M4A4 | Howl (Field-Tested)

Field-Tested (FT) is the cheapest way into the M4A4 | Howl and into the Contraband rank, which no other item in CS2 holds. Float runs from 0.15 to 0.38. No case drops the M4A4 | Howl, and no collection is listed behind it.

What the M4A4 | Howl looks like in Field-Tested

Paint covers everything but the muzzle and the front sight. A dark gray that passes for black runs under torn red bands crowding toward the handguard and the stock. Red fills the barrel shroud, pistol grip, magazine bottom and stock edges, while the carrying handle and sights stay dark gray.

An orange-yellow wolf's head with a red mane sits on the side of the receiver and reads in full: eyes, snarl, mane. No lettering or numbers appear, so two colors and that head carry the finish.

Field-Tested strips red from the raised parts: handguard ribs, butt plate, magazine corners, the lip of the carrying handle. The wolf keeps its flat panel and stays whole, so even a worn copy is recognized at a glance. Scuffing grows plainly from 0.15 to 0.38.

Where the M4A4 | Howl came from

The finish shipped on May 1, 2014, and six weeks later a DMCA notice arrived over it. The claim covered the rifle and the Howling Dawn sticker alike. Valve took the case apart in a note of its own and called it serious: the image had not been created by the people who submitted it.

The outcome was a new drawing, a recall of the earlier work and the Contraband rank, with the caveat that such items would never be issued again. Valve drew the wolf in use today, and the finish is number 309 in the catalog.

What to check before buying

Before paying for an M4A4 | Howl, read these:

• the float inside 0.15 to 0.38, whose upper end clears red off the handguard ribs;


• the kind of listing: the counter version and the plain one are sold apart;


• Stickers and an applied name, if the last owner left any.

One drawing on every copy leaves no pattern to hunt.

What the M4A4 | Howl costs in Field-Tested

Factory New asks about half again as much, Minimal Wear about a sixth more. Well-Worn sits level with this wear, under three percent between them. Below that the scale runs out at 0.40, so Well-Worn holds only the tail from 0.38 and Battle-Scarred never existed.

Rank offers no comparison, since the game has one Contraband item. Among M4A4s in this wear nothing costs more than the Howl. M4A4 | Poseidon trails by nearly four times, M4A4 | Daybreak by more than ten.

Getting the M4A4 | Howl

A finished listing is the only way; no new copies enter the game. Valve rebuilt the 2014 case without this finish, and the item has no collection, so a contract is out of reach.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the M4A4 | Howl

The M4A4 | Howl has a StatTrak version. No Souvenir packages were ever made for this finish, because packages only ever covered tournament map collections. A souvenir copy can still be built by hand. The Souvenir-O-Matic puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on a normal skin from the inventory. That is why the odd souvenir copy turns up where no package was ever made.

A sticker gets the magazine and the middle of the stock; bands and the wolf take the rest. Cool and white logos show on the dark base, red ones dissolve into the pattern. On the lightened edges part of a sticker goes with the paint, and nothing comes off clean.

Who this wear suits

Buying the M4A4 | Howl in Field-Tested is sound in these cases:

• the item and its rank are the goal, not untouched edges;


• the one-and-a-half-times gap to Factory New matters;


• the rifle is for CS2 matches, where scuffing cannot be made out.

Inside the band the preview decides: at 0.15 the body is close to Minimal Wear, at 0.38 red has left the edges entirely.