Mouz’s home ground: Mirage

In CS:GO, being the strongest team on a map is an achievement and a big advantage. It’s really hard because you need to have a long winning streak against the top teams to be able to prove this and you have to keep winning streaks with them as they make adjustments. This caused the team to keep researching new strategies until it became an endless battle between teams to see who would be the best on a given map. Once a team makes a name for themselves on a map, this will completely change the strategy as other teams will have to ban that map and force them into a difficult situation. Currently Mouz has proven themselves to be the best Mirage players. They are having a 12-3 result on this map in 2018 at LAN tournaments. Their opponents are: Avangar, Na`Vi, Renegades, Vega, Space Soldiers, Virtus.Pro, SK, twice against G2, Cloud 9, Liquid, Na`Vi, HellRaisers and again Virtus.Pro. This is the home ground of Mouz Mirage.

To understand why Mouz is the best team at Mirage, we need to look at their roster. Their five players include: Chris “chrisJ” de Jong, Tomas “oskar” Stastny, Robin “ropz” Kool, Miikka “suNny” Kemppi, and Martin “STYKO” Styk. The three main stars of the team are oskar, ropz and suNny. They often have to rely on the condition that 2 of the 3 names above must perform well to win. Otherwise chrisj or STYKO need to have a big impact on the game. Deeper than that, oskar is one of the best awper in the world and he can also play very flexibly, looking for kills or back on defense. Ropz is a skill lurker that can be played extremely aggressively when needed. SunNny can switch between two positions, either following chrisJ or lurker/holding position after placing the bomb. ChrisJ is a pretty good secondary awper right now (depending on the map) and a good entry fragger. STYKO is a reliable guy, he takes information, creates space and gives influence through teamwork and clutches through the right decisions.

For Mirage, it can be divided into 2 sides. Let’s focus on the CT-Side first. The most important thing is to control Mid. In the case of Mouz, the 3 players who have the task of controlling Mid are: chrisJ, suNny and oskar. It’s really hard to break through Mouz’s Mid defense because they have so many tactics to use. The biggest threat is that they play 2 awp – where oskar can align from connector or window and chrisJ can align b-short. suNny can be played in window, connector, underpass or after smoke in b-short. The change between these 3 players is the reason why they are difficult to catch. For example, if suNny is in the window and the enemy team smokes the window, he can switch to the ladder room and chrisJ can create a trap when he moves back. Conversely, suNny can hide behind the smoke on b-short and then attack after the flash of oskar or chrisJ. Another way to play is to have suNny play awper support by killing whoever comes up from underpass to try to kill oskar or chrisJ. Another way is to have both suNny and oskar play mid early from the connector, with oskar trying to get the opponent’s kill and suNny supporting him. Once they are noticed by the enemy team, chrisJ will be the next to play mid and kill anyone who tries to kill oskar and suNny.

We haven’t even taken into account that chrisJ can drop a smoke on b-short and use it for multiple purposes. He can either step back and swap positions with the B floor. Or he can push the B floor to the underpass to hook the T-side. The third option is to hide behind the smoke to use all the remaining grenades to stop the enemies under the pass (and there are a lot of good Mirage teams taking the connector from the underpass). And another option is to keep the ladder room, or if he’s using a rifle he can do the entry fragger and play in suNny’s aggressive position for early mid. There are also strategies where suNny plays in the ladder room and chrisJ bait him in the b-short.

Then there’s oskar with mid control positions. The problem with oskar is that he can appear in too many positions and it is impossible to know for sure where he will appear. Yes, he is the best mid controller, but sometimes mouz leaves mid control to chrisJ and suNny. At that time, oskar can play with ropz for 2 people at A ramp, or at ticket boot or bait ropz in the jungle. In any case, he might have a 1-3 chance to take down the enemy and switch back to playing defense if there is a site attack. Mouz also has times when oskar solo B with awp and if he is confident enough he can take down 1 or 2 enemies while backing to a safe position and buy time waiting for his teammates to come support.

This is based on STYKO and ropz being the site defenders. B site is pretty good for STYKO as he is usually the crawler and if there’s no movement around the map or the enemy team is bombing A his biggest influence is late round decisions, coordination team contracts and clutch situations. As for ropz, he has his own strategies with oskar and suNny as he can play mid early on their behalf, buy time for site A attacks with the right use of bombs or can aggressively push A floor.

Another frustrating thing about facing mouz is that in low-man situations, they know how important it is to capture key points in the map that can help them surprise opponents and kill off rotations. occupy good positions for easy retake. Another plus is that they play extremely well around oskar if he wants to save an awp when they give him space to get his exit and assist him afterwards.

While their Ct-side is the best in the world, we can safely say that the T-side is what makes Mirage Mouz’s best map. The reason is that the T-side is a matter of Mouz and sometimes they hit a dead end. But this problem does not appear in Mirage because on this map the whole mouz squad has found a way to contribute. Moreover, they have a lot of good tactics at hand and chrisJ seems to understand this very well. So no matter what happens he can figure out how to call on his teammates if someone is on fire, or use real combat in most cases.

The mouz t-side relies on mid control. They usually let suNny, STYKO and oskar go with chrisJ under the underpass. Or another tactic is to have suNny go with chrisJ underpass so he can swap lives with chrisJ and then go to connector or get boosted to windows. From there suNny can control the connector. In addition, STYKO can enter the ladder room and support suNny or lurk or prevent CT rotation. Oskar is usually the mid control but can also play aggressive on the B floor for early kills. Finally ropz is the player who gets information/lurk on floor A and can be the first or second player to fight. If they can’t defeat the enemy soon, they will split up. It can be all 5 people split or for one person to lurk. If they go to B, ropz will be lurk on A floor, if they go to A then suNny or STYKO will be lurk. As for the site bombing, the plan is for chrisJ to enter or create space and have others swap lives with him. Once the bomb is placed, anyone on the team can end the round.

What makes mouz the best team to play Mirage is that there isn’t a single piece of the puzzle. Everyone on the team has their place and nearly all of them take these positions to the next level. That means if a key member can’t earn a life, the rest still have a chance to contribute to the team. Moreover, they have too many tactics in controlling mid in CT-side. As for the T-side, the positions make sense and allow their stars to shine across the map. Because of those reasons, mouz has become the best team to play Mirage. It’s unbelievable when you look at the top teams they faced in Mirage: FaZe, Liquid, Fnatic, SK, and Cloud 9. Mouz is the best Mirage player out of all of the above and Mirage is their home ground.

Source: VPEsports