CS2 Retakes Explained: Loadout Cards, Maps and Rules

On 19 of the 20 bombsites that Counter-Strike 2's Retakes mode plays, the file that decides where the bomb goes puts 75% of its weight on the default plant. The twentieth is Nuke's A site, where the default and a spot the file labels "for mini" carry equal weight.

That is how Retakes runs: a config, a set of card definitions and one small text file per map. Valve brought the mode back on October 22, 2025, as a "fast-paced 4v3 after-plant scenario" in which you select a loadout card each round. On this site it has only come up in passing, as a word in a few other posts. Here is the whole mode: how a round runs, every loadout card in both decks, where the bomb lands on each of the 10 maps, and what it does to your rank.

The rules come from the mode's config (gamemode_retakecasual.cfg), the card definitions in the game's console variables, the per-map retake files and the game's English strings, all read from SteamDB's public GameTracking-CS2 repository at the October 8, 2026 build, plus Valve's release notes. Where a file stores a number without saying what it means, I fall back on the Valve Developer Community's Retakes page. That page was written for the CS:GO version of the mode, so every claim taken from it is labelled as such.

Retakes in 30 seconds

The game's English strings still carry the rules text from the CS:GO War Games version of the mode: "Win 8 rounds in this best of 15," "3 Ts vs 4 CTs," "Choose your loadout with loadout cards," "Improve your loadout by winning round MVPs" and "Weapons and loadouts do not carry over round to round." The parts the files can check still hold. The team-size console variables are 4 Counter-Terrorists and 3 Terrorists, and the config caps a match at 15 rounds and lets a team clinch once it has won more than half of them, which is where the 8 comes from.

Back since October 2025

Retakes is older than Counter-Strike 2. Valve introduced it in CS:GO with Operation Broken Fang on December 3, 2020. When that operation ended on May 3, 2021, Valve wrote that Retakes was sticking around and gave it "a new home among the Wargames."

It was missing from Counter-Strike 2 until October 2025. None of the 15 copies of gamemodes.txt that SteamDB holds from December 2023 to October 3, 2025 defines a Retakes mode. Valve's October 22, 2025 notes then added "Retakes as official game mode supporting Defusal Group Alpha and Defusal Group Delta maps on official matchmaking servers," and the announcement that day called it "the return of retakes."

It has changed only a little since. The October 29, 2025 card changes are in the card section below, and the full list of release-note lines is near the end.

How a Retakes round runs

The game's Retakes loading screen sums the mode up in two lines: "Rounds begin with the bomb already planted at a random site" and "Select a loadout at the beginning of each round." It lists two settings underneath, "Friendly fire is OFF" and "Team collision is OFF."

A round, in order:

1. Freeze time, 7 seconds. The Retakes config sets 7, up from Casual's 5, and this is when you pick a card. Per the Valve Developer Community page, nobody can shoot or drop a weapon in this window, Counter-Terrorists cannot move, and Terrorists other than the planter can move but are held in by blockers. All 11 of CS2's retake files (one per map, plus a separate one for night Ancient) list barrier walls around both sites, and the game ships a model called retakes_barrier. The same page says a player who has not picked when freeze time ends gets a random card, and that bots always do.
2. The plant. Per the same page, one Terrorist holds the bomb and plants it automatically, so it is planted the moment freeze time ends.
3. The fight. The config sets a 2.25-minute round clock, but with the bomb already ticking, the round ends inside 40 seconds: a defuse, a Counter-Terrorist wipe or the detonation. A defuse takes 10 seconds, or 5 with a kit, so a kitless retake gets about 30 seconds of fighting before the defuse has to start. The bomb timer guide has the second-by-second table.
4. The reset. The next round starts 5 seconds after this one ends, against the game's 7-second default.

Two more rules decide where each round happens:

• Spawns are lists, not fixed points. Each map's retake file lists spawn points per team and per site. Mirage's has nine Counter-Terrorist points for an A retake, and its comments put them at CT spawn (two), Market, Short/Cat, Underpass, top of Mid, T spawn and Palace (two). Per the Valve Developer Community page, each player gets a random point from the list and no point is used twice in a round. A Terrorist on A cannot assume the retake comes from CT spawn.
• A site cannot come up three times running. The console variable mp_retake_max_consecutive_rounds_same_target_site is 2, described as a limit on "the number of consecutive rounds targeting the same site." After two rounds in a row on A, the next one is on B.

