‘Chiu on This’ is a short and regular opinion blast

As online CS:GO has started, I’ve decided to back and review all of the Astralis games in the last few months to find out if there were tendencies or patterns in the way they use their utility. After reviewing a bunch of the games and tournaments, I think there are four core ideas that iterate across the games that I’ve seen.

The first is that they are often used in conjunction with map control and communication. For instance, Astralis on an antieco CT round on Mirage will do the following. They will molly T ramp, take mid control, and then deny any sort of explosive burst from palace. When that is all confirmed, Xyp9x will then use a smoke down B halls to cut off any vision of the T players. He can then use his HE and spam down through the smoke as it is likely that is where the Ts are as they have shown no other presence across the rest of the map.

This gets to the second idea I’ve noticed. The conjunction of using the HE nades with smokes. This makes sense since Astralis use smokes better than anyone so when they use a smoke, it is likely because they know that the enemy is nearby. So they can block off the enemy with a smoke and then use it to set up an HE nades.

The third idea is similar to the second. It is to use the HE nades in conjunction with enemy utility. They are masters of timing their counter HE nades whenever the enemy use their own utility to try to take map control.

The fourth idea is iteration. After Astralis uses a set of HE patterns, they then iterate on top of them. They figure out what the next logical move would be to counter or mitigate the nades and then use that to create their next pattern.

I’m certain there are other things that come into play when it comes to how Astralis use HE nades, but these are the major patterns I’ve noticed.

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