Strategy is a vital part of success as a team at the highest levels of CrossFire. It allows arguably less aim-oriented teams to be on par with their aim-heavy counterparts and when used by teams who are talented on the attack, they win half of the battle for that squad.
Now that we’ve talked about strategy and tactics, here are the common ones used by teams in this year’s CrossFire Stars Grand Finals:

Pick-Offs

Used by teams who are on the Global Risk and Black List sides of nearly every map, the idea is to reduce the numbers of the opposing team by peeking or taking aim duels and through playing optimal positions in order to maximize the chances of picking off someone. Most of the time, teams that have a lot of aimers or excellent snipers use this tactic often as their default attacking setup.
This is usually more effective on the Black List (i.e. attacking) side, where success in using the strategy usually increases their win rate by quite a lot, while losing the initial pickoff does not mean that they’ll lose the match outright (after all, they can just either trade, wait for pushes or execute on a site and hope to overwhelm the defenders with their immediate superior presence before a rotation is called.)
Failure in this department is usually more pronounced on the Global Risk side, as they are forced to spread their lines thinly, thus allowing the attacking teams to just rip a site and virtually have it all for themselves.

The One Big Push: 4-1

Though this type of push may seem barbaric and straightforward, it actually requires a high amount of coordination and impeccable timing in order to execute successfully.
One example is the A push by ruLegends on their match on Port against AG in their initial group stage match. The trades were so quick that more than half of the players on the server were wiped out in the first thirty seconds of the game, allowing the Russians to capitalize on the chaos and win the round outright.
ruLegends used a combination of flashes as well as a lurker on the middle portion of the map in order to prevent rotations by the Chinese squad, thus ending the round rather quickly.

Split Pushes: Slicing the Map into Two Halves

This type of push is usually done by placing smokes in order to obscure the defenders’ positions and prevent rotations as well as flashes and smokes to take defenders out of their hiding spots.
A split push is generally effective, especially if the Global Risk side is playing standard setups and is playing passively. However, if the defending team is either quick on the rotation or has stacked a certain site beforehand, then this type of push is rather dangerous to do.
Thus, split pushes are generally done if the team has knowledge of the opposing side’s setups or if the team has already picked off one or two enemies beforehand.
Many teams, especially among the top four squads at this year’s CFS Grand Finals, tend to use this tactic as their standard setup.

Aggressive Pushes: Global Risk Option

KOWAI became notorious for these pushes as they are able to take their opponents by surprise, getting two to three men down on the enemy side before they are even able to react.
However, the counter for this is rather simple: The team that plays on the Black List side should just play passively and allow the GR squad to get into their own crossfire setup, quickly turning the tables into their favour.
Overall, it’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy.

Thoughts

This year’s CFS 2017 has been really entertaining to watch, with new teams and extreme strategies coming to the fore.
Here’s to a bloodier and more strategy-oriented battlefield this coming 2017!