I will be taking a look at the third map from the Liquid Tempo Storm game from the Katowice Qualifiers. I will look mostly at the pistol round and a couple other rounds and give my opinions and insight to them. I will also be talking a little about team play and economy. What you can learn from this post is that by looking at the pros you can learn and improve your own play.

Pistol Round:

The pistol round starts and Liquid is playing S1mple aggressively at B Upper to get information, with nitr0 playing at the bottom of Ramp to back up S1mple. Hiko holds Ivy and sees SHOOWTIME cross over and falls back with that information. AdreN and EliGE sit on A site playing near Bombtrain watching T Connector and Ladder Room. Liquid has all the entrances to both Bombsites covered in this setup and holds passively on A with an aggressive set up on B. Tempo Storm is set up for their execute and plan on sending two Ivy, two T Connector and one Ladder. Tempo Storm start by smoking Hiko off at Ivy, since they saw him at that position earlier. Boltzz and SHOOWTIME then proceed to push from Ivy while LUCAS1 and felps push out from T Connector. AdreN falls back onto the Bombtrain to get an angle on boltzz and SHOOWTIME while they come out of Ivy, but Tempo Storm is doing a multipronged attack and LUCAS1, who pushed in between Red Train and Blue Train, catches him out. EliGE gets caught out by HEN1 who peeks out from Ladder Room and EliGE has to fall back into Back Lanes. AdreN was in a very exposed position and should have fallen back into Z, but Tempo Storm pushed the A Bombsite very quickly and caught him out of position. I have pictures below showing the movements of the two teams.

-Nitr0 has a very quick rotation to Z and picks off felps who is jumping on the Bombtrain to try to get a positional advantage in Z, this is greedy and he should have held a passive position at Electric Box, or behind Bombtrain. Liquid is in a very doable 4 vs. 4 retake. S1mple works on a flank towards Ladder Room, but HEN1 is already there holding that flank. S1mple engages HEN1 in Ladder Room and Hiko pushes through Back Lanes. Nitr0 and EliGE sit back and do nothing just holding angles. The setup that Tempo Storm was holding was perfect for this. SHOOWTIME was holding on the Back Lanes train to where Hiko would not spot him, but SHOOWTIME would see Hiko. LUCAS1 and boltzz were both in positions to cover SHOOWTIME if multiple people had peeked him or to hold back to cover the Bomb defuse in case Liquid did overrun SHOOWTIME. Liquid takes a bunch of 1 versus 1’s instead of pushing together as a team, getting picked off 1 by 1. This leads to Tempo Storm winning the pistol and taking the first three rounds. I have pictures below showing the movements of the players and also what their movements should have been if they made any mistakes in my opinion. Play together as a team and work around your teammates to help and push enemies together to better help your team win the round.

First Gun Round:

I have a picture below showing what Team Liquid bought for the first gun round. Notice that adreN has zero armor, since he used all his money to buy s1mple an AWP. This shows that Liquid is almost completely dependent on having s1mple on an AWP. If they were not dependent on him having an AWP then everyone would have bought armor and rifles. Another thing that is notable in the picture is that Liquid only have 3 smokes. If they all went for rifles with body armor then they would have had 5 smokes and multiples of flashbangs and grenades. Unless s1mple went insane with an AWP or Liquid have really good positioning I do not believe they would win this round. Now for the actual round Liquid have a standard Counter-Terrorist setup on Train. Nitr0 is playing on top of Pop Dog Train with adreN playing Z for a fast rotate if Tempo Storm rush B. Nitr0 sees that there is aggression to B Upper. Adren rotates into the B Bombsite to give nitr0 some support. Nitr0 and adreN have taken more passive positions behind Bombtrain and Pop Dog, but one of the A players has not rotated to hold Z.

-I think s1mple should have gone Z and held T Connector when adreN rotated into the B Bombsite. Tempo Storm had shown no aggression towards the A Bombsite and s1mple could just have easily held T Connector from Z, since he was holding it from the back train near Ivy. This would have given him a faster rotation and Tempo Storm may not have been in the positions that won them the round. I have pictures below showing rotation times to the Bombsite and a picture showing a different setup. If s1mple did go Z after adreN left then I think EliGE should have gone Electric Box to watch Ladder Room and to support s1mple if Tempo Storm came out of T Connector.

EliGE could have also gone towards Hell and supported Hiko at Ivy, but there was no signs of aggression from Tempo Storm towards Ivy. I believe Liquid had s1mple stay in his position because Liquid believed that the B aggression was faked. If s1mple were to get rushed from T Connector and Ivy, position would be very weak. Holding Z with an AWP is a lot safer of a position as well. It was a good round from both teams, but Liquid got over run at the B Bombsite before any rotations could come in. Have map awareness make sure everything is being covered and that the player who rotates, his position is being covered. Make sure your positioning is able to catch out the enemy while remaining safe yourself. Learning to play the whole map and have map control is a very important part of Counter Strike. Below I have pictures expressing some of these ideas.

Impact Round:

Round 11 in my opinion is a very big round for Liquid, since they won round 10 and if they lose this round their money will be low and they will forced into a force buy and save. Tempo Storm does something really interesting here and decides to change up the pace of how they are playing. While Liquid is taking the time to set up and throw grenades Tempo Storm is already out T Connector and catching Liquid off guard. As you can see in the picture below everyone is flashed and Liquid is trying to get into safe positions to stop Tempo Storm from taking the Bombsite. Liquid ends up getting the two opening picks, but SHOOWTIME gets two kills and s1mple gets flashed and stuck in a molotov. The round goes into a 2 vs. 2 situation. HEN1 is in a safe spot watching the bomb from T Connector and SHOOWTIME gets aggressive from Heaven and watches Ivy. Both HEN1 and SHOOWTIME can watch bomb from their positions, so all they have to do is wait for Liquid to push them.

Nitr0 pushes from Ivy and SHOOWTIME catches him out and then Hiko tries to rush SHOOWTIME and loses the trade. Hiko and nitr0 needed to peek closer together, so that they could get a trade kill. SHOOWTIME had time to reset and change his position before Hiko engaged him. This is the reasoning for Liquid losing this round. Liquid lost the round which lost them a lot of money since it reset the losing bonus. This caused Liquid to force buy and if they lose that would cause them to save and then force buy again. This is what makes this half so one sided from Tempo Storm. Tempo Storm was able to completely control the economy of Liquid. Make sure you make good economic decisions throughout the game. Think about the things you can buy at the beginning of the round and what will be most beneficial towards your team.

Conclusion:

This was a look at the third map of the Liquid/Tempo Storm series for the Katowice Qualifiers. I took a look at a few rounds that i thought were important and led to Tempo Storm having complete control of the game on the Terrorist side. I hope I have shown you a few ideas to keep you learning and improving your Counter-Strike game.

Are you into fantasy leagues? Then check out AlphaDraft and put together your allstar lineup!