Call Of Duty League Stage1/Week 1/Day 2 takeaways — A day of map fives

Another day in the opening week of the Call Of Duty League, and boy was it competitive. Well, mostly. As my friend Sean Collins from the Dallas Morning News tweeted out, “Three game fives already today. Wins are going to be so hard to come by in the CDL this season. There are no free matches anymore.” He is completely correct, nothing is given in this league, so let’s take a look at these pound for pound matches and talk about how they turned out.

Three game fives already today. Wins are going to be so hard to come by in the CDL this season. There are no free matches anymore.

— Sean Collins (@seanzcollins) February 6, 2022

Atlanta Faze vs Paris Legion

• Man, Faze look a bit lost on maps right now. I’m not sure if they’re not playing together or this game just doesn’t fit them like Black Ops Cold War did, but something is off. Paris is definitely not the pushover we thought they were, but Atlanta is last years champion, and by a large margin. They should look like this.
• That being said, they did pull off the win with a decisive 6-1 on Berlin that was never in doubt. There was one moment where it seemed like Temp may creep up on Arcitys and Cellium who were rotating through Fire, but Cellium spun on him, leaving us mouths agape.
• Whatever Faze does next week, one thing they need to figure out is why they’re so bad at Control. Paris easily bested them on it, and Faze’s prized SMG line in Simp and aBeZy posted putrid stat lines. Given we’re seeing other teams spawn trapping, I don’t get why they aren’t able to do the same. One things for sure, ban Gavutu immediately.

• For Paris Legion, you can’t really walk away with a negative besides the loss. You punched well above your weight, taking a vaunted Atlanta squad to a map five. The key for them is how they build off of this. This can’t be your ceiling, you’ve got to start turning these into wins.
• Did we wake up in Black Ops 3? John was all over the place, dictating rotations, winning key gunfights, and flanking the crap out of Atlanta. He may have only finished +7 kills and a 1.12 KD, but his play elevated this squad.
• Temp put in some ridiculous work as well, to the tune of +18 kills and a 1.28 KD. He may have the most upside of any on this Paris squad, so hopefully he can keep it rolling.

London Royal Ravens vs Optic Texas

• Yeesh London, you woke up and chose violence! After playing two really tough maps, with Optic only barely closing them out, the Royal Ravens stayed out of their own heads and kept up the pace, and it helped them go home with the W.
• In only his third CDL match, Gismo followed up a wonderful regular season debut with an insane +22, breaking the 100 kill mark. Gismo opened the match slowly, but in Control he went off for 31 kills and a 1.72 KD, spurring the comeback from his teammates.
• What’s surprising, Afro didn’t need to be the superstar for London to beat Optic. It helped that he regained after the first two maps, but if he can just be steady Nastie and Gismo can pick up the slack.

• If you’re Optic Texas, you can’t be happy in the slightest with how this one ended. You were up 2-0 and the one map you took off the Thieves in the Kickoff was a 3-1 Control. But thems ain’t the ropes, and Optic never seemed to regain composure after getting stomped on Tuscan.
• The good news, Scump looked in form after a rough start at the Kickoff Classic. He was constantly picking up multi-kills and nearly made it to 100 kills.
• The bad news though, Shotzzy and Illey will have to shake off a rocky start to the regular season. Combined they both only had two positive maps between them through ten performances. You can’t do that and clutch many matches.

Seattle Surge vs Toronto Ultra

• After being absolutely treated to an absolute banger in the last two, somehow we were given even more killer COD. At first it looked like Seattle was going to trash Toronto in response to their loss in the 3-1 Grand Finals loss, but Toronto started mounting a killer comeback. Of course, this one found itself in a round 11 Search and Destroy, and Accuracy delivered an icy defuse that will live in infamy.
• Freakin’ Sib man! I wish I’d trusted my gut with him in pick ’ems, because he has somehow surpassed Pred in most impressive Seattle rookie. Look at this stat line, 102 kills to 73 deaths, +29 kills, and a 1.40 KD. Sib must have took Simp’s magic with him when he left Atlanta, because that is the kind of season he’s starting with.
• As we mentioned earlier today, Mack was going to have to step up if they didn’t want things to be like they were last week. He certainly did, without any games where he was any more than -4 kills.

• As for Toronto, they’re still in the top three/four teams even with the loss. They didn’t get rattled down 2-0, and even though that Accuracy clutch is a heartbreaker they brought it all the way to the end.
• Even so, you can’t have everyone in the negative for kills and expect to out-will the other guys. Insight was the closest to positive with a .99, but when that’s the best you can do you’ll generally lose most of your maps.
• That Bocage Search and Destroy was honestly very surprising. I figured that Toronto’s speed would help them on this one, and they seemed to cruise to a victory over LAT on it in the Kickoff semi-finals, but Seattle was able to match their ferocity. Insight was left in 1v3 or 4s way too often, so they’re going to have to adjust their strategy on it.

New York Subliners vs Los Angeles Guerrillas

• What’s going on with New York? They’re really struggling right now, and if not for a insane throw by the Guerrillas they’d have lost 3-0. The Subliners make the smart plays, which is why they’re still in games even when being lambasted, but they need to pick it up in the slaying department.
• Speaking of that, New York kept winning Hardpoints even when being outslayed, but that didn’t help them today. They got outslayed by 58 kills by LAG, and you’ll lose every one of those.
• At least Hyrda showed up, but that didn’t make up for the rest of his team looking terrible. Clayster and Neptune were just awful with -54 between them. CrimSix wasn’t far behind with -16.

Hey @Subliners, you dropped something. https://t.co/5oGOMt7yCd pic.twitter.com/hctWnSdJQh

— LAG Asim (@GstaAsim) February 6, 2022

• Los Angeles Guerrillas finally decided not to be the punching bag, but they’re still struggling to play the maps right. The first two were good yes, but they should have never lost the Control, and they almost dropped the Tuscan Hardpoint despite dominating both. If they don’t get it figured out they’ll only beat the teams under them and never make it further than that.
• Asim must’ve taken this match personally, both from his lackluster play yesterday and playing his former team today. He went wild in both Tuscans, dragging his team across the finish line and dropping 59 non-traded kills.
• Gunless was yet again that steady anchor, going +19 and never dropping under positive for the match. He has tremendous skill, and even if his team isn’t more than successful than Seattle was last year he’s reminding us how good he is.

Stay tuned to Gaming Trend for our takeaways as this week’s matches takes place, and we’ll do our best to bring you content here and on our YouTube channel! You can follow the league both live and after hours on the official Call Of Duty League YouTube channel right here. If you want to jump into the game, check out CallOfDuty.com, and if you want to know more about it first, check out our review right here.

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