AWP | Electric Hive (Field-Tested)

The AWP | Electric Hive in Field-Tested (FT) takes up more than half of this finish's scale: 0.23 of 0.40, with the float running from 0.15 to 0.38. It is a Classified skin from The eSports 2013 Winter Collection and drops from the eSports 2013 Winter Case. Field-Tested sits mid-scale, and the most worn wear is still some distance away.

What the AWP | Electric Hive looks like in Field-Tested

This is a lilac-violet rifle with a metallic cast, crossed by a mesh of red-orange honeycomb cells with dark outlines. The hexagons vary in size, overlap in places and thin out toward the edges. The mesh covers the receiver, handguard and stock. The long barrel stays dark, and the bipod and the rings on the barrel are violet.

Field-Tested lightens the edges of the receiver and stock, where the cells lose their outline and the violet drifts toward gray. The mesh still reads as a whole. There is no lettering on the rifle.

Where the AWP | Electric Hive came from

No Workshop submission lies behind the AWP | Electric Hive: Valve made it in-house. The skin appeared on December 18, 2013, and its number in Valve's catalog is 227. Valve describes it in one line, as a rifle painted with a hydrographic in a hexagonal pattern.

What to check before buying

Before taking an AWP | Electric Hive, look at these points:

• float: in this wear the rifle sits within 0.15 to 0.38;


• how the cells lie: the artwork differs from copy to copy;


• what the previous owner left on the AWP | Electric Hive: stickers and a name tag.

Pattern index shifts the overlay of the mesh, and copies differ in where the large cells fall. No rare variants are named, so listings are compared by their previews. Choose within 0.15 to 0.38: the difference between the top and the bottom of that band is noticeable.

What the AWP | Electric Hive costs in Field-Tested

Against Field-Tested, the other wears price out like this:

• Factory New is priced at two and a half times Field-Tested;


• Minimal Wear is 15 percent dearer;


• Well-Worn is 1.67 times dearer.

Of the thirteen Classified AWPs priced in this wear, nine cost less than the Electric Hive and three cost more: Redline, BOOM and Silk Tiger. Crakow! and Corticera sit closest below it, and Duality and Mortis close out the row.

Getting the AWP | Electric Hive

The rifle drops from the eSports 2013 Winter Case. A trade-up can produce it too, using ten skins one rank down. If the ten come from this collection, the odds of landing the AWP | Electric Hive are one in three. The skin itself then goes on as an input toward M4A4 | X-Ray.

StatTrak and Souvenir

The AWP | Electric Hive has a StatTrak version. No souvenir packages exist for it, but a souvenir copy can be built through the Souvenir-O-Matic.

Stickers and craft on the AWP | Electric Hive

Cells and dark outlines cover almost the whole body, so a sticker with a thin outline has a hard time here. Stickers with a dense fill in cool tones read best, since the red-orange mesh mutes warm ones. The one free area is the dark barrel, but stickers are not placed there.

Who this wear suits

Field-Tested is a sensible buy for the AWP | Electric Hive in these situations:

• you want a bright mesh at a price two to three times below Factory New;


• you choose the CS2 rifle by cell placement and by float;


• you want the AWP in CS2 to look fresh through the middle of the body, with edge wear that does not bother you.