USP-S | Cortex (Field-Tested)

On a pistol built around pink accents, Field-Tested (FT) is the working middle: the USP-S | Cortex holds the band from 0.15 to 0.38 here. The rank is Classified, and the pistol falls out of the Clutch Case. The Clutch Collection was released on February 14, 2018.

What the USP-S | Cortex looks like in Field-Tested

The base is silver and black, and a pink pattern of interlaced lines runs over it, close to a diagram of brain folds. There is not much pink, and it gathers on the slide and the grip while silver metallic holds the rest. The suppressor is nearly plain, and that is the part which gives a copy's condition away first.

Field-Tested rubs the edge of the slide and the front of the suppressor, where the pink lines come up to the rim. The silver base turns matte at the same time and loses some of its shine. Toward the upper end of the stretch the thin lines of the pattern start to break, which shows more clearly on the grip than on the slide.

What to check before buying

Worth checking on a copy:

• the float, because the thin lines break well before the base itself rubs through;


• the state of the suppressor, which catches corners more often than any other part;


• a name tag and stickers that come along with the listing.

One and the same drawing sits on every copy, and no rare version of it exists.

On the USP-S | Cortex this grade is stretched from 0.15 to 0.38, and that is visible on inspection.

What the USP-S | Cortex costs in Field-Tested

The starting price for this grade is held by the listing block over the text. The other grades stand against it like this:

• Factory New asks roughly seven times as much;


• Minimal Wear roughly four fifths more;


• Well-Worn is cheaper by about a sixth;


• Battle-Scarred by about a fifth.

The bottom three grades cost almost the same, so going down to Battle-Scarred costs the seller next to nothing and leaves the buyer with the rougher copy. The sevenfold gap to Factory New rests on those thin lines: in the clean grade they run unbroken end to end, and the pistol looks like a different skin.

Getting the USP-S | Cortex

The pistol comes out of the Clutch Case and belongs to that case's collection.

A trade-up contract also produces it. Ten skins of a lower rank from this collection go in. Glock-18 | Moonrise, MAG-7 | SWAG-7, Negev | Lionfish, Nova | Wild Six and UMP-45 | Arctic Wolf are the usual choices. The set holds three Classified skins, so the chance of landing on the pistol is one in three. The inputs decide the wear of the result.

Above that the Classified rank is traded up into Covert, which here means M4A4 | Neo-Noir and MP7 | Bloodsport. For a buyer it means Classified skins of the Clutch Collection keep going into contracts instead of settling in inventories.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the USP-S | Cortex

The USP-S | Cortex 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.

Silver with pink is a light ground, and dark stickers read best on it. Pink ones merge into the pattern and white ones get lost on the metallic. Free room is short: a craft in CS2 gets the slide and a small piece of the grip, as the suppressor is rarely covered. That is why one sticker suits this pistol more often than a set of four.

Who this wear suits

Field-Tested on the USP-S | Cortex is the right call if:

• an inexpensive Classified USP-S is wanted for the counter-terrorist side in CS2;


• paying seven times over for the clean grade serves no purpose;


• the pink accent itself matters more than a perfect line of the pattern.

The thin lines on the grip are the first thing to go. Anyone who needs the pattern whole should take listings under 0.20.