occurs at least once a game is the "B explode", coined and made popular by SK’s “Fallen”. This strategy should be run after going through the motions with one of your defaults and taking control of Connector, B Short, and Toilets. Two players should have Short control, one player holds for the Short push in case any Counter-Terrorists decide to peek aggressively and will also throw a supportive flashbang for his teammates after they have all pushed out of Monster. This flashbang will not blind them, due to it exploding on the opposite side of the pillar. Practice throwing this flashbang as late as possible while not blinding your teammates. The other player on B Short is the pure support player. He will throw a Molotov for Barrels, a flash for the players pushing out Monster, and then a smoke for Heaven in that order and in quick succession.

Three players gather outside Monster and act as the main brunt of the push. Your entry fragger should simply push off of the initial flash thrown, using the curvature of the tunnel to make himself a hard target to shoot at and duel any players to the right of the tunnel, before simply rushing the B site keeping to the left of the pillar. The second and third player pushing Monster are there to trade frag and carry the bomb, again keeping to the left of the pillar until the Heaven smoke blooms. The players pushing Monster who do not have the bomb should aim to clear the site of Counter-Terrrorists and then push into and establish control of the water area. The support player should hold Connector and prevent Counter-Terrorists rotating through it. The second player on Short should stay around the sandbags area helping his teammates wherever he is needed.

In Conclusion

Overpass has a very interesting strategical element because it does not fall into the usual categories. Teams have tried to play it in a very structured manner as one would play Train or Nuke. Other teams have tried to play it in a very loose manner as one would play Cache or Dust 2. But the most successful teams on Overpass are those who can combine the two most prevalent styles of Counter-Strike to form a hybrid style. A style that allows for fast-paced and aggressive rushes to be interwoven with slow map control defaults. Below is a playlist with all the above featured smoke videos. Again, please share these with your teammates and sorry about this week's lag.

Once more, we hope this guide will help lead your team towards success in the coming week when playing Overpass. Check in again next week on the Team Dignitas website, for our next Map Guide where we will be discussing Mirage.