AK-47 | Redline (Battle-Scarred)

The AK-47 | Redline in Battle-Scarred (BS) is the cheapest way to own this rifle, the one CS2 players simply call the "redline". But the saving is smaller than you would expect: Field-Tested is less than a third dearer, while Minimal Wear is almost six times dearer. The float here runs from 0.45 to 0.70, not to one as on most skins, because the AK-47 | Redline's own ceiling stops at 0.70. It is a Classified skin from the Operation Phoenix Weapon Case, released in February 2014.

What the AK-47 | Redline looks like in Battle-Scarred

The main departure from the clean wears is the carbon: the black weave stops reading and turns into an even dark gray ground. Wear runs along the edges, the magazine and the exposed metal, down to bare metal in places. The red stripe holds. On a dark base it keeps its contrast where a light skin would have turned into a smudge. Because of the cut-off ceiling the spread inside the wear is small: copies at 0.46 and 0.69 do differ, but not by much.

What to check before buying

The AK-47 | Redline has no pattern variants, so no copy inside this wear is dear for being rare. Two parameters remain, and in Battle-Scarred they work differently than in the clean wears:

• the float has little effect on looks, so there is little point in chasing 0.46 over 0.60;


• what the previous owner left on the AK-47 | Redline: stickers and an applied name explain almost all of the price difference between listings.

What the AK-47 | Redline costs in Battle-Scarred

No wear of this skin costs less than this one. For comparison:

• Well-Worn costs about a tenth more, despite looking worse, since it gets only the narrow band of 0.38 to 0.45;


• Field-Tested costs less than a third more, yet looks distinctly tidier.

That is why Battle-Scarred is bought for price, not for looks. If the budget stretches to a third more, go straight to FT. The skin has four wears, not five: the wear scale starts at 0.10, so Factory New does not exist for the Redline at all.

Getting the AK-47 | Redline

The AK-47 | Redline comes from the Operation Phoenix Weapon Case. This is a case from the 2014 operation, and Valve no longer makes new ones like it.

So most cheap copies arrive not from cases but from trade-up contracts. The game takes ten skins of one rank and returns one skin a step higher. Into this contract go ten skins of the rank below from the Phoenix collection. Out comes one of three Classified skins: the AK-47 | Redline, the Nova | Antique or the P90 | Trigon.

The Redline itself seldom goes back into contracts. To get the Covert AUG | Chameleon or AWP | Asiimov, people put in the Nova | Antique and the P90 | Trigon, which cost several times less.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AK-47 | Redline

The AK-47 | Redline has a StatTrak version. Souvenir copies of the finish turn up as well, though no Souvenir packages were ever made for it: packages only ever covered tournament map collections. Those copies are built with the Souvenir-O-Matic, which puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on a normal skin from the inventory.

The black body of the AK-47 | Redline suits a craft better than motley skins do. In this wear it is already scuffed, so expensive stickers will not pay off here. Cheap ones are the choice: red logos such as FaZe Clan, MOUZ or Heroic land right on the color of the stripe. Worn stickers sit more fittingly on such a base than new ones, and they cover the most battered spots too.

Who this wear suits

Battle-Scarred on the AK-47 | Redline makes sense if:

• you need the skin itself in a CS2 loadout on a minimal budget;


• the rifle will be covered with stickers, and the state of the base is secondary;


• you want StatTrak™, and the clean wears are beyond the budget.

The downside is obvious: on inspection the skin reads as badly scuffed. The step up to Field-Tested is so small that, for looks, it is wiser to take that one straight away.