The matches were super tough, but we managed to pull out a win. The first match on dust we got stomped, the second we barely pulled off a Nuke win (which is typical, Nuke matches are always close), then we stomped UVA on inferno. Replays are available, and we are scheduling an event to look over them in person as a team with other interested CSGO players!

Secondly, we have our official NCeSPA matchups and times. Based on how we do in each NCeSPA match, we will be potentially advanced to further matches. So these next few weeks will be crucial! I will be reviewing our accuracy and ability to smoke in these coming practices!

http://i.imgur.com/u2BhziH.jpg


We will have practice tomorrow. I am excited to see where we are. After the evaluations during our meetup, I will make a writeup of the final improvements our team needs. I am so proud of how much you guys have improved during our time coaching!

Summary of Week 6 Practice

Before I go into specific practice details, I have some exciting news! I have decided that we will be organizing two teams, our primary pre-existing team and a secondary one with the two subs and interested new members. This growth is exciting, it brings great joy to see the interest in group CS:GO play rising here at CNU. There has been a separate Facebook group created for the secondary team, and it will not interfere with our core practice.

I was super satisfied with how our practices went. For the first time both Saturday and Sunday, I felt like we really operated as a unit.

Pros:
- I felt like we always had a good concept of who was covering where when we went up to take sites.
- Our grenades were on point
- Everything seemed to flow much better than before
Cons:
- Nothing really, If I was to criticize anything it would be our ability to scan sites when we entered to take out opponents but we were really spotless. I will have to focus harder on you guys (and enlist Brad's help)

We will be scrimming with UVA sometime next week, and we may integrate an upcoming CoD player who is nationally ranked on console gaming into our core 5 if he continues to improve his CS game in B team.

We are also doing practice today, because everyone is super busy! I will be providing more information directly, stand by!

Here is my official write-up for this weekends practice! This weekend, we played on a random assortment of maps, to test out our ability to play on maps we are less comfortable with. There are a lot of changes coming, so please read thoroughly

--- Pro's ---

- Our callous were good, despite us being uncomfortable in our positions
- Individuals are getting comfortable knowing when and how to buy as a group.
- We are also winning save rounds! I may suggest we move from P250's to Five-Seven's given how much better we do!

--- Cons ---

- Our grenades are weak! Grenades are the KEY to getting up in the higher ranks, especially to a certain point. When we start the revisiting of maps, I will be reassigning additional grenades based on a Google Doc of people saying where they know they can consistently grenade on each specific map (following the grenade practices we totally have been doing)
- People have been wiffing easy defenses after bombs have been planted. Some of us shine under pressure (Brad definitely does) but others do not. Here is a a tutorial by the WarOwl which may help
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBQyv3Psklc
- It is obvious we need to practice Inferno
- Hardware issues! Although this is not a *real* issue, there were Microphone problems and both Alex and I suffered from technical difficulties that removed us from the games. It definitely played a part. Make sure your machine is stable, background programs are not interfereing, whatever it takes to insure you are up and running. I know I had to verify the integrity of my game cache because my CS:GO continually crashed.

--- What To Expect In The Future ---
Next Map: Inferno
After that, we do randoms from the list of: Inferno, Dust2, Mirage, Nuke, Cache, Season

We will be changing how we approach smokes! Now that everyone is familiar with what smokes on various maps they can and cannot do from their homework (hint hint wink wink) we will be filling out a Google Doc that shows what each person can do for each map, and getting individuals who can flash the areas we need for gaps. It will close the gap we need to grenade effectively as a team. Anyone who wants to play with the official practices or in our official matches vs other schools needs to do this

We will try to do our save rounds with Tec-9/Five-Seven not P250 for one week to see how effective it is

--- Callout Maps ---
https://i.imgur.com/FcMyBjr.png - Cache map missed last week (thanks Alex)

http://www.tobyscs.com/files/de_inferno-map-callout.jpg - Inferno callout map for this week's practice

Good grenades to learn on inferno are smoking off A's headshot box, and mass smokes for the B approach. You need to go see which ones you can and cannot pull off. In earlier posts there are ways to learn where your grenades are in Console, and given the fact we have improved so much they are going to become mandatory.

--- Closing Thoughts ---

We are about to move up in seriousness now that we have covered all the major maps, are working better as a team, and have learned more. Now is going to be the time that we are going to be playing as best we can, and ranking up. We have worked hard for this guys, keep it up.

We have decided on the $5 Division 2 NCeSPA league, and mirage as our next map by vote!

We played Nuke this week! Noticed some good and bad things

--- pro ---

Buys are consistently good, weapons are shared when necessary

Horizontal placement has RADICALLY improved, I have noticed everyone doing it better

We have definitely been observing and learning from each other tactically (good example was closing doors at lower Nuke after planting, which I learned)

We had significantly faster and better communication due to Skype

--- con ---

We were weak on nuke callouts at times (a less familiar map). Make sure to read the sheets! I put time into those!

Vertical crosshair placement still needs work

There were some issues with positioning/tactics in clutch moments, but that just takes practice

Our play had times where we were not 100% as a team, so we need to make sure not to get lax on communication/paying attention to strats that change on the fly. We were doing this well before, so it should be easy!


Here are the callouts for mirage
http://i.imgur.com/f5ZbgU7.png


For a grenades link, I simply have a link to the CSGO reddit this week! Go out and learn a grenade spot for mirage of your choosing! Grenades are harder in mirage than on other maps!
www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/search?q=mirage+grenades&restrict_sr=on


Make sure to do your aim map practices!!!!!! I see a lot of people playing in games during the week, make sure that you spend time practicing also! We are getting to the point where we are going to rank up based on reactions and tactics alone! We did them as a team to give more clarification on ways to do them Sunday's practice


If you have questions about your config/mouse setup like we discussed while warming up Sunday night, or do not think you have everything optimal, please message me! CSGO should be configured for network and mouse settings!

See you next week!

--- summary of our practice ---


We are definitely improving in some areas! I noticed a lot of stuff this week

Pro:

We are buying as a team much better. If you are still unsure about what you can spend, check the earlier accouncment

We are GREAT at pistol round

Our callouts have gotten better

We are getting better at landing grenades where they need to be

Cons:

We are having issues with Mic delay via steam. We are going to have to get on an official chat client (vent, teamspeak, whatever) before next practice

We had issues holding A on CT Dust. We will revisit this later

Stutter stepping still needs work for some people, and some individuals are running and shooting. Please revisit the tutorial for some ideas

Crosshair placement horizontally has improved, but vertically still needs some work. Also some individuals have mediocre reaction times. Headshot maps and the aim_maps really help. Camden's practice is showing in his play!


--- Nuke: the next map we play ---

http://i.imgur.com/SOWYAak.jpg I have personally edited a callout guide for nuke (changed a few, added some obvious but unlisted names like Mini Roof)
this is very important, as nuke is extremely hard for T side and teamplay is paramount

- various smoke tutorials (get a feel in empty map with practice settings upper/outside/ramproom smokes) -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM4Qxe2Qaxw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGuFYA7betU - huge list just skip around

--- practice ---

remember to put in at least one hour with aim/deathmatch headshot/running a single gun for 100 kills. we don't need to focus on pistol practice right now we are great at pistol round