CEVO Articles - by Justin Carmony

What makes a good strat? What makes a great strat caller? After speaking with several professional and amateur players I wanted to venture my ideas on what makes a good strat caller. Maybe I’m “totally off my rocker” and I’m way off in left field; or perhaps I am dead on. Either way I’d like to explore and get some feedback from the community on the topic of calling strats.

First of all, what is an effective strat? While the question may seem odd to ask, it is important for us to understand the definition. I think a good definition transforms a strat from being “3 go here and 2 go there…” to a powerful strategy. So here is my personal definition for what is a good strat in a competitive video gaming:

A strat is a clear plan of action with a specific purpose of creating and maximizing opportunities to gain and/or maintain the advantage.

Let’s break that down into two parts: First, a good strat is a clear plan of action. It is clear in the sense that the end goal and secondary “back-up” plans are in place. This means players know their parts and know what to do in case things change. This is especially important with more risky/aggressive strats, because if you wrongly predict your opponents’ moves, the seconds transitioning from Plan A to Plan B can make the difference between winning and losing. A well planned strat has zero confusion as to different possibilities. Many times I’ve seen a Plan B executed just as well as a Plan A due to proper preparation. Other times I’ve seen a team just fall apart because one thing went wrong and left them in confusion.

The second part is the “why” of a strat. I believe this is most overlooked aspect of strat calling. In game you might tell players to do specific actions, but if you or your players don’t know the “why” behind the “what” then they don’t know the end goal to gain the advantage. A strat without a clear purpose isn’t nearly effective as one with a purpose. The power of an effective strat is that it is designed with clear goals in mind. Once I heard a professional player say after winning a championship that “every single action of each of [their] strats [had] specific purposes for taking the advantage. Every flash, every [grenade], down to every movement is designed and engineered to give [them] the advantage.”

Now that we’ve defined what an effective strat is, how can a player take their “strats” from being just general directions to specific plans to gain the advantage? While I know I don’t know everything, I’ve put together a list of three things I believe are most crucial to effective calling:

1) Make Clearly Defined Calls with Goals and Purposes.

Clearly defined and understood strats make all the difference during execution. Purposes and goals should be clearly defined. “Go long A” isn’t as valuable as “Slow push long A and wait for the pick. You want to draw their grenades to gage how many players are playing that area. If you pick off one of their players push up to watch. Look for…” Define the purpose and goal of specific actions and make sure it is understood throughout the team. This will lead to better execution and fewer errors.

One aspect of a clearly define strat are what I call triggers. A trigger is a specific event that causes another action, and can be thought of as an “If-Then” statement. “If we’re able to take out their sniper, then we push up through the middle.” Triggers are critical because they map out the different possibilities. “What do we do if we lose two teammates?” Triggers also give opponents less time to react. If a team can respond quickly to different events, many times one team can out-react the other and gain an advantage.

An example of a trigger is a strat my team has used in scrims on de_nuke for CS 1.6. Sometimes we’ll take a gamble and rush lobby to try and catch the opponents off guard. However, if we rush and our opponents are not in lobby we immediately have two guys pop in vents to defend the lower bombsite. However, if we wait till we hear the bomb planted in lower, we are put in a much greater disadvantage. Even if the two people in vents die, they are able to call where the enemy is at so we can counter.

90% of all planning is done before the match/scrim. Each round a strat caller shouldn’t have to explain each strat to every possible variable. That is what practice is for, defining all the major strats and tactics. In the actual game a strat caller should only need to make tweaks and adjustments to play against the current opponents.

Poor planning and defining of strats lead to confusion. Confusion is a destroyer of strats, gives your opponents the ultimate advantage, and should be avoided like the plague. Strats, like stated before, should contain backup plans. If some of your teammates fail, the remaining should know what to do in that situation. If a team is constantly finding themselves in confusion during a match, they need to sit down and define all backup plans.

Once again, if a strat caller is finding that strats are not being executed clearly, they need to sit down with the team and decide “What is the purpose of this strat? What advantages does it give us? How is it weak? How could the opponents stop us?” The more players do this the more second nature it will become to them to think this way. Soon players will find themselves automatically defining and clarifying strats with little effort.

2) Know your team & players’ strengths and weaknesses

How can a strat caller adapt to an opponent’s strategy if they don’t know the tools they have to work with? Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of a team collectively as a whole and on an individual player level is important. Find ways to capitalize on strengths your team has over your opponents, and defend against your weaknesses. Remember, maximize your opportunities and minimize your weaknesses.

This may seem trivial, but many amateur strat callers miss the boat entirely with this. Recently I played a scrim where I had an inexperienced player defending a bombsite with me, which for our team was the more difficult of the two bombsites to defend. Our opponents took our site 11 out of the 15 rounds. However, the strat caller never made any changes to where people were playing, but only told us to “tighten” up the site. Granted, we didn’t lose each one of those times and we were able to retake the bombsite a few rounds, but it was frustrating to being locked into a stagnate strat that obviously wasn’t minimizing our weaknesses.

Newer strat callers, or callers with a newer team, should sit down and list the strengths and weaknesses of their teammates. Talking to a team about strengths and weaknesses can help reveal not only strengths to try to exploit, but also weaknesses to guard against. Think which strats in the past have worked and why, and vice-versa with strats that haven’t worked. This knowledge is critical to adapting to opponents and making educated decisions on what strats to call.

3) Read & Adapt to the Opposing Team

I truly believe the most crucial part of a strat caller is the ability to see how opponents are playing and decide how to counter their strats is irrevocably vital. An effective strat takes into consideration the opponent. Look for strengths and weaknesses. See how you can adjust a strat to exploit a weaker player or a less defended area. Look at your opponent’s tendencies as a whole team. See if they leave any weaknesses in their positioning. True, it comes down to execution of the strat by your team, but the strat caller must focus on creating opportunities for success. They key is gaining the advantage over your opponents. If your strat doesn’t give you any real advantage, there is probably a more effective strat for the occasion.

Adapting to opponents isn’t something that is done just once. Re-adapting to an opponent’s changing strategy is key. After having watched hundreds of demos I’ve seen time after time one team who just out played the other. Not better shots or amazing skills, just one team that maintained the advantage and adapted to keep it. Even if they lost it for a short time, they adjusted and gain it back. Anyone who has played against a team like this knows the frustration that this can cause. Adaptation isn’t learned over night and mostly is learned by trial and error. Loses aren’t a total loss unless you walk away without having learned anything. So keep practicing and scriming to test your team’s strats against others.

Conclusion

In summery a good strategy is clearly planned out in advanced. The purpose of each strat should be to gain the advantage over opponents. Each strategy tries to maximize the strengths of a team and defend against weaker aspects. All “triggers” are known through the team and should be planned for good and bad events. Teams should sit down and discuss the different aspects of their strats to see how they can be improved. Strat callers need to read their opponents and find ways to adapt to their strategy. By using effective and well-planned strats a team can gain a serious advantage over a team without well-planned strategies.

My goal of writing this article is to make players think and reflect on their team’s strats. Maybe they can think of ways to improve them. But I really want to know your thoughts as a reader. Do you think these points are valid? Are they important? Are they the most important? What suggestions do you have? What have you found to be effective?

I hope again that this article can help someone out there, and even more hopefully you’ll let each other know how to be a better strat caller.