Akira’s Pistol Guide

Intro

This is a guide to using pistols successfully on CS:S. Most of this is common sense and the rest is dispelling myths so that you feel comfortable and confidant with one in your hand. This guide will be specific only for five-seven and compact, others will be mentioned, and slagged off.

In one month of using pistols only, and I mean only pistols (5-7 and compact), I got to 9th rank on the Wildcards server, defended bombsites on my own, rushed with my team and picked off awpers and scouters.

How I was introduced to pistols

A while ago my favourite weapon was the M4 rifle. Nice big gun, has a silencer for increased accuracy or without for more of a punch. If I never had money I would buy either P90 or Deagle. As T’s it was the AK47 or the Defender (which is highly underrated).

It was only until I started playing gun games that I started to appreciate how good some pistols could be.

I hate glock, everything about it feels naff, even a shot to the head from it feels better than it feels in your hand and that’s because if a shot hit your head you wouldn’t feel too bad.

I noticed that I always did well with the five-seven, found it quite easy compared to the other pistols and after a while I thought I would try it out in proper games.

Advantages of pistol

• Cheap- You can buy a five-seven or a compact on any round straight off, and nearly always with armour and nades etc, when you press ‘re-buy’. In most games I’m running around with $16000 cos I don’t need to spend much money.

• Accurate- The five-seven is very accurate. Compact is probably slightly less accurate but you can fire off a couple more rounds in the same time so you should still hit as many times in a panic situation.

• Can fire a quick succession of bullets with less recoil than a rifle.- Fire off 5 quick shots from a five-seven or a compact and they will be more accurate than holding down your mouse button and firing 5 from a rifle. Sometimes people will be running across me at a bit of a distance and I’ll pop them off with a head shot. They will complain but what they don’t realise is that a lot of the time I have fired 5 quick shots to hit them once or twice. Running round a corner and coming face-to-face with a rifle, I sometimes win because I have hit them 5 times very quickly and they have hit me once or twice and missed with the other shots.

• Do well with it and you stand out more, lol- People mostly know me for using a pistol. If I did just as well with any weapon then I wouldn’t stand out so much as I’m not that great, its only the fact that I’ve got a piddly looking weapon in my hand that people remember me when I pop them off.

Disadvantages

• Doesn’t always pack as much punch as the bigger guns.- This isn’t always the case but most of the time a shot from a pistol will do less damage than one from a rifle. This is balanced off by the high accuracy and the less recoil when firing quickly.

• May have to reload more often than with a rifle.- The five-seven comes with 20 rounds in a mag, meaning that if you storm a bombsite then you have enough to kill up to 4 people before you start hearing an empty chamber. The compact comes with 13 and means that you can pwn 2 people in general before needing to reload. In general this is ok because I always reload after firing, the only time it really matters is when you are being attacked by several people at once and don’t have time or a hiding place to reload.

• Can be tricky killing from afar if that person can see you- ok, so you’re on Dust 2 defending bombsite A and you see a T at long just near the ramp/ditch. Now, if he sees you and has an AK/M4 or scout/AWP, chances are that you wont last long. You may hit him, even several times but at that distance it wont knock enough off in time before he lines up his crosshair with your noggin and gives you a lobotomy.

Tactics for using pistols

A lot of the following info is not only common sense and well known, but should be applied to most of the weapons in CS:S.

Aim for the head or just below. Seems obvious but we all probably start shooting at someone as soon as the crosshair is anywhere near the enemy. Its quite scary waiting that extra half a second to line up a more accurate shot whilst the enemy is spraying away. A lot of people say to aim below the head so that the recoil will hit the head after one or two shots. With the five-seven and compact you can get away with aiming just for the head and firing twice or three times.

Related to that is the next tip of trying to aim at head height whilst running around the map. Again all weapons should be used in this way, apart from Awps which kill anyone without the need to shoot, lol, well not quite. When running down a corridor estimate head height, if someone runs past fire off 3 quick shots, you should hit them. When running outside and you look at a window, don’t just aim in the general direction of it, aim for where someone’s noggin would be should they pop up. That way you don’t waste time lining their head up in your crosshairs.

Know your limits. As I said earlier, it is very difficult to kill someone from a distance if they can see you, so don’t even attempt it. If they cannot see you then go ahead and set up your crosshairs and fire one shot every second or two very quick shots, wait a second and two more. The little bit of recoil is exaggerated more over long distances. If they cannot see you then you have time to do this but if they see you before you fire a shot, hide and wait for a better opportunity.

Have something to back you up. I find this is definitely need with the compact sometimes due to it only having 13 rounds. Have your knife at the ready if you plan on rushing. This way you can run towards them whilst firing and if they happen to be alive still when you’re next to them, you can switch to knife and finish them off, though a burns victim is generally better at knifing than me. I suck. If you are guarding a bombsite or some hostages a flash is good to have so that you can gain a bigger advantage. A nade is good if lobbed first and then you rush with your pistol.

Turn auto pick-up off. Nothing worse than being determined to only use a pistol, running over a rifle and then seeing an enemy. I always end up getting shot because I’m switching to pistol when I should just use the weapon I have, lol. Also, is there anyway that I can turn off the way that a rifle is selected after lobbing a nade or flash? I want to flash a room and storm in with some five-seven pwnage and when the flash is thrown I have a rifle in my hands.

Give it time. You may be used to all the advantages of your favourite weapon that you only notice the cons of using a pistol. You will probably play worse than usual as well and may get fed up but if you stick with it then you will improve.

Don’t be afraid. Ok so you’ve got a really small gun in your hands, that doesn’t mean that you cannot rush, it doesn’t mean you cannot defend a bomb site on your own. Just get in there and show them who’s boss

Give it a try and if anyone has any decent tactics for using pistols then let me know, lol.

Akira [-CSG-]

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