The Mirage map has been the most popular among professionals and amateurs in Counter-Strike for a whole decade. All because of its unique design and awesome balance! But what's stopping you from playing on it like a pro? All you need is to thoroughly study our guide and go destroy your opponents!

History of the Mirage map

The very first version of the Mirage map saw the light of day in 2004. At that time, the then-unknown BubkeZ created a map named de_strike, especially for the professional CPL league.

After that, the map moved from Counter-Strike 1.4 to Counter-Strike 1.6 and later transitioned to CSS, after which Valve bought the rights to this map from BubkeZ and released it in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, where it has been part of the official game map pool for 10 years.

With the transition to Counter-Strike 2, Valve only made minor cosmetic changes to the map, but its structure remained the same.

Positions on the map

To fully understand what's happening on the map and make sense of the information exchanged by your teammates, it's critically important to master the key position names on Mirage.

Playing Defence

Since Mirage is one of the most balanced maps in the game, it's worth paying special attention to both the defence and attack sides. But, let's start with the defence side.

Firstly, it's worth noting that the defence side wins rounds with a probability of 51.5%. Now let's move on to the players' positioning on the map:

• One player jumps on the car and watches the B Apartments
• One player plays on Short
• The sniper can play anywhere on the map, but most often it's either Window or Connector
• One player plays as a support at point A

When fully equipped, it's very important for the defence team to control the centre of the map. At least three players should occupy it. Moreover, the A support player should assist his teammates with flashes from the very start of the round.

The most important thing for the defender at point A is not to play close to the opponents but simply jump on CT. Because if they get killed near the pit, point A immediately becomes open and the chances of a retake become very slim.

The same goes for the player under B: they should play as passively as possible and not take close positions, so as to be able to fall back to the back of the site and wait for help from their teammates.

Grenades for Defense

Now let's look at the main grenades for defense at different points. At the beginning of the round at point A, you should throw a Molotov into the pit and flashes like this on mid:

After that, the pit can be covered with a smoke grenade.

But at point B, the only grenade you need to throw is just a Molotov and smoke into the carpets.

There aren’t so many grenades for Mid, however, there are a couple of important smokes. For example, a smoke on the letter to make it more comfortable to play on Short or a smoke in Con, which makes you almost invisible to opponents.

Another important grenade is a Molotov behind the boxes from the Window, when there's smoke in it:

Playing Attack

The terrorists' game on the Ancient map is mostly built through playing in the centre of the map. So, the basis in each round (apart from pushes on A or B) is built through Mid.

Now that we've covered the basics, let's look at the players' positioning on the map:

• One player controls the push from point B
• Three players occupy Mid
• One player plays on the side of point A - this can be either Pit or Palace.

Important: The player controlling point A, at the very start of the round, throws grenades on Mid.

Grenades for Attack

First, let's consider grenades for mid:

• Smoke in the Window

• Smoke in Short

• Molotov in Connector

• Flashes from tabseN

Now let's look at the necessary grenades for point B:

• Smoke in the Right Arch

• Smoke in the Left Arch

• Smoke in the Kitchen Window

And let's finish with grenades for point A:

• Smoke on the Stairs

• Smoke in CT

• Smoke for Connector and Jungle

• Molotov on the Bench

• Molotov under Palace

Having covered grenades, let's move on to strategies.

Tactics on Mirage

In this section, we will step by step describe three main strategies, through mid. We'll skip the usual site pushes, as they only require throwing default grenades.

Split on A

For a split on A, you should send three players to play through Mid, while the rest go through A.

One of the players, who will be playing under site A, should throw these grenades:

• Smoke in the Window

• Smoke on Short

After that, you try to occupy the area near the Connector and go out on A. The moment your three players approach the Connector, you can throw this smoke into the Jungle:

After that, you just need to throw smoke in CT and win the round.

Split on A #2

In this round, one player occupies the area near site A, and four go underground. It's important to conceal your movement on the map as much as possible and only walk on Shift.

Once you're spotted or already under the window, you can start making noise. Namely, throw smoke in Short and a Molotov in the window. Then quickly occupy site A.

At the same time, your teammate from the pit throws smoke in CT, and you calmly enter the site.

Split on B

The beginning of this round is also the same, namely with taking Mid. Four players go to mid, while the last player plays through Palace.

The player occupying Palace should throw accompanying grenades on Mid:

•  Smoke in the Window and tabseN flashes

After successful actions on mid, you quickly approach site B, you can also throw a Molotov on the car and smoke in the Window, but this is already the task of the player from Palace.

Don't forget to give yourself smoke for the run, so you don't get killed from point A.

Conclusion

To achieve success on Mirage, it's important to know key positions and strategies for both the defense and attack teams. Knowing positions and using the right grenades will help you and your team confidently participate in battles and win rounds.