AWP | Neo-Noir (Field-Tested)

The AWP | Neo-Noir in Field-Tested (FT) is the cheapest of this skin's five grades. The grade's wear band is 0.15 to 0.38, a stretch of 0.23. The finish's scale stops at 0.50, which is why the prices of all five grades sit close together. Covert in rank, the rifle comes out of the Danger Zone Case.

What the AWP | Neo-Noir looks like in Field-Tested

A woman's face in a comic-book style is drawn on the side of the receiver and on the cheek piece of the stock. The ground is violet-blue, the fills are purple and raspberry, and the highlights are teal. The barrel, bipod, scope body and muzzle brake are bare dark metal. The only color on the barrel is a thin teal stripe that breaks into pink dots toward the muzzle, and the eyepiece of the scope carries a teal ring.

Wear in this grade hits that stripe first: a thin line on a round surface rubs off before anything else, and the dotted row at the muzzle goes with it. Next the stock edges lighten, along with the cheek rim and the butt plate. The large fills on the receiver and the black outline of the face are still intact toward the top of the band, so the portrait reads across the whole range.

Where the AWP | Neo-Noir came from

The finish was drawn by a Steam Workshop artist who goes by donschi. He posted the submission on August 23, 2018, already under its final name. In the description the author called this rifle the main piece of the Neo-Noir series. The artwork took months and was fitted to the shape of the AWP, and it came out the most detailed in the series. A detail from the same place: in the girl's left hand is a badge of the global rank. The Danger Zone Collection was released on December 6, 2018.

What to check before buying

Copies of the AWP | Neo-Noir differ in only a few ways:

• the float: it shows whether the teal stripe along the barrel survived;


• the stock edges and the butt plate, which lighten sooner than the side of the receiver;


• stickers and a name tag, which come with the listing.

The skin does not exist in two different artworks. The width of 0.15 to 0.38 makes the choice meaningful, and copies closer to 0.15 are cleaner.

What the AWP | Neo-Noir costs in Field-Tested

Factory New is dearer by roughly a quarter, Minimal Wear by roughly an eighth. Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred actually cost a little more than FT, so the price floor of this finish falls on exactly this grade.

Among Covert AWPs the skin sits toward the bottom: only three finishes cost less in this grade, and the other fifteen cost more. Right above it come AWP | Wildfire and AWP | Printstream, and below it AWP | Hyper Beast and AWP | Chromatic Aberration press close. AWP | Medusa, AWP | Dragon Lore and AWP | Gungnir cost orders of magnitude more.

Getting the AWP | Neo-Noir

This finish has a single case, the Danger Zone Case, and the skin drops from it directly. For a trade-up you put in ten skins from the tier below, all from one collection. Desert Eagle | Mecha Industries, MP5-SD | Phosphor and UMP-45 | Momentum all qualify. The collection has two Covert finishes, so the odds of landing the rifle are one in two.

Beyond that, the skin itself can serve as a trade-up input. The Covert rank of the Danger Zone Collection leads on to the Navaja Knife, Stiletto Knife, Talon Knife and Ursus Knife.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AWP | Neo-Noir

The AWP | Neo-Noir 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 side of the receiver is taken by the face, and a sticker there gets lost. There is room on the back of the stock and along the barrel, though the ground there is dark metal. The neon palette fights most colors: black, white and equally acid stickers sit comfortably beside the purple and teal.

Who this wear suits

Field-Tested on the AWP | Neo-Noir is worth buying in these cases:

• you want a bright AWP for CS2 to play with, not a display piece;


• a quarter on top for Factory New seems unnecessary;


• you have time to go through listings and pick a float closer to 0.15.

In CS2 the portrait on the receiver is visible at any wear inside the grade. The difference between the two ends of the band shows only on the barrel: at the top of the band the teal line is already ragged.