The Eastern European Buy

After reading my two entries on eco rounds, found here and here, you probably thought you knew everything that you need to know about counter-strike finances and how to resolve when to eco. You are wrong. For every decision you make there is at least another line of play to choose. Does that mean that everything we learned about eco rounds is wrong? No.

You see, in the previous entries on the subject we determine the value, reason, and strategic implication of ecoing. In this entry, we will take a closer look on circumstances not yet covered. For example the "semi-buy" also known as an "Eastern European buy". Feeling curious yet? Let's go!

The Eastern European buy is a round when two or three players on the team are buying, and the others are not. It is a valid strategy since it gives you a round of firepower which you should not have. The catch is that even though some of your mates are buying up, you are still behind in firepower overall. My inclination is that whenever someone needs to eco and nobody can afford to drop, your team probably should eco to minimize the financial losses during an unfavored round. Therefore I cannot say I agree with this strategy. However, if you have strong clutch players on your team, making sure they are in a position to frag as much as possible is certainly valuable.

Sometimes you go for an Eastern European buy since you happen to have some surviving players from the previous round, with weapons and armor, but not enough money to make a full buy for the entire team. In either case, survivors or not, you have a choice to make regarding putting armor and helmet on your saving players. If they do, they can certainly not be referred to as saving players anymore. However, it is the optimist's strategy since the main reason for doing this is the chance you get an entry frag on an opponent and have the possibility of liberating a gun or two. If you manage to do that, you have another fully armed and armored player on your team. If things go poorly, one of them might be able to pick up one of your dropped weapons and the recycle it. However, the worst case scenario and a strict possibility is you being outgunned and the armor and helmet buy suddenly starts to look silly.

It certainly is quite the surprise when you are up against ecoing opponents and one of them drops you with an AK-47.  There is an element of surprise to the Eastern European buy that can come in handy, especially if you have excellent marksmen in your ranks. Even though I myself do not feel comfortable with such a semi-buy on my team, I must admit that it could be a valid strategy. The key to success is not just having skilled people with powerful guns in their hands, but the coordination of your team. If everyone is buying what they can at all times, they are not executing any tactics; they are burning money. Therefore make sure that your team is in on it before you buy anything. At the most you could buy armor and helmet if you have liberated a gun in a previous eco round, without announcing it. But you probably should either way. One of the worst feelings is when you have a certain pattern in your team with about half the players saving and the other half buying interchangeable every round. 

Now it is time to hit the servers soldier!  Practice makes perfect.