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Overview


The Nova's rock-bottom price tag makes it a great ambush weapon for a cash-strapped team.
―Official description

The Nova is a pump-action shotgun that appears in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive & Counter-Strike 2. It replaces the Leone 12 Gauge Super from early Counter-Strike games.

Overview[]

The Benelli Nova is an Italian shotgun. In-game, it holds 8 rounds of 12 gauge shotgun shells. It can be purchased by both the Counter-Terrorists and the Terrorists.

As the cheapest shotgun option, it has low power but is a good economic investment due to having high kill rewards. It has a slow rate of fire due to the pump-action, even slightly lower compared to the Sawed-Off and MAG-7 68 RPM vs. 71 RPM.

At extreme close range, the shotgun can kill in one shot to any body part if all pellets hit. However, the shotgun has the lowest armor penetration out of all shotguns, meaning that more shots need to land in order to instantly kill armored enemies compared to other shotguns. This reduces its effectiveness significantly against armored opponents, but it compensates somewhat with the lowest pellet spread compared to the other shotguns, allowing for more kill potential at range.

The reloading process involves individually loading new shells into the weapon's loading port. It is possible to interrupt the reload and fire mid-reload by pressing the primary attack key during the reload.

As with all the other shotguns, the Nova has a 3× kill award multiplier. In Classic Competitive, one kill rewards $900, whilst in Classic Casual, it's $450 per kill.

Properties[]

Hitbox Primary Attack
Unarmored Armored
Head 106 52
Chest & Arm 26 13
Abdomen and pelvis 32 16
Leg 19 19
Each shot contains 9 pellets.
Red signifies a fatal hit.

Tactics[]

  • Thanks to its tight spread and more forgiving maximum range and falloff modifier, the Nova can make a serviceable buy round option.
    • The Nova's spread pattern is vertically-oriented and resembles a wishbone. With most of the pellets being clustered at the center of the crosshair. Therefore not requiring as specific of a circumstance when aiming at your target.
      • It should be noted that the pellets in the center clump will usually tend slightly to the left. So, aiming accordingly is still important to remember.
  • The Nova will typically fall off very fast after the first few rounds in each half of the match. Being hampered by having the lowest per-pellet damage and weakest armor penetration.
    • On CT side, the MAG-7 is the logical upgrade. With stronger damage and armor penetration, as well as incorporating a much simpler strategy revolving around it.
    • On T side, the Sawed-Off is typically avoided for being very difficult to use. So, if you do plan on continually using a shotgun, you're kind of stuck with the Nova because the XM1014's slower movement speed is a hindrance to pushing and taking sites.
  • One thing to be most wary of when using the Nova is that its damage can be very inconsistent at any range. On one hand, you might somehow miraculously snipe a target and make back the amount spent on the gun out of the exchange, but on the other, fail to kill, even when perfectly aiming dead-center.

Update History

March 13, 2019
  • Price reduction for some shotguns: Nova ($1050), Sawed-Off ($1100), MAG-7 ($1300).
  • Nova can now shoot through walls at a penetration value of 1.
February 8, 2018
October 1, 2012
  • Reduced all shotguns' price by $300.

Achievements[]

Weapon Specialist
Nova Expert csgo Nova Expert
Kill 100 enemies with the Nova.

Trivia[]

  • The Nova shares its reloading animations with the Sawed-Off and shares the same pump sound from the Sawed-Off and the MAG-7.
    • The pumping sounds of the Nova are reused from Left 4 Dead 2 Pump Shotgun.
  • On the left side of the weapon, there is a print that says 'BENETTI'. This is most likely an intentional corruption of Benelli (the manufacturer of the Nova) to prevent copyright infringements.
  • Although the Nova in-game has an 8-round magazine capacity, the in-game model depicts it with the standard 4-round tube magazine.
  • In the CS:GO Beta, the Nova shared the same pumping animation as the Sawed-Off.

Behind the scenes[]

  • Like many of the weapons in earlier builds of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the Nova featured different color schemes in addition to some minor differences.[2]
    • The Alpha outline icon depicts it with a sight attachment.
    • The weapon was also known as the Leone Eclipse according to both the placeholder announcer and the text string files.[3]

External link[]

References

  1. CSGO Alpha Weapon Showcase (1.0.0.40) August 2011
  2. iconlib.swf. Beta build
  3. Build 1.0.0.0.40, sound/ui/nova.wav and ressources/cstrike15_english.txt
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