With Astralis being Cloud9's next opponent, I am going to attempt a scouting report on them. In doing so, I downloaded every map they played for the last 6 months in order find tendencies on each map and wrote an app to give me an image every 5 seconds of every round. This produced over 70,000 images haha. So, without further ado, here is some general information before we get into specifics:

Over the last 6 months, Astralis has not played Mirage once. It was their perma ban. They played Nuke the most at 25 times (19-5-1 record), Dust2 19 times (11-8), Inferno 18 (13-5), Train 12 (10-2), Vertigo 9 (7-2), Overpass 7 (5-2).

So, I am going to start with Nuke, their most played map.

Nuke

Dust2

Inferno

Train

Vertigo

Overpass

Nuke

T Side

Let's start with pistol round T sides, What did they do the most over the 25 T side pistol rounds they had.

Outside Rushes: 8

Smoke Mini and hit A or head down Vent: 6

Rush Ramp: 5

So, 19 of the 25 times, they had their play chosen 15 seconds into the round. They do a good job of not just doing one thing. Switching up which of the 3 main paths they go down. When going either Outside or towards Ramp, Xyp9x typically was lurking around Lobby. So, I would say its fairly safe to say if Astralis doesn't rush onto A, you can expect Xyp9x to be in Lobby or Squeaky waiting to see what is going on.

One thing I noticed, that might be a tell, is in 4 of the 5 ramp takes, and 4 of the 8 outside takes, when xyp9x is lurking, he grenades Squeaky and molly's off Mini. Where as, when they are going A or down vent, they drop a smoke Mini. So, that could be a tell of 1. if xyp9x is lurking, and 2. if they are rushing through squeaky or somewhere else.

If they lost the pistol round, every time except for once (they rushed down vent), they sent multiple outside with typically 1 Vending and the other 1-2 in Lobby/Squeaky. One was always Lobby.

After winning a pistol round, they sent four Outside 4 of the 11 times and sent no one Outside 3 of the 11 times. Other than that, it was hard to get a pattern on how they started the rounds. Here are 9 of the 11 images, maybe you will see something I don't:

On non pistol rounds, Astralis loves to play outside. ~75% of the time they send 2-3 outside with a couple in Lobby. ~15% of they time they head straight onto A through Squeaky, and 10% of the time they rush ramp.

Only one or two times, of all the T side rounds, did I see them through the double Outside smokes and not have at least one person outside. But, ~50% of the time they through the smokes, they weren't actually going down Secret right away. It would either be Glave hovering around behind Red Box or someone top Marshmello/Mini with the rest of the team in Lobby/Squeaky.

When they plant on B, they seem to like having a player ramp when the other is on site, when possible (aka they already have ramp control).

CT Side

For pistol rounds, their default seems to be 2 ramp, 1 mini, 1 near hut and 1 heaven or silo:

If Astralis won the pistol, they would always have only 1 ramp who, every time but once, dropped a smoke Trophy room and then get up close to the smoke:

Then, for the most part, the other positions would be 2 on A (one close to Squeaky and one Heaven or Silos), one Garage or Red, and one Mini or supporting outside.

Twice when they dropped a smoke towards T Red, they pushed up into it, but, it doesn't seem to be that common.

When they lost the pistol however, over on Ramp, xyp9x almost always played down on the lower ramp watching towards Trophy, with 3 times having a player either boosted or hiding behind those boxes.

All 3 times they had 2 ramp, they had 2 close or on Hut, and the other player Mini watching outside, and smoked out the T Red area:

When dev1ce has an awp, he almost exclusively uses it outside, and I would say ~60% of the time he is on the left side of Garage or behind CT Red:

For the most part, on all kinds of rounds, Astralis seems to like playing 1 Ramp, 1 Heaven, 1 Hut, 1 Outside, and then 1 kinda rotating around either Hut, or helping outside, etc.

Dust2

T Side

On the T side of Dust2, Astralis' default looks to be for the most part, 1 Tunnels, 1 Lower Tunnels, 1 Long Doors, and 2 Mid/Top Mid/Suicide:

4 Times they rushed Long, they never rushed B or rushed up Cat/Mid:

If they won the pistol round, they typically would then pressure Long early or push quickly towards Mid Doors from Tunnels:

If they did not have anyone out Long, there were always more than 1 person in Tunnels and 1 Mid:

If they lost pistol though, they did have a couple of fast Mid plays:

And also had a couple lurk in Long Doors plays:

When going Long, Astralis did a few times send all 5 through the Long Doors, but, for the most part, they would send 3-4 and have 1 either Mid or Lower Tunnels

There were a few times where there was a player in a different spot Upper Tunnels or sitting back near T Ramp waiting for a rotation:

I would say for the most part though, if you can confirm 3 are pushing Long Doors, the B player is safe to start taking control of tunnels, just making sure to check towards T Spawn, and if no one there, expect someone Lower Tunnels.

