While more and more aspects outside of the game have begun to develop along similar lines to established sports Counter-Strike is a game which is still being misunderstood or under-analyzed by its own players. Players seem to have gotten a firm enough grasp overall on the concept of strategy, there have even been some inroads made to an understanding of team play/team chemistry. One area which still evades any kind of deep understanding appears to be game tempo. Counter-Strike is not a simple equation to be solved by picking the right strategy to attack the right bombsite, it’s not just a case of finding their weakest player and concentrating your attacks on his position. These are infantile ideas which should have given way to a more complicated and dynamic understanding of the game long ago. Game tempo whether controlled consciously or unconsciously directly increases the chances of one team winning in any situation greatly. While even many of the top strategists in the Counter-Strike world seem to have overlooked this aspect let us consider it in more detail.

To provide a more tangible example for those of you who are not used to engaging in the more cerebral aspects of Counter-Strike let's look at professional basketball. There are teams whose primary whose primary talents lie in fast breaks and heavy three point offence. These teams as a primary goal want to speed up the game to the quickest pace they can manage, they are not concerned with defensive aspects, their aims are to overrun the opponent with pace they cannot handle. If the opposition scores they take it quickly up the other end and give an answer before the opposition has had a chance to catch their breath. Any mistake resulting in a turnover will end up in a similar situation but due to the opposition not having scored it just adds to the psychological pressure. The key factor one needs to look at though is what happens when a team like this is successful in raising the tempo of the game to the fast pace they like to play at: the opponents find themselves playing at that tempo. This is a huge advantage for any team, when you make the opposition stop playing their game and start trying to play yours you are going to have the edge in almost all situations. Let's now relate this back to Counter-Strike to prevent anyway getting lost in those sports analogies.

In Counter-Strike you can run a fast rush or a slow pickoff, anyone who has played any level of competitive play knows this. What people don't consider is the full spectrum of speeds one can play at in between those extremes. In the modern game when terrorists kills one or more Counter-Terrorists anywhere on the map the defensive team will either rotate a player to that location or be considering weighing up in their minds when they will need to do that. The inexperienced strategist at this point says once you kill an opponent you should rush that position with all your numbers since it is more vulnerable. We are not, however, talking about any findscrim opponent here and when you are playing against the best teams in the world unless you can ensure you are going to get all your players into the site, the bomb planted and setup before the Counter-Terrorists getting their rotation fully into effect this tactic may well just be a way of throwing away an advantage you've gained. Instead you will see shrewd teams allowing the Counter-Terrorists to rotate and re-setup in positions, essentially by doing this you are making all areas of the map more vulnerable as the CTs are spread more thinly. That will suffice for now as an example of how a slowed down tempo directly affects your chances of winning over your opponent's in each situation.

From the days of CO (Charges Only) play in the European scene there has been a great emphasis on co-ordinated rushing as a method to win games. When the best two teams in the world face off a fast rush will nearly always result in the deaths of the CTs in the site in question, flashing has gotten to a level where in some sites it becomes highly troublesome to survive rushes and players now understand the importance of timing on split attacks. More importantly than just this numerical success the real added benefit of successful heavy rushing is it wears the opponent down psychologically and forces them to start doing things that normally wouldn't be a part of their gameplan. If they think you are going to attack a position heavily again and again they will often begin to completely bias their defense towards holding that position, often with stacks or attempts at pushing up and suprising you. This in turn leaves other positions more vulnerable or if you continue to attack said position chips away at their psychological stability. The difference between these two attacks and the two extremes everyone knows about that were discusssed earlier, despite how similar they may appear, is both work on the principle of forcing the enemy to play your game and play it at your speed. The first tactic slows the game down to a level where any inexperience or mistake from the opposition will be deadly on their part and regardless they are growing less and less likely to win the round as their defense is spread thinner and thinner. The second attack as well as the direct visceral result has a more subtle effect of setting up future successes at other sites and placing uncertainty in the mind of the opposition.

