Throwing HE grenades to temporarily clear smoke grenades and get away with cheeky kills has become a staple in CS2 since the game came out in March—and s1mple has arguably already mastered the new mechanic.
The best CS:GO player of the decade has been doing the play constantly in his FACEIT Pro League (FPL) matches and nobody seems able to stop him. S1mple has always been known for his quick reactions and high mouse sensitivity, and that helps him literally get free kills when he nades a smoke grenade in CS2, as you can see in the compilation below.
The concept of the play is pretty simple, all you need to do is make an HE grenade explode near a smoke so the latter clears temporarily.
This play could work in countless situations, but s1mple gave a good example of how to execute it on Mirage while the Terrorists have smoked Window and are taking Mid control, and on Nuke when the Terrorists have thrown smokes Outside to move towards Secret or Mini.
Though we have seen pros do this sort of play multiple times at IEM Sydney and each team has a different callout for nading smokes, we did not see someone get as many kills as s1mple has been getting in FPL, which features some of the best players in the world playing in a more loose environment than officials.
This play can also be used to simply force rotations from the enemy teams or gain a tidbit of information for your team, but we can agree it’s definitely better when you grab a free kill as s1mple does.
As time passes, we’ll see if this smoke grenade mechanic is too OP for pros, like it seems now, or if people will find a way to counter this play.