Guns still drop when you die, since the config keeps the standard drop rules, so a dead player's weapon is on the floor for the rest of that round. It just does not follow anyone into the next one.

Every loadout card, round by round

Nobody buys anything in Retakes. The config sets starting money and the money cap to zero and switches player and team cash awards off, and per the Valve Developer Community page the cards replace the buy menu. Each card is one entry in a console variable, and the game's own error message spells out the format: an "available amount", then "body armor present,helmet present,weapon,utility1" and so on. Per the Valve Developer Community page, that amount is how many of the card the team's deck gets for the round, and an entry that lists two cards adds one or the other.

The decks are split by round type. Three of their names, "Default Pistol Round", "Upgraded Pistol Round" and "Full Buy Round", appear in the game's server binary; the fourth console variable is named for a light-buy round, and its description calls it a force-buy round. The Valve Developer Community page gives the order: round 1 is the pistol round, round 2 the upgraded pistol round, round 3 the light-buy round, and every round from 4 on is a full-buy round.

Two weapon entries follow your own inventory loadout. Starting pistol is your Glock-18 as a Terrorist, or whichever of the P2000 and USP-S you equip as a Counter-Terrorist. Rifle slot 1 is the AK-47 for Terrorists and your M4 for Counter-Terrorists: the M4A1-S by default, the M4A4 if you equip it, and since October 29, 2025 a random one of the two "if player has both equipped in their CT loadout," in Valve's words. The M4A4 vs M4A1-S guide covers the difference. Every other card in the four decks names a fixed weapon.

The pistol round

The upgraded pistol round

The light-buy round

The full-buy round

The cards reference grenades by loadout slot, and the game's item schema puts the flashbang in slot 0, the smoke in slot 1, the HE grenade in slot 2 and the Molotov or incendiary in slot 3. Valve's launch art agrees on the three it shows: TEC, TEC, BOOM! with an HE grenade, Hot Shot with a Molotov and Finders Keepers with a flashbang. The card names are the display names from the game's English strings; the Bright Eyed card is still called LightEmUp internally.

What the decks tell you

• In the pistol round, armor is a trade. On both sides the plain card (4v3 or 4 Bad Guys Left) is the only one with Kevlar, and the grenade cards carry none. In the upgraded pistol round, Blind Fire is the only armored card on either side, and it comes with a flashbang as well. Every light-buy and full-buy card comes with Kevlar and a helmet.
• The CT pistol deck is four cards for four players, and one of them has a grenade. Whoever draws Flash Out! or Hide and Peek is the team's utility for that round.
• Fire is scarce. The decks hold one incendiary card (1g) and one Molotov card (Hot Shot), both in the full-buy round.
• The full-buy decks are mostly your main rifle. Six of the seven Counter-Terrorist cards are an M4 and four of the five Terrorist cards are an AK-47. The AUG and the SG 553 get one card each.
• The SSG 08 is a light-buy gun here. Sharpshooter puts two in the Counter-Terrorist deck and Set Them Free one in the Terrorist deck. In the decks, the AWP appears only as the bonus card below.
• Two grenades is the most any card gives (Boom Box). The config caps a player at three grenades, no more than two of them flashbangs. The utility guide covers what each one does.

The AWP card and the enemy card

Full-buy rounds add a bonus card on top of the decks above, and per the Valve Developer Community page some of them also deal an enemy card. Valve's launch art at the top of this post shows both.

The AWPortunity is the bonus card: an AWP with Kevlar and a helmet, the same for both sides. Its availability console variables read "1,2" for Counter-Terrorists and "1,1,2" for Terrorists, which the game describes only as an "availability pattern." The Valve Developer Community page reads each number as how many AWP cards a team gets in successive full-buy rounds, cycling back to the start, so one and then two for CTs. The page's own editors flag that reading as unconfirmed.