With a little thought no doubt one begins to remember rounds where game tempo was either consciously or unconsciously controlled in big tournaments. Perhaps the Terrorists walked all the way into the site until spotted before rushing, reducing the chance of the CT rotation having an effect to almost nothing. One may remember rushes where a team sent in a first group of two the three players who attacked the site and then a second came in moments later. This not only flusters the defending players in the site because it means even if they kill the first 2-3 they will most likely be reloading/forced to hide when the second group enters, but it also can make teams think the initial group was the extent of the attack on that site and the move was intended as a fake. In the current tactical climate of anti-stratting and compulsive demo viewing teams are constantly trying to second guess their opponents and sometimes this can result in an effect of over thinking which ends up only with one outthinking oneself.

There are teams out there who when allowed to play at their natural tempo would have substantial chances to win major tournaments, when that flow is interrupted though and they are forced to play at a fast pace or a slow pace their inability to adapt makes them into also-rans at best on the competitive stage. This is best seen by looking at the current situation of Asian dominance in Counter-Strike. Many were expecting the Asian teams would be playing catch-up for a long time but they have overtaken many of the top teams in the world by taking an entirely different approach to the game. The American teams practice in such a bubble that at the tempo they are used to playing at they can usually perform quite well, when it comes to a major event like a CPL though in comes a top European team and the tempo changes considerably in either direction and the American team looks strained and bewildered to say the least. The European teams are used to being the dominant forces in the game and so they try and maximize their edge at every turn. They control the tempo of the game as you'll see in teams like SK.swe, at times slowing it to a snail's pace to force the opposition into making uncalled for mistakes or at others raising it to a level the opposition can't handle against one of the most skilled teams in the world.

The Asian teams, however, seem to take a different approach. While the top Europeans try to control the tempo and the Americans barely consider it as a factor and hope to play at their natural tempo the top Asian teams are forcing the enemy to play at their preferred tempo. When you play wNv they aren't thinking what tempo you play best at and trying to alter the game to disadvantage that aspect of your game, instead they are from the out enforcing their own will on the game. When you play them you are playing at their tempo and as many have noted their unorthodox approach to tactical play has made that a very tricky proposition to say the least. The brilliance of their tactical planning lies in the fact that what at the time seems counter-intuitive becomes the right move when you find the end result being a victory more often than not. Their strategy is nothing Americans or Europeans are expecting, and even if it were the tempo to which they take the game at times makes overcoming them an almost Herculean task.

The Asian teams have also evolved a playstyle which suits their mentality better than an American or European style would. In the East a key element to the collective psychology is the idea that everyone has a job to do and all must do their part in order for everyone to succeed. In Counter-Strike this has spilled over into a style of play which is not just regimentally unit-based like the Swedish style which has dominated for so long, this style incorporates the idea of a key player to a degree not seen before. The two top Asian teams both have clear star players, Jungle for wNv and solo for project_kr. It is not just the talent of these players which allows them to be so effective though, it's the mentality of the surrounding players and the way the unit adapts to having one player who can play on such a high level of consistency. In Quake you will see each team has a stronger player who they will let run the quad each time, this increases the teams chances overall chances when their best player in the position to do the most damage. Likewise in Counter-Strike these teams are executing their strategies in a manner which puts their stars in the best position to win the round for them each time. This means when one of those players really goes off the Asian teams become near impossible to stop.

This idea may not seem revolutionary in print but considering the other playstyles we see why it has not emerged previous to the recent surge in the East. The best sides from other areas of the world either try to play overly adaptive or overly regimented. A lot of these tactics treat each player as though he was a clone of the others. There are times when a Ksharp or a Rambo may have been playing really hot but the restrictive tactics which had been run time and time again in practice meant they were pinned into certain situations at major events. This is a topic which could easily be discussed at greater length but enough has been covered for the moment. For more insight observe the matches of SK.swe at the 2003 CPLs and compare them to the most recent WEG wNv and project_kr demos. Sometimes it's not just about controlling the tempo the opposition have to play at, it's about being the tempo the opposition have to play at.