Call of Duty Stage 2 Recap: What a weekend of Call of Duty we got to witness. There were some major upsets as well as a few crazy loser bracket runs. We were also able to see a new champion be crowned. Let’s take a look at some of the surprising outcomes from the weekend and discuss what the league will look like going forward.
Early Eliminations
On the first day of action, we saw Florida Mutineers taking on Los Angeles Guerrillas followed by Los Angeles Thieves taking on Paris Legion. The Mutineers and the Thieves were able to quickly close out both of these series with 3-0 map counts. That meant the major weekend lasted roughly 45 minutes for both the Guerrillas and the Legion.
We saw another early elimination from a winner’s bracket team for the first time. The New York Subliners, who had worked themselves into a spot where they were considered a top team, started with a tough matchup against the Dallas Empire. They were unable to win a map, losing by a score of 0-3, and were sent to the loser’s bracket.
Once they got to the loser’s bracket they ran into the Los Angeles Thieves, who were coming off back to back match victories. The Thieves were able to stun the Subliners and take the match victory by a score of 3-0. That meant the Subliners, who finished in the top 6 of Stage 2 after their matches, were eliminated with a record of 0-2.
Chicago Optic also made a quick exit with a record of 1-2. In their first match, they played Toronto Ultra and just could not seem to close out maps when they needed to, losing 1-3 map count.
Optic was able to win their first losers bracket match against Seattle Surge by a score of 3-1. They then had to take on the Minnesota Rokkr to get into the top four. The Rokkr were able to play spoiler to those hopes and were able to close out a game five to win the series 3-2, eliminating Optic from the Major.
New Champion
In Stage 1 we saw Atlanta Faze basically walk through the competition. They never really seemed to be threatened by anyone, and the way things started in the Stage 2 major, it looked to be going the same way.
Faze was able to win their first three matches relatively easily by scores of 3-1 in all three. They put themselves into the major championship without losing more than a single map in a match. That was until they met the Toronto Ultra on Sunday night.
Toronto Ultra, who barely made the winner’s bracket after matches, was able to shock lots of people on the major weekend. They were able to win their first match against Optic but then were quickly sent to losers after their match with Atlanta Faze. We then got to witness a team get all the momentum with a great losers bracket run.
Toronto was able to win three elimination brackets by a combined map count of 9-2. They beat the Los Angeles Thieves 3-0, then took on Minnesota Rokkr, who they beat 3-1, and then had the Dallas Empire, who they were also able to beat 3-1. Those three elimination wins put them back into the major champions against Faze.
In the major championship, the series is no longer a best of five, but switches to a best of nine. Faze was able to take the initial hardpoint map, but Ultra came back strong and won both the search and destroy map and the control map. Faze then went back into the driver seat when they won the next hardpoint and closed out a round 11 search and destroy.
At this point, the series was sitting at 3-2 in favor of Atlanta Faze. That is when Toronto flipped the script and put Faze away. They were able to win the control map by a score of 3-0 and then dismantled Faze in search and destroy by a round count of 6-0.
Heading into the last hardpoint, which Faze had dominated both previous maps, Toronto played aggressively and were able to come away with the victory 250-156.
The hardpoint map win for the Ultra allowed them to become the Stage two major champions and took home the grand prize of 200,000 dollars. They were also awarded 75 CDL points to go towards the final standing before the Call of Duty world tournament at the end of the year.
Going Forward
After a tough weekend for quite a few teams, there was instantly chatter about teams needing to make roster moves. Temp, formerly with 100 Thieves, was benched/dropped at the beginning of stage 2 and then was picked up by Paris Legion for stage 3. Slacked, a veteran player for the Florida Mutineers, was dropped after a mediocre performance as well.
While these are just two of the more notable moves, there is plenty of chatter of bigger things to come. A veteran and largely followed Clayster took to social media after the Subliners went 0-2 to discuss his own personal mental state.
The players have played the whole league online so far this season, and it seems the isolation may be weighing on some of the players.
With that being said, the official twitter account for the Call of Duty League (@codleague) released a tweet saying that they are in the works for bringing back in person events in the near future. I can only see this as a great thing from both player and viewer perspective and am looking forward to seeing this come to light.
Check back on Thursday this week as we discuss what Stage 3 will look like and break down the first week of matches.