The enemy card is tagged "Enemy Loadout" on screen. The Counter-Terrorist one, Behind Enemy Lines, lists Kevlar, a helmet, rifle slot 1 and an HE grenade. The Terrorist one, Finders Keepers, lists Kevlar, a helmet, rifle slot 1 and a flashbang. Per the Valve Developer Community page, an enemy card's weapon comes from the other team's default loadout, which would make Behind Enemy Lines an AK-47 in a Counter-Terrorist's hands. Valve's art bears that out on the Terrorist side: its Finders Keepers card shows a silenced M4, not an AK. The CT enemy card got its HE grenade on October 29, 2025, when Valve "Replaced Flashbang with HE Grenade on CT Enemy Loadout Card."

The four cards in that art are one of each kind the Valve Developer Community page says you can choose between in warmup: an upgraded-pistol card (TEC, TEC, BOOM!), a full-buy card (Hot Shot), the enemy card and the bonus card.

The MVP card

Win a round's MVP and the game tells you "Congratulations! MVP Bonus card available next round!" The card is tagged "MVP" on screen, and the client's player data carries Retakes fields named for an MVP boost item and an MVP boost extra utility slot. The Valve Developer Community page says the round's MVP gets an additional grenade on one of their cards. The War Games-era rules text pitches it as the way to "Improve your loadout," so in a round you are already winning, the MVP is worth chasing.

Defuse kits: the config and the deck disagree

The Retakes config sets mp_defuser_allocation to 2, which the console variable describes as handing defusers to "everyone." The deck strings say something narrower. Each Counter-Terrorist deck opens with a number in front of its cards: 1 for the pistol round, 2 for the upgraded pistol round, 3 for the light-buy round and 4 for the full-buy round. Every Terrorist deck opens with 0. The Valve Developer Community page identifies that number as the team's defuse kits for the round type, given to random players, and the client tracks a separate Retakes defuse-kit flag on each player.

I could not confirm in a live match which of the two wins. Until you have seen it for yourself, play the pistol round as if one Counter-Terrorist has a kit, and check yours before you commit to a late defuse. Kits do drop when their owner dies, so a dead teammate's kit is worth the detour. The gap is the five seconds the bomb timer guide is built around.

Where the bomb lands

Each map's retake file lists plant spots for both sites, and the server's own error message names the first number on each line as a "weight." Per the Valve Developer Community page, weights are relative: a spot with a weight of 10 comes up ten times as often as one with a weight of 1. That turns the files into odds:

On 18 of the sites the default carries 12 of 16 weight points, and each other spot carries 1 or 2 points, a 6.25% or 12.5% chance. The 2-point spots are the likeliest alternatives. Thirteen of those 18 sites have one, and the file comments name them, among them "triple" on Mirage A, "under window" on Dust II B, "behind fountain" on Inferno B, "under heaven" on Anubis A, and a spot on Mirage B that the file calls "useless pillar."

Nuke breaks the pattern at A. Its file gives 8 points to "default, back site," 8 to a spot "for mini" and 1 each to two others, so the bomb is at the default only 44% of the time and at the Mini spot just as often. Nuke's B site has three spots and reaches the same 75% for its default with 9 points of 12. The Nuke callouts guide places Mini and the rest of the names.

The practical read: on any site but Nuke A, expect the bomb at the default plant, because three rounds in four that is where it is. A Terrorist should expect the retake to know that too.

Ten maps, and Ancient is the night one

On Valve's servers, Retakes queues by map group rather than by map. gamemodes.txt gives the mode two online groups, both of which Casual also uses, and the game names them Defusal Group Alpha and Defusal Group Delta:

Three things stand out:

• It is not the Active Duty pool. Seven of the ten are Active Duty maps. Vertigo, Train and Overpass were cut from that pool on January 28, 2025, January 21, 2026 and July 8, 2026, and they are still Retakes maps. The map pool history has the full timeline.
• Ancient is the night version. Delta's Ancient entry has been de_ancient_night since the August 14, 2025 build, and the game still labels it "Ancient." Its retake file has the same spawns and plant weights as the daytime map's. Valve's announcement that day said the night version was "only available in Casual and Deathmatch"; Retakes, which arrived two months later on the same map group, is a third place to meet it. The Ancient callouts guide covers the names.
• Cache joined on April 28, 2026, when Valve added it to Competitive, Casual, Deathmatch and Retakes. Its retake file first appears in that build. The Cache callouts guide has the map.

Retakes versus Competitive

Both configs sit side by side in the game files:

Three of those rows follow from one choice. Retakes keeps friendly fire switched on but sets every damage multiplier to zero, including the one for your own grenades, so a Molotov at your feet or an HE grenade in a tight doorway costs your team nothing. The economy guide covers the Competitive money side that Retakes skips entirely.