This was a play I saw a few times, they would smoke Xbox, and glave would push up to Short A with 3 towards B and 1 Top Mid. Not really sure how you would sniff this out other than seeing and killing glave, but, here it is:

If Xbox is smoked, and you see more than 1 player pushing up A Short, that seems to mean there are going to be 4+ players Mid and only once was a player checking for a CT push tunnels:

Only 8 out of the 33 times they smoked Xbox, they had 3+ players towards B (4 of which were the play I showed earlier). 5 of those 8 times glave was A Short. And every time they had 0 presence Long.

On Ecos, they do like to put pressure Mid and Cat:

CT Side

Astralis does a good job of mixing up their CT side pistol defenses. ~60% of the time there is only 1 on B, but, they do a great job of sometimes throwing 3 Long, sometimes going Cat, sometimes, 2 Mid, etc:

If they lost the pistol round, they typically sent 3 long with either 2 on B, or 1 B 1 Mid:

If they won the pistol, they would typically play 2/1/2 with 2 B, 1 Mid, and 2 A/Long. About half the time, the Mid player would actually be Cat instead of Mid Doors:

For the most part, Astralis does play 2 on B site and push out Long to get control there:

Astralis loves to double AWP on Dust2. They have a couple common setups that they use. One, is to have one AWP watching Cat, and the other AWP on B Site:

When double awping, I did notice that when one of the awps goes to hold Long Doors, a lot of times there is only 1 on B. Sometimes the other awper, sometimes just Magisk:

Seems like for the most part, the secondary awper is either on B site or watching Cat from Mid Doors while dev1ce switches off from Long or Cat:

Inferno

T Side

For pistol rounds, Astralis' default is to have one player on either side of Banana, one Bottom Mid, one Alt Mid, and one in Tunnels:

Only one round did they start with more than 2 Banana. They did end up going B on this round, but it wasn't a straight rush. They started executing 30 seconds into the round with all 5 there:

There were a few times they did have no presence Banana though. All 5 times they did end up at the A site:

If they lost the pistol round, they would continue a similar default of 1 Alt Mid, 1 towards Apps, 1 Tunnels, and 2 hanging around Lower Mid/Lower Banana waiting for the CT utility to finish. Would a couple times switch it up where one player was, but fairly similar:

One time they did force down Banana and go B with their whole team, but the rest was like the above photos:

If they won pistol round, they would always molly Car, and send 1-2 up Banana. There was also always pressure up Alt Mid, either by Apps Door, or Apps Window, or both:

On Eco rounds, this was a play I saw about once a match, where, there would be 1 player either Lower Mid or in Lower Banana while the 4 others all pushed up Alt Mid:

On regular rounds, I noticed that the majority of the time they had a player on T Bridge (typically xyp9x), there was at least one other player in Alt Mid (typically Dupreeh). BUT, they do have this play that I saw quite a number of times where Dupreeh would drop the molly in Apps, then head Tunnels. Then, they would exec on B once xyp9x finished spamming. They used this in the last round or 2nd to last round of a half/match quite a few times as well. Seems like one of their go-to plays:

CT Side

On the CT Pistol rounds, Astralis does a good job of mixing up sometimes having 2 B, sometimes 3, sometimes only 1, but, they also do seem to rush down Mid fairly frequently:

Heres 9 other pistol rounds just to look at:

If they lost the pistol round, the majority of the time they would play 3 B with a player on the Short A side of Brackets:

If they won the pistol round, they would typically play 2 on B and 3 A:

Astralis a lot of times will have 3 players start towards B, one of them dropping some utility and then heading back to A:

When they do start 3 towards B, they do seem to like to have one player Boiler and one player inside Apps. Prob had this setup ~33% of the time when 3 towards B:

They do boost by Boiler to have the awp look down mid a couple times, and when they do, they always have only 2 B and the other A player is typically just on the other side of Top Mid:

Train

T Side

Astralis seems to favor going to A site for most pistol rounds, sometimes slowly go towards B. Only 1 time did they send anyone towards Ivy and it was just one player. Every time they dropped a smoke on A, they followed it up with a flash and exec'd on A. And they dropped the utility pretty fast. Seems that if the round goes 30 seconds with no utility, they are prob about to pop out B:

The 6 times they lost the pistol round, they seemed to mix it up pretty good. Here are the 6 rounds if you see anything:

If they won pistol, most of the time they would drop 2 smokes on A, and then just wait around seeing what happens, then drop 2 more and exec on A. The one time they went B, they just threw a pop flash A and hurried to B. And one time they exec'd A on the first 2 smokes on A, but the rest was a slow play after initial smokes. Again not much presence Ivy:

Man, Train is hard to find patterns. The rotations are so fast its hard to find a pattern in what is is being set up. I would say though they seem to go A ~70% of the time and they only seem to have presence Ivy ~33% of the time.

