Toxic Call Of Duty Is Back - Here's How The Major IV CDL Tournament Shaped Up

This tweet went down yesterday after Dallas Empire beat Chicago OpTic in yesterday's competition. I've outlined this drama in a few blogs before, but if you missed it, I'll give you a quick recap:

Formal and Crimsix used to be teammates in Infinite Warfare. Crimsix claims that during this time, Crim, Formal and Scump had an agreement that if any of them won MVP during this season, they would split the bonus three ways between them. Formal ended up winning MVP and according to Crimsix, he never split the bonus with his boys. I'm not sure if this agreement ever went down, but Crim claims it to be true.

Major IV Recap

FaZe is dominant, they're the best team in the league by far. There's no way to sugar coat it or beat around the bush. Yesterday, Empire gave them a run for their money and almost stole the show, but FaZe came out on top.

The way CDL (Call of Duty League) tournaments work is a Best of 5 series (Finals is Best of 9) that cycle thru 3 game modes: Search and Destroy, Hardpoint (King of the Hill), and Control (mix of the 2).

After beating OpTic to get to the semi-finals, Empire found themselves down 2-0 against Toronto Ultra. Outta nowhere Empire completely turned game around and reverse swept Ultra to punch their tickets into the Grand Finals.

This is where things get interesting - Empire has already played 2 series, won both and are red hot going into the Finals. FaZe performed so well throughout the tournament that they only had to play in the Finals on Sunday.This is a huge debate within the competitive CoD community - Who has the upper hand in this series? FaZe is well-rested, but in gaming you perform better the longer you play (to an extent). It's not like traditional sports where players get fatigued the longer they play. There's no load management in gaming and these players are used to gaming for hours and hours on end.So when FaZe performs so well they have no preliminary matchups on Sunday before the Finals, you can make the argument that they'll come into the competition cold when facing a red-hot Dallas Empire. Empire had to make a scrappy run through the loser's bracket to get to the finals. FaZe didn't drop a single series, but now they are all on the same playing field with a Best of 9 series. Because all CoD tournaments are double elimination, in previous Call of Duty titles, the Winner's bracket finalist would have the advantage of being able to drop a full series and still win the tournament. Think about it this way, if the entire tournament is double elim and one team never loses a series, shouldn't they have some sort of advantage going into the finals? In Competitive Cold War, the loser's bracket finalist gets the benefit of having the playing field be even when finals begin. It's just one Best of 9 Series, not 3 separate series with the winners coming in at a 1-0 advantage.

Empire, led by Thicc6, took advantage of this and ALMOST pulled off the upset, initially going up 4-3 in the series. They were one map away from bringing home the championship, until FaZe found their rhythm in Hardpoint and forced a Map 9 to occur. 

Map 9 took place with Search and Destroy on Black Ops 2 classic map "Raid." The tournament prize pool was $500,000 with first place taking home $200,000, while second place takes home $120,000. This Map 9 is an $80,000 round of Search and Destroy. Wild to think.

FaZe ended up winning the Map 6-4 and bringing home the Major IV Trophy. Cellium took home the MVP award and FaZe's dominance continues in the CDL.

Overall, the tournament was absolutely electric and it proves again that LAN esports are significantly better than online tournaments.