Too Early Power Rankings: Minnesota Røkkr and Seattle Surge Are Both Top 4 Teams In The Professional Call Of Duty League
Yesterday, we saw an absolute slugfest between Minnesota Røkkr and Seattle Surge that went the full distance - Map 5, Round 11 of Search and Destroy. Due to an insane clutch play by Seattle Surge's Veteran Accuracy, Surge took home the victory and bragging rights over Røkkr.
As you see above, Accuracy (Surge) was left alone on a 1v2 against Priestahh and MajorManiak (Røkkr). Priestagg and MajorManiak made the fatal error of splitting during the1v2 and exposing themselves unnecessarily. In this type of scenario, the2 players should always stick together so they're able to trade each other out. This is a very common phrase you'll hear when watching professional Call of Duty - if your teammate dies, you should have an angle on where he got shot in order to trade him out and get the kill. Think of it like Chess, you always want your pieces protected. An unprotected piece is an easy capture for the enemy. You always want to make sure you're protected to get the most value from your life.
Accuracy has been known as the ice man and right here, he shows you why. Regardless of Røkkr's split, he still made all the right plays to secure the round, and ultimately the series, for his team.
This single round was so important because Call of Duty series are played as Best of 5s. This specific round came on Map 5 (aka the series was tied 2-2) and Search and Destroy is played as Best of 11 (or first to 6 rounds won). So Accuracy's clutch happened on when the score was tied 5-5 on Search and Destroy, with the series being tied at 2-2. Final round, winner take all and it went in favor of Accuracy and Seattle Surge.
In the grand scheme of the CDL, this individual series wasn't make or break. However, it was an extremely important series for each individual team to see how they match up against some of best competition in the CDL.
This series happened during a Major qualifier. The CDL (Call of Duty League) has 5 Majors + 1 Champs Event. Prior to each major, CDL teams play each other on the weekend to earn their seeding for each Major. Think about Majors like the Saturday or Sunday for PGA tours, with the weekend matchups being Thursday + Friday. It's not exactly 1-1, but this should help paint the picture. The better your qualifier matches, the better your seeding will be for the Major.
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As it currently stands, Seattle Surge and Minnesota Røkkr have appeared to be two of the best teams within the CDL. I would rank them both in the Top 4 of the league. So that's why I say in the grand scheme of things, this matchup doesn't have extreme significance - BUT, both teams wanted to mark their territory and assert their dominance by winning the series.
I'll be dropping my full CDL power rankings after this weekend's matches.
We got more games lined up for today as follows (my picks to win in parenthesis):
3pm - Minnesota Røkkr vs London Royal Ravens (Røkkr)
4:30pm - Paris Legion vs OpTic Texas (OpTic - plz CoD Gods)
6pm - Atlanta FaZe vs Boston Breach (Breach - major upset alert)
7:30pm - Los Angeles Thieves vs Florida Mutineers (Thieves)
Lastly, these series are played online which is significantly different from LAN events. Online ping plays a major factor in these games, so it's not a true test to know which teams are truly better than the others. As of now (and hopefully this remains), all Majors will be played on LAN (aka one local network). This is extremely important because it enables every single player to have the same game connectivity. With these online matchups, certain teams can have big advantages if their ping (or latency when connecting to the game is better). I know that's a lot to digest, but if you want to read more about the significance of LAN - checkout my blog below (more pageviews = feeding my family. Thank you for clicking)