No rank, and open to new accounts

• It does not rank you. The client's rank-emblem script handles three rating types, Premier, Competitive and Wingman, and none of Valve's Retakes notes mentions a rank. It sits with Casual and Deathmatch among the modes that do not rank you, alongside Rush. Wingman is the small-team mode that does.
• A new account can play it. The play menu's script gates modes by profile level. Below level 2, the modes it lets you queue on Valve's servers are Casual, Deathmatch, Arms Race and Retakes; the rest show "Complete matches in other game modes to unlock this one."
• Parties go up to 4. Valve raised the party size the day after launch ("Increased matchmaking party size for Retakes to allow 4 players in a party"), and the client's session script caps a Retakes lobby at 4, against 3 for Rush, 2 for Wingman and 5 for the other modes.

Retakes in Valve's release notes

I searched all 309 Counter-Strike announcements Steam lists from March 2023 onward for "retake," and added the CS:GO lines that set the mode up. These are the lines that name it:

The files add one detail the notes leave out and contradict another. The October 29, 2025 build also rewrote most cards to name a specific weapon where they had pointed at a loadout slot, which is why only the starting-pistol and rifle-slot-1 cards still follow your inventory. And the March 18, 2026 build gave the Retakes config a per-half map-guide round limit of -1, which the same day's notes define as unlimited, while the notes themselves say Retakes guides are limited to the first 5 rounds of the half. Competitive keeps the default of 5. The card definitions in the October 8, 2026 build are identical to the October 29, 2025 build's.

What I could not verify

• Which defuse-kit rule wins. The config says every Counter-Terrorist gets one; the deck strings say 1 to 4 per round type.
• The round order. Pistol, upgraded pistol, light buy and then full buy from round 4 is the Valve Developer Community's description of the CS:GO mode. CS2's Retakes game rules also carry a field for the first round of a "second half," although the config switches halftime off, and I could not confirm whether the sequence restarts partway through a match.
• What the AWP availability pattern does. The one-then-two reading is the same page's, and its editors flag it as unconfirmed.
• How many cards each player sees. The files define a team's deck; they do not say how it is split between players.
• How long map guides last. The Retakes config sets no round limit; Valve's March 18, 2026 notes say the first 5 rounds of the half.
• Live-server overrides. gamemodes.txt also runs a gamemode_casual_server.cfg that the game does not ship. It runs before the Retakes config, so it can only change what that config leaves unset, the 40-second bomb timer included, and Valve's servers could apply settings no shipped file shows.
• Whether teams ever swap sides. The halftime switch is off, and nothing I found says the mode swaps sides another way.
• A paler smoke grenade in Valve's art. The Finders Keepers card in the launch art shows a lighter smoke grenade icon that the card's definition does not list. It may be the MVP extra grenade; nothing I found says so.

More mode and weapon breakdowns live on the Counter-Strike 2 coverage hub, and the wider archive is on the Mythras blog. For drilling the plant spots above on an empty server, the practice server guide has the setup.

Quick Action Checklist

• Retakes is 4 Counter-Terrorists against 3 Terrorists, first to 8 rounds of 15, with the bomb already planted every round.
• Pick your card in the 7-second freeze time. Per the Valve Developer Community page, miss it and you get a random one.
• Nobody buys anything. Your card is your loadout, and weapons do not carry over between rounds.
• In the first pistol round a grenade card costs you your Kevlar. From the light-buy round on, every card has Kevlar and a helmet.
• Full-buy rounds add an AWP bonus card, and per the Valve Developer Community page some also deal an enemy card that hands you the other side's rifle.
• Win the round MVP for a bonus card next round.
• Do not assume you have a kit on the pistol round. A defuse needs 10 seconds without one and 5 with one.
• The bomb is at the default plant 75% of the time on 19 of the 20 sites. Nuke A gives the default and the Mini spot equal odds, about 44% each.
• The same site comes up at most twice in a row.
• Alpha is Dust II, Mirage, Inferno, Vertigo and Cache; Delta is Train, Anubis, night Ancient, Overpass and Nuke.
• No rank, parties of up to 4, and it is one of the four modes a new account can queue.