This is a new series I’m starting called Home Turf. As Auguste “Semmler” Massonnat once said, “Get out nerd! This is my turf!” In CS:GO becoming the best team on a map is an achievement and a great advantage. It is hard to do as you need a significant streak against the other top teams in the world to prove and as you continue to play against them, the more they adjust. This in turn forces the team to make a deeper and deeper playbook until it becomes a never ending battle between teams to see who will be the best team on a particular map. Once a team does stamp themselves as the best on a map though, this forces the entire strategy to shift as other teams will be forced to ban that map leaving themselves open to weaknesses. Right now Mouz have proved themselves to be the best on Mirage. They are on a 12-3 record on the map in 2018 on LAN. Their wins include: Avangar, Na`Vi, Renegades, Vega, Space Soldiers, Virtus.Pro, SK, G2 twice, Cloud 9, Liquid, Na`Vi, HellRaisers, and Virtus.Pro again. This is Home Turf, Mouz’s Mirage.

To understand why Mouz are the best on Mirage, we need to go down their roster. Their lineup includes: Chris “chrisJ” de Jong, Tomas “oskar” Stastny, Robin “ropz” Kool, Miikka “suNny” Kemppi, and Martin “STYKO” Styk. As a team their three main star players are oskar, ropz, and suNny. The team usually needs two of these three players to show up for the team. If not then chrisJ or STYKO need to have good impact on the game. To go further, oskar is one of the best AWPs in the world and is good at being dynamic, finding picks, and transitional defense. Ropz is a strong lurker that can go aggressive when the need calls for it. suNny can pivot between being the second man in after chrisJ or the lurker/postplant player. ChrisJ is good as a secondary AWP at times (depending on map) and entry fragger. STYKO is the glue guy, he gets information, creates space, and brings impact through teamplay and clutches through good decision making.

As for Mirage, it can be divided into two sides. For the first bit, I’ll focus on the Ct-side. The most important thing to look at is Mid control. In the case of Mouz, the three players that take control of this are: chrisJ, suNny, and oskar. It is incredibly hard to crack Mouz’s Ct-side mid control because they have so many variations they like to use. The biggest threat is the double AWP setup where oskar is looking from either connector or window and chrisJ is looking from cat. suNny can either be in window, connector, underpass, or behind the smoke on cat. The variations between these three players is what makes it hard to punish mouz. For instance if suNny is in window and the Ts smoke window, he can then go into ladder and chrisJ can setup a trap as he falls back. Conversely, suNny could be hiding behind the typical smoke on cat and then be flashed in by either oskar or chrisJ. Another variation is having suNny support the AWPers by taking an angle on anyone coming up underpass to try to hit oskar or chrisJ from the side. A final variation is to have both suNny and oskar make first contact from connector, with oskar going for the pick and suNny supporting him. Once they draw the attention, ChrisJ makes second contact and flanks the T players trying to punish oskar and suNny.

This also doesn’t account for chrisJ’s variations as he can deploy a smoke to cut off cat and use it for multiple things. He can retreat and reposition for B apts. Or he can push B apts and then go into underpass to flank the Ts. A third option is to use the smoke to cover himself as he unloads the rest of his utility to stall out anyone pushing underpass (and many of the best Mirage teams have their connector play come from underpass). Another option is to hold catroom, or if he’s on a rifle use himself as an entry fragger and take suNny’s aggressive positions to make first contact. There is also the setup where suNny plays in catroom and chrisj baits for him on cat.

Then we get to oskar’s variations from mid control. The problem with dealing with oskar is that he is running too many different positions to concretely know where he is going. Yes, he’s the best at mid control, but sometimes mouz leave mid control to chrisJ and suNny. At that time oskar could be doing a two man T ramp setup with ropz, be at ticket, be at jungle baiting ropz. In either case, he is likely to get 1-3 shots off and play a transitional defense if an exec comes in. Mouz also have the variation of putting oskar solo on B with his AWP with full confidence that he can get 1 or 2 picks while falling back and creating time for the rest of the team to either shut down the B hit or retake the site.

This is rounded up by STYKO and ropz as the zone players for B and A respectively. The B site is good for STYKO as he is often used to get information if there is no contact anywhere else on the map and if the A hit does come, his best impact comes from late round decision making, teamplay and clutches. For ropz he plays multiple setups with either oskar or suNny as he can play first contact for them, stall out any pushes that come towards A with good utility usage, or go aggressive into palace himself.

The final bit that is annoying about dealing with Mouz is that in small man situations, they understand the importance of getting critical map points that either let them surprise and kill enemies that are rotating or put them in good spots to do a good retake. They also get a bonus in that they are incredibly good at playing around oskar if he has a saved AWP as they set him up to try to get opening picks and then know how to play off of that.

Where the Ct-side is likely the best in the world, the T-side is arguably what makes this Mouz’s best map. The reason I think that’s the case is because the T-side is a problem for Mouz’s team and they sometimes run into a cul-de-sac. This isn’t the case for Mirage as it is a map where the entire Mouz team finds ways to contribute. On top of that, it is has their deepest playbook and one that ChrisJ seems to understand the best. So regardless what happens he can figure out who to call around if someone is on fire, or what tactic to call in a majority of situations.

The T-side of Mouz is dependent on mid control. They usually have suNny, STYKO, and oskar take it with chrisJ coming from underpass. Another potential variant is having suNny come with chrisJ from underpass so he can either trade chrisJ and get into connector or be boosted into window. From that point suNny can take over connector and make a play. Additionally STYKO can go into catroom and play secondary contact, lurk, or cut off rotates. Oskar is used to take mid control, but can also be used to look for a pick at B apps. Finally ropz plays info/lurk at palace and can be either first or secondary contact. If a pick isn’t made, then the split happens. It can either be a full 5 man split or they leave one person to lurk. If they go B, ropz lurks at palance, if they go A they can leave either suNny or STYKO to lurk. As for the actual split, the plan is to have chrisJ entry/create space and have the other players trade off of him. Once the bomb is planted, any of the remaining players can close out the round.

What essentially makes Mouz’s mirage the best in the world is that there are no extraneous pieces in the puzzle. Everyone has a role they play and nearly all of them excel at their roles relative to the competition. This means that there is a chance for any single member of the team to contribute when some of the main fraggers go missing. On top of that they have too many looks on Ct-side mid control and the players on the wings make sure that it can’t be easily abused. As for the T-side, the roles all make sense and allow for play making all across the map from their star players. Because of those reasons, Mouz has become the best team on Mirage. That’s an incredible feat when you consider how many top teams there are on Mirage right now: FaZe, Liquid, Fnatic, SK, and Cloud 9. Among all of them Mouz is the best and Mirage is their home turf.

Photo Credits: Daniel Ranki (@daniranki)