DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca: The Map Advantage

Importance of maps

In less than six months, Dust 2 will celebrate its 15th anniversary. It is quite telling of the importance of the maps in Counter-Strike when they have been played for so long and have become icons of the franchise itself. The current pool consists of maps that have been in the game since the beta in 1998. Mirage and Cobblestone date back to CS 1.6, Season and Cache to CS:Source, leaving Overpass as the only brand new map to CS:GO. While there have been many updates to all of them since then, the maps have generally retained their original layouts and features. Maps are of a capital importance to CS, which would lack two things without a varied map pool. First, the diversity of plays with different maps layouts and angle configurations, and a layer of strategy for a series.

The Pick & Ban phase

Unlike most other esports, there aren't many gimmicks or pocket strategies in Counter-Strike that will win you more than a few rounds before the opponents can start to adapt. The element of surprise can quickly deplete in a game. A team’s strengths and weaknesses, play styles, and strategies to employ, all come into play during the map pick and ban phase of a series.

The pick and bans can be boiled down to three things; avoiding maps your team hasn't practiced as much on, picking your home maps, and denying the opponent theirs when these don’t overlap. The home map is one where a team is the most comfortable playing on, due to fitting their play style or most familiar and practiced. Most teams focus on practicing and perfecting a small set of maps while overlooking some others in order to try to be the best on a few maps rather than being average on all of them. A famous example of this would be Na'Vi back in 2013 who were known to never practice Nuke as they were always able to ban the map.

TSM vs Envy: the example

A textbook series when it comes to pick and bans would be Team EnVyUs versus Team SoloMid in the ESL One Cologne semifinals two months ago. EnVy first removed TSM's best map, Overpass. The Danes had been on a tear on this map historically by taking full advantage of the quite atypical layout of the area around bathroom and connector, keeping opponents guessing and withholding information about what they’re doing. EnVy though had completely ignored Overpass, having played it a grand total of two times in the past three months. TSM then banned Cobblestone, their worst map, and also happens to be one of the stronger maps for EnVyUs who have a 9-2 record on the map in the past three months, including a 2-0 against TSM on it. EnVyUs opted for Cache for the first game, a map that fit their aggressive playstyle and on which they already managed to outplay TSM multiple times. TSM immediately responded by picking their second best map, Dust 2, on which EnVy has shown some weaknesses, and thus combining their strength with EnVy's weaknesses. These picks played out as expected as EnVy won Cache convincingly while TSM beat EnVy on Dust 2. The last map which was randomly chosen between the remaining ones, ended up being Inferno, which is arguably EnVyUs most dominant map where they boast an insane 13-2 record. They ended up taking a whopping twelve rounds on their T side, closing out the series in their favor.

Home maps

Having a specific map or set of maps that a team is particularly good at can help ease the intensity in a best-of-x series. Knowing that you always have one map to fall back on if you’re down in a series, or to take the early lead and momentum in the series. It can also put teams on the international radar as with Luminosity. At the beginning of the year during MLG Aspen, the Brazilian team then under the KaBuM.TD banner, displayed excellent executions and easily handled the favored Cloud9 on Mirage. They have since continued to be a strong presence in the NA scene in various tournaments and consecutively securing a Legends spot at the majors.

On the contrary, playing on a home map doesn’t guarantee a win, especially when the opponent is more skilled. Team Liquid have shown to be very strong on Overpass and Cache in the NA scene, but that didn’t stop Fnatic from eliminating them 16-9 and 16-7 at the PGL Season One finals. It wasn’t all doom and gloom for Liquid at PGL as they were able to take Cobblestone, another good map of theirs, off Fnatic in the same series, and almost take Overpass off Virtus.pro 14-16. In the end, to be a truly dominant team, every map in the pool will need to be a home map. It will be hard to play teams like Fnatic on a “home map” when they are dominant on just about every map. The one or two weaker maps they have could be easily vetoed.

Conclusion

At this upcoming major, take careful attention to the map pick & ban phase at all stages of the tournament. Watch how in the group stages challengers will try to get the map that will allow for a higher upset potential over the Legends. For the best of three matches, watch as both teams try to maneuver the series map order that will favour them over their opponents. There is more to the advantages that maps provide than what meets the eye.

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Writer: Ragnarork
Editor: Nagisama
Graphics: DearDave
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