Are you tired of standard A or B rushes on Mirage? Do you want to be a tactical mastermind?
Don’t sweat it, because in this week’s edition we’re picking the brain of NaToSaphiX on how good IGLs are calling, and what tendencies they pick up on.
Pre round calls - by NaToSaphiX
A general rule of thumb is that in every top team, there is a pre-game prep for every match, where the IGL and the team will pick out the first 1-2 T rounds they want to play on their T side.
As part of that, you run a pre-game analysis, trying to find gaps or things to exploit in your opponents’ playstyle, but oftentimes you won’t find anything in the pistol or follow-up rounds.
So instead of trying to exploit the opponent early on, you prepare the first 1-2 buy rounds as T, in order to make them as solid as possible.
Outside of set rounds like that, in general, IGLs will call from the perspective of any one of these five:
- Previous rounds: What are the tendencies of the opponents and our game plan? If a team has won 3 rounds in a row going fast A, maybe it’s time to go slow B, because the opponents will start stacking A (a simplified but relevant example).
- Feeling: Call it a gut feeling or experience. This is when the IGL knows that the opponents have a specific strategy in their playbook and tries to counter it. “I know they have this aggressive CT B push and I think they will use it now, so let’s rush A long and make a wall of smoke instantly, so they can’t come back in time”.
- Contingency: Also known as the set-play around an objective. “Let’s take banana-control and instantly pop B, but if they block us early on banana, let’s retreat and set up for THIS tactic”. You play based on your opponents’ actions.
- Goal: Based on an outcome; for example starting in a default with the set goal of getting out of apartments: “Let’s work the default, but if we can end up in apps and pop there on timing X, it would be perfect”.
- Freestyle: “NiKo go kill”. No, really freestyling is just a combination of all of the above, where all rounds start with a default, and the IGL makes a mid-round call based on initial reactions to what is happening.
TLDR: And that, our dear readers, is how to get out of MGE. Or maybe, we wouldn’t know, because we’re hard stuck in GN3 😟
