Callouts are important on every map in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. There’s no CSGO map where callouts are more important than Nuke, though.
Nuke is one of the trickiest maps to play in a solo queue environment. This stems from the fact that it’s one of the few maps built around being tall instead of wide. Nuke effectively has three floors stacked on top of one another. This makes it immensely difficult to get a read on opponents’ locations from the mini-map alone.
This is particularly troublesome around the bombsites, which are basically stacked on top of each other, as well as the area surrounding the A bombsite, which has scaffolding running above the site, a ramp running underneath it, and heaven directly overlooking it.
It’s worth going over the most important callouts of Nuke and giving listing definitive names for highly contended areas of the CSGO map. Though this isn’t comprehensive and some names can vary from region to region, this is a good place to start.
Nuke callouts in CSGO
The major areas of Nuke are the A bomb site, the B bomb site, and the outside area. Outside control is important in CSGO as it functionally replaces the “mid” areas of Mirage or Dust 2. By controlling mid, players have extra avenues for attacking sites. Scoped rifles are unwieldy across much of Nuke, but the high vantage points and relative openness of the space between CT spawn make them important.
With complete outside control, T-side players can attack the A site through A-main. With some effective smokes, they can easily head underground through secret towards the B site.
The T side has immediate access to the lobby area, which offers two paths towards the A site through squeaky and hut. After moving through secret, the B site can be attacked through tunnels into doors and control room. The tricky thing with the B site in particular is how many different hiding spots there are for CTs with scaffolding running around the site, cubby spots in dark and the back corner, and the ability to attack from ramp.
Nuke has historically been a CT-sided map, but things have shifted in a big way since the IEM Katowice Major in 2019. The popularization of the AUG and SG-553 made the map much more even between the two sides. Though Astralis famously dominated the map for years, things shifted hard after that point. Natus Vincere famously held a 20-map win streak on Nuke until Team Vitality ended it in 2021.
