If you dig through history, you may be amazed at how many life-altering discoveries have been made by accident. FaZe Clan’s rain contributed one such discovery during the longest CS2 match ever by pulling off an impressive new Ancient smoke by messing up a different simple smoke throw.
Ancient is way past due the period where it can be considered a new map and even the release of CS2 doesn’t change the fact that we know most of what can be discovered about that map already. It’s so unlikely to invent an effective new smoke that it took FaZe Clan’s rain messing up a rudimentary throw to pull off what is admittedly a very cool new Ancient smoke.
During the third round of FaZe’s matchup with Ninjas in Pyjamas at the CS Asia Championships on Nov. 9, rain set himself up for a smoke toward CT that he’s probably thrown hundreds of times. Instead of hitting the side of the temple and falling down into CT, as it’s supposed to, rain’s smoke clipped off the top edge of the widest part of the building and tumbled right into the lower section of the temple. Not exactly what rain had in mind, but still better than the smoke going off on top of the temple.
As cool as this smoke is to pull off, it’s understandable why no one’s made it popular yet, and why rain never repeated it after this one round. Its usefulness is very limited—if it even exists. The temple connects CT spawn to the A bomb site and it’s incredibly unlikely that any Counter-Terrorist would be too bothered by this smoke. Then again, FaZe Clan did win the round in which rain threw this temple smoke, so who knows, this may be the new meta going forward—confusing the enemy with smokes in weird spots.
Rain’s accidental discovery wasn’t the most notable part of the FaZe vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas matchup. FaZe’s 28-25 victory created CS2 history by becoming the longest match ever played on LAN since Counter-Strike esports shifted to Valve’s new game.
Despite CS2’s competitive history only spanning a month and a half currently, this record is legitimately hard to beat with the new MR12 system. It’s very likely this Ancient duel will remain in the record books for a long time—for its length and the accidental discovery of the coolest useless smoke ever.