One thing I did notice, when they would send 2 towards Ivy, there was mostly 2 in, or close to, B Halls:

CT Side

On CT Side pistol, the 33% of the time they have 3 A, 2 B, with the 2 B both on or near Sidewalk:

25% of the time they will have someone peak Upper:

And the rest pretty much they would have 4 towards A with one on B:

If they lost the pistol round, every time they played 4 on A with one person checking Upper:

If they won, they liked to play 1 on B, close to the entrances, and on A, have someone quick out Ivy, or fast to Popdog, or both:

For the most part, on CT, Astralis likes to play 1 on B, and, xyp9x likes to play close up to the Lower entrance. A lot of times though, by about the 30 second mark, if they don't see anything on A, they would rotate someone over:

They also seem to put a player Sandwich quite a bit on A, typically paired with another player eBox or Bomb Train, and Ivy. Seems like it might be their goto setup:

If they smoke out Ivy early, that seems to mean they probably aren't paying attention to it. A couple exceptions to it though:

Vertigo

T Side

On pistol rounds, Astralis seems to like to stay grouped up the majority of the time, mostly going to A:

Twice they did a 2 Mid, 3 A play, and once they had a lurker Mid, but, most of the time were all together:

If they lost the pistol round, all 7 times they went some towards Mid and some towards A:

If they won the pistol round, one time they all 5 went to A, and the other time they spread out and played it slow waiting to see if any pushes would come:

For the most part, Astralis does a pretty good job staying spread out at the beginning of rounds. They like to have someone watching Lower B Ramp for pushes, and they like to have 2 Lower A Ramp/Forklift most of the time:

They also like to boost over Forklift:

They only went heavy towards B to start about 10% of the time:

CT Side

For the 9 CT pistol rounds, their most common setups were to have 3 A, 1 B, 1 watching Mid, and 2 A, 2 B, and 1 Mid Toolbox. On B they also liked to peek down the stairs:

Once they put 4 A Ramp:

If they lost the pistol, they once played 3 aggressive on A, and the other time played 2-1-2 with the Mid player at Toolbox:

If they won the pistol, they liked to get aggressive down A:

For the rest, they have a player Toolbox pretty frequently and play a lot of 2-1-2 from there:

They also like to be aggressive around A Ramp pretty frequently early in rounds:

Overpass

T Side

Of the 7 times Astralis played Overpass, 2 times they defaulted to having 2 Connector, 1 towards B, and 2 Playground/Fountain, and 2 times they did the same thing but moved one player from Connector to Water. So, 1 Connector, 2 towards B, and 2 Playground/Fountain. They played all these rounds pretty slow waiting back to see if any pushes came from the CTs:

The other 3 times they had 1 round each of heavy presence towards A, Connector, and B:

If they lost the pistol round, they seemed to do fairly similar, slow, defaults. Twice ending up on A, twice on B:

If they won the pistol round, 2 of the 3 times, they again slowly took control of Connector and Party, watching for pushes, then once ended up on A, once on B. And the third time they sent 5 towards B going for a faster execute:

They seem to favor getting Connector and Water control over going towards A. Only ~15% of the time did they start off a round sending 3 towards Playground/Fountain. They do a lot of 2-1-2/2-2-1 and 1-2-2/1-1-3:

Three times I saw them do the 4 man stack. Every time, the 5th player went Connector, and at least 2 of the times they did it, they tossed just a single flash over towards Fountain (couldn't 100% confirm if a flash was thrown the 3rd time):

CT Side

On pistol rounds, Astralis seems to like starting with a heavier B side. Three times having 4 there, and twice having 3. 3 of the 5 times they pushed straight into Water:

The 2 other times they once sent 2 Connector with 1 on B, and the other time, just played 3 back around Bathrooms and 2 on B:

If they lost the Pistol, they did something different each of the 3 times, but if they won, 3 of the 4 times they had 2 on B and pushed players down Connector:

Astralis seem to like to play 3 on B, or, if they only have 2 on B, have another player Connector:

They also seem to like pushing into Water when they have 3 or more on B:

If they pushed 2 up Long or 2 down Connector, that means they have one player Party/Bathrooms and 2 on B, typically just sitting back on the site:

Conclusion

Thank you so much for taking the time to check this out. Hopefully some knowledge was gained from it.

This is just the start for apps and content I am creating to give insight into Cloud9 and their opponents.

If you saw anything yourself or want to talk about any of this, hit me up on twitter @Cloud9_Win. Lets crush this team ✊.