When your team is on a Force Buy: Without your usual rifles and AWP, your team can’t hold the standard angles, you have to get into close quarters. In close quarter combat, having pistols or SMGs can give you an advantage over rifles. A headshot with your pistols (P250, CZ-75, Five-Seven, Deagle) will 1-hit kill people, your SMGs and pistols have better running accuracy than rifles, allowing you to strafe around while spraying down a stationary enemy.

When you want to take map-control and gain information: Taking map control is essential on the Terrorist side, but it can also give your team a significant advantage on the CT side. To take map control, you will basically want to push certain positions to control strategical choke points, this allows one of the players that would normally play on Site X to over-rotate to Site Y. Correctly using your grenades is essential here, and you want to gain every possible advantage, because these pushes are very risky and could easily backfire. Some examples from the three maps:

Dust2: Your normal setup on Dust2 as CT would be something like: 2-1-2, 2-3 or 1-1-3. When you do this push, I would advise you to do the 2-1-2 setup (2B, 1Mid, 2A), as you will need at least two players to push into the B-Tunnels. Pushing into and controlling the Tunnel area will give you a huge advantage as a CT. At least two players push the Tunnels from B-Site with a pop-flash, the Middle player can make a decision. He can push Tunnels with the B players, he can stay passive on Middle, or can spot Mid with some shoulder-peeks, and if he doesn’t see a Terrorist holding Mid, he can choose to push through Middle into Lower Tunnels. Taking control of Tunnels should be relatively easy this way. The pop-flash thrown by the players pushing from B will usually blind the opponent and guarantee the CTs an easy kill. If the Mid player chooses to push Lower B, he should be able to get an easy kill on the unsuspecting or distracted enemy. With this push the CT-team controls every route leading into the B bombsite, and can stack the A-Site.

Inferno: Here you should take control of Banana, sending 3 players to B and 2 to A, instead of the usual 3-A, 2-B setup.

At the beginning of the round, one of the A players has to smoke the bottom of Banana from CT Spawn. Both A-players should play towards the Short-Pit area, to guarantee control over that entrance to A-Site (just in case the Terrorist team were to push mid fast), and because the rotation from B will arrive from the Arch Side anyway. The B players will not stay back on the site, they will try to take control of Banana by immediately pushing it. Correct grenade usage is once again very important. You don’t want to flash your own teammates, you want to flash early and it should be the first player that flashes. You can throw a deep flashbang over the roofs, or just bounce one off the wall when you reach the car area.

Throwing HE-grenades and incendiary grenades can make your task easier but the smoke that lingers after HE-grenades could block your vision and running through your own incendiaries would be suicidal. By the time you are pushing down banana, the smoke thrown by your teammate at the beginning of the round has already bloomed, it will block of vision for Terrorists that are at T-Ramp or at the bottom of Middle, and thus you will only have to concentrate on overwhelming the Terrorists that are already in Banana. You will usually encounter only one player, maybe two, so getting the kills should not be hard, especially with correct grenade usage and good coordination. The CTs should rotate their smokes to keep control of Banana, this basically means that they will keep re-smoking it. After a player throws his smoke, he will rotate back to the A-Site, eventually leaving a single player holding the bottom of Banana.

Mirage: On Mirage there are various positions a CT can push, depending on the spawn position of the player. Pushing A apartments can be a good choice, but only with a good spawn, because you want to be peeking A-Halls before the Terrorist gets there. This is a good place to push with an AWP. Also, if Apartments is clear, and later in the round the enemy push the A-Site through Ramp, you will be guaranteed some free kills on the unsuspecting enemy.

Pushing B-Halls or Underground are both very risky pushes. If you die in B-Halls, the site will be open, and is really hard to retake. Pushing Underground can pay off massively, you could potentially backstab 1-2 people in B-Halls without a problem, or you could gain a lot of valuable information, and your team can over-rotate to the A-Site.

Putting early pressure on Mid is a pretty common thing to do. The Terrorist player will be focused on Window when he peeks Middle, expecting an AWPer to be there, but what he will find are two CTs shooting him in the side. Controlling Mid is very useful, not only will you be able the T’s rotation through T-Spawn, but if you get there unnoticed, you can hide behind the boxes and shoot unsuspecting terrorists in the side.

When you want to go for a fast pick:

Here, you are taking a calculated risk, you can put your team into an advantageous position, but only if you get a kill. Only trading kills (you kill a player, then you die) still favors the Terrorist team. General advice: Pick a position where you can catch an enemy while he is running, and take the engagement from a position, where you only have to worry about that single line of sight.

Some examples on Dust2, Inferno, and Mirage:

Dust2: Getting boosted up to Short and going for a fast kill on Short/Middle. Generally speaking, the enemy will not be expecting a fast push here if you have not done it before. You also have to worry about a player from Lower Tunnels shooting you in the side, so you don’t want to linger around for too long. Run up to short as fast as you can, peek out, take some shots on the enemy player, then run back. You should definitely not reload and re-peek the enemy, at this point there can be someone in Lower Tunnels, or more players on Middle.

Inferno: Run across Middle and run into Apartments, go to the window and spray down the Terrorists coming up on 2nd Mid.

Mirage: Peeking out of connector is great if you have a teammate in window. The Terrorists will be focused on fighting him, making your job that much easier.

Aggressive plays should be used to throw off the opponent, your CT Side shouldn’t be based on them. If your aggressive plays succeed, you get the early kills, gain vital information and map-control, you will set up your team to win the round. While all of this is great, you should also consider the risks that you are taking. Getting killed early will most likely lose your team the round, and in Counter Strike one crucial round lost can result in your defeat.