AIMperiumPlayGame guide · 17 topics
Two halves of 12 rounds. The first club to 13 rounds wins the match.
The two clubs swap sides at half-time.
A 12-12 tie goes to overtime.
Overtime runs in blocks of 6 rounds, 3 a side.
Blocks repeat until one club takes a whole block.
A round lasts 115 seconds.
Planting takes 3 to 5 seconds, and only the bomb carrier can plant.
Once planted, the bomb goes off after 40 seconds.
Defusing takes 10 seconds bare-handed.
A $400 defuse kit cuts that to 5 seconds.
Every match day each player wakes up a little hot or a little cold.
It is a swing of up to 9 rating points either way, and it lasts that day only.
That swing is what makes an upset possible.
Experience steadies it, so an old head swings less than a rookie.
The Cool head trait takes the dips away entirely (Special traits).
Before every league match the two clubs ban maps from the pool of 8, one at a time, until one map is left. That map is the match.
The home club bans first and bans last, so it makes 4 of the 7 bans and in practice picks between the final two maps.
The away club is paid for that: it chooses which side starts.
Home gives you the map, away gives you the side.
Your own bans come from your saved map ban order; other clubs ban by map strength.
The map is fixed the moment the veto ends and kept with the result, so a rewatch and a paused match always run on it.
Clubs ban the maps they are weakest on, so the veto follows map strength.
A club with a favourite map will keep steering matches onto it, which is why your own map strength is worth watching.
The veto screen shows the strength of both clubs before you agree to your bans.
Your own numbers are exact.
Theirs are a range, and a better Analyst makes that range tighter (Staff roles).
Play your match and the veto screen opens first.
Your bans are already filled in from your ban order, so "Accept and play" is one click on an ordinary matchday.
Change any ban of yours and the other club answers it at once, so you see the whole ceremony before you agree to it.
The map left standing at the bottom of the screen is the one you will play, and you see a picture of it there.
"Back, decide later" closes the veto and changes nothing.
Simulate the matchday instead and you do not attend: your ban order is played for you.
The away club chooses which side starts, T or CT.
When you are away, you pick it on the veto screen.
When you are at home, the other club picks, and the screen tells you which side you were given.
Your starting side and the ban trail stay with the match: in the match header while you play, and in the rewatch afterwards.
The map list on the left of the Playbook IS your ban order: the 8 maps in the order you want them banned, the one you want gone first at the top, moved with the arrows.
The list is saved with your club and stays the same from season to season until you change it.
A club that never touches it uses the standard order.
Your side of every veto is filled in from this list.
That is what makes "Accept and play" one click, and it is what gets played for you when you simulate a matchday.
The bar under the picture drives the whole match, and the panels and scoreboard carry its numbers.
The big play button starts and pauses the round, and turns into a replay arrow once the round is over.
The double arrows jump straight between the round's moments: a kill, the plant, the defuse.
The long slider scrubs to any second of the round, and dragging it pauses playback.
The Speed slider runs from slow motion to a fast skim, and the number beside it is the current multiplier.
Skip to round result stops the playback and shows how the round ended; the round counts either way.
Scoreboard, or the Tab key, overlays both teams' numbers for the half.
Click a player there to open their stats; Escape or a click outside closes the card (Closing a pop-up).
The panels either side of the map list both starting fives with their health and gear, thinning out as players fall.
The bomb clock appears in the bar the moment the bomb is planted (Round timers).
In a scrim one more button appears, Fog / Broadcast, which reveals both teams while you practise (What you can see in a match).
Each player on the map is an operator: a team-coloured body with a helmet showing which way they are looking.
Red is the attacking side, blue the defending side, and your own club has a white outline.
The ring around an operator is health: a full ring is 100 HP, it drains as they take damage, and it pulses when they are nearly down.
Kneeling at the bomb means planting or defusing.
What they are holding tells you more again: reading the guns.
Some maps have a bridge, a raised catwalk drawn as a planked deck; an operator passing UNDERNEATH it is drawn faded and dashed, so you can tell who is over and who is under.
Each of your own players carries a small mark above them: the icon of their role, in that player's own colour.
The icon says what they do, and the colour says which of your five they are, so two players of the same role still read apart.
The colours are the ones your five wear on the tactics map, so a mark here is the same player as that dot on your plan.
Rest the mouse on one of your players, or tap them, to read their nickname; move away, or tap the map, to hide it again.
A player who is down keeps their mark, faded, so you can still see who fell where.
Only your own club is marked, on either side and in every rewatch; the other club never is.
The weapon in an operator's hands tells you their buy: a small pistol on an eco, a rifle or the long sniper on a full buy.
That is how you spot a force-buy or a held sniper angle without opening the scoreboard.
A lone weapon on the ground is where someone died; it vanishes the moment another player picks it up, so watch for a rifle disappearing off the floor.
A weapon can change mid-round: walk over something better than what you hold, and the gun in your hands changes there and then.
SCAVENGED marks a gun picked up off a team-mate; LOOTED means it came off an enemy they had just killed, which is the rarer of the two.
The kill feed names whatever they were really holding, but the scoreboard still lists what they BOUGHT.
The match map shows what YOUR team can sense, not everything that is happening.
An enemy one of your players has a clear line of sight to is drawn normally.
Your players also HEAR an enemy who comes close to one of them, even through a wall, but a heard enemy is only a "?" marker, never a normal one.
An enemy far from all of your players is not heard at all, however noisy the place they are standing in.
A spotted enemy stays drawn for a moment after they break line of sight, so someone ducking behind cover does not flicker.
Once the bomb is planted, its position is always shown.
A dimmed marker with a "?" is an enemy you cannot see: one you have lost track of, or one you can only hear.
A heard enemy's marker sits where they were when you heard them.
A lost-track marker sits at the last place you knew about, which may be nowhere near where they are now.
Either way it shows the direction they were facing back then, not now, and it fades away after a while.
Enemies you have never seen or heard are not drawn at all, and neither are their view cones, their shots, or the bomb they are carrying.
In a scrim, and only there, a Broadcast button switches the fog off; league and cup matches are always watched under fog.
Your own match is saved after every round, in the league and in the cup.
If the tab closes, the connection drops, or you simply stop, the match is kept.
To stop on purpose, use "Save & exit" on the match screen, and the game shows a "Match saved" screen until you resume.
When you come back, or simply next open the game, the last round plays back from its start, in case you missed how it ended.
Then you pick your next tactic as usual, with the score, the money and every past round exactly as you saw them.
A paused match must be finished before anything else.
A half-played match must be finished before anything else: while one exists, the rest of the club is locked.
Play it out, or use "Finish match now" to simulate straight to the result; it asks you first, and Escape there means Cancel (Closing a pop-up).
You can tell it to stop asking, and switch the question back on under Account.
There is no way to restart it, so a bad start cannot be rerolled into a good one.
One exception: after a game update, a half-played match starts again from round 1, and a short notice in the match explains it.
The updated engine would replay your saved rounds differently, so a fresh start is the honest option.