Throughout the history of Counter-Strike, the role of the sniper has always been one of the most important in the team. A player using AWP usually has a much better chance of making a frag on an opponent than his teammates, since he uses the strongest gun in the game. At the same time, snipers are always imposed an extra burden of responsibility, because they are always expected to heap frags.

Also, the role of a sniper has always been very diverse and creative. In Counter-Strike, extraordinary players in this role have always been able to open up to the maximum and benefit the team; the ability to kill with a single hit only spurs to play unusual.

For the entire 20-year history of Counter-Strike, the game had a lot of talented and skilled snipers, and most often they did not resemble each other in their behavior on the server. Today we will look at the most popular styles of sniper playstyles in CS:GO and understand exactly how to play the most popular AWPers at modern CS scene.

Defence

In defense, snipers have much more space for creativity than as T-side, which is why the most beautiful highlights with AWP often occur on the CT-side. We can roughly divide snipers for this side into two categories: passive and aggressive.

Passive

The job of a passive sniper is to hold a particular point from a sufficiently distant and safe position. A player with this style can play both from the farthest locations, and taking a closer position to the enemies. There is always one thing – when attacking rivals, he can always move back and take position enemy can't access.

simply shoot off opponents who come to the point one at a time or do not use grenades. It can always buy a couple of seconds of time for the team by moving between objects on the point. In addition, in his Arsenal there is always a gun that will help when shooting at close range.

However, a passive sniper is simply enough to cover with grenades: a competent smock or a timely flash drive is enough to make the player get lost and stay out of position. Also, this style of play with AWP is quite easy to read, and many terrorists check popular sniper positions in advance, going out there with a prefire.

GuardiaN is the best example of a passive sniper in defense, who brought this style of play to the ideal. See how well he moves to the point after the first frag, and then dances in the site, picking out rivals one by one.

Aggressive

Fans of aggressive AWP playstyle are the absolute opposite of snipers who prefer to sit and wait. They always rush forward to give an openfrag as quickly as possible and catch the opponent by surprise. These snipers are not afraid to make impodent decisions and often take the most insane and unexpected positions.

The main advantage of such playstyle that the opponent might not expect you. Often, terrorists simply run to one of the sites with a knife in their hand, not expecting aggressive actions from the defense, and they have to pay for it with their lives. Overpass map is ideal map for this playstyle: you can suddenly peek connector mid or monster.

The problem with aggressive style of play is obvious - the sniper can easily be intercepted by terrorists. Just one or two passive attack players are enough to make the entire plan for an aggressive peak with AWP fail.

However, sometimes the terrorists are distributed across the map, and the defense sniper can play unexpectedly. The master of this style has always been JW, who performed such pirouettes with AWP that even the commentators then could not come to their senses for a long time.

T-side

Snipers' playstyle as Ts is significantly different, cause AWP is a very heavy weapon with which the player moves extremely slowly. It greatly restricts many team strategies, so using AWP on the terrorist side is extremely skilful.

In the attack, the sniper has to pick up certain positions, already waiting for the opponent there. Many professional teams do this in different ways.
If we talk directly about the style of play of snipers in attack, we can distinguish two different approaches: the sniper-entry and the closing sniper.

Entry-fragger

Often the sniper is the first player to make an open kill in the roundand clear the most important positions on the maps. Such a player needs to be as accurate as possible, because one miss with AWP in such a situation is tantamount to death.

Not every sniper decides to play the role of an entry-fragger in the attack, because players with AWP have a high risk of failure, going first to the target of the opponent. It can be shot by a counter-terrorist hiding somewhere with an automatic rifle or another sniper in defense, who will have more time to react.

One of the most famous entry snipers is ZywOo. The Frenchman is known for his crazy runs on banana on Inferno, where he inexplicably clears all the opponents ' positions.

Closing a sniper

However, it is much more common to use a system where the sniper comes to the site after several players with rifles. Usually with this tactic, a player with AWP scans more distant positions and helps teammates take a site and get a foothold on it.

Also, if the sniper goes to the site one of the last, he can try to drag the clutch. It is much easier for some snipers to work in a 1 in X situation than to try to give entry. Allu is one of those players.

Features of certain snipers

Today, there are many extremely talented snipers on the CS scene, and many of them can be identified without even seeing their nickname. This is due to the specific style of play of some AWPers.

Let's take a closer look on four of them.

kennyS & his flickshots

One way or another, all snipers sometimes have to make flicks, but it was kennyS who brought the sharp crosshair transfers to a new level. For him, it is almost as easy to kill an opponent with a flick as with a normal shot.

S1mple & his noscopes

"Noscopes are not just random shots, I train them specially”, S1mple has often said, and it's hard to disagree with him.

device & his flexibility

The Dane today is one of the most cunning and elusive snipers thanks to his constant changes of positions. Look at this ace – each frag was made from a new angle.

ZywOo & his pressure

We have already mentioned that the Frenchman often plays the role of entry-fragger in the attack. So, the main feature of ZywOo is that it does not stop after the first frag made, but always presses the opponents even deeper into the site. When many passive snipers would have already retreated, Mathieu keeps doing just ZywOo things.

CS:GO is great because it gives snipers several opportunities to implement at once. Thanks to this, we almost do not see the same playstyles.

The next time you watch a top match, follow the actions of snipers in teams and look for differences in their game strategy. This knowledge will greatly improve your understanding of CS and allow you to mentally outplay your opponents on the server.

Have fun!

Written by: Igor Larionov