THIS LEAGUE - In Major V, We Saw The Craziest Comeback In Competitive Call of Duty History
CDL Major V Recap
There was chaos and upsets going on all weekend in this tournament. As I mentioned in the video above, this was the final Major of the season and in three weeks we'll have the grand daddy of them all - CoD Champs. Major V was the first Major with fans back in the arena, and it couldn't have been more electric.
Format - all matchups mentioned aside from the Grand Finals are a best of 5 series cycling through 3 game modes: Control, Hardpoint and Search and Destroy.
Aside from Røkkr coming back from 4-0 to reverse sweep Ultra and win the Championship, the biggest upset happened on Saturday when Atlanta FaZe (FaZe Up) lost to Seattle Surge. For some background, in the previous Major IV, FaZe looked UNSTOPPABLE and they were able to win back-to-back Majors. Although this weekend's major was different because fans were present in the arena, but both tournaments were played on LAN (I'll link a blog at the end of this blog explaining what LAN is and why it's so important).
So after Major IV, FaZe had a target on their head as the team to beat. In the most shocking turn of events, Seattle Surge took down the behemoth and had them finish in 7th/8th.
This is the best way I can summarize an upset of this magnitude:
your high school team just beat the 96 bulls
— hank (@Hank_Ike) July 31, 2021
Another reason why this is so wild, only 8 teams qualify for CoD Champs due to performance during the regular season and Major events. Seattle does not qualify for CoD Champs given their current points, so FaZe was beaten by a team that won't even be competing in 3 weeks.
It's unfortunate for Surge that they aren't able to make Champs because they are a SNEAKY talented team. This team features a bunch of veterans that thrive when tournaments are held on LAN as opposed to Online (again, see blow at the end for the key differences).Think of Surge the same way we think of Oral Roberts or Loyola University Chicago when the NCAA tournament rolls around. They might not be the best team on paper, but they are dangerous when you matchup against them.
After taking down FaZe, Surge had their eyes on OpTic.
In a wild series that went all the way to Game 5, OpTic was able to persevere and advance to Championship Sunday.
Only 4 teams advance to Championship Sunday, and this Sunday featured OpTic, Dallas Empire, Toronto Ultra and then Minnesota Røkkr.
To start, we had OpTic vs Dallas Empire and OpTic came out HOT
Empire was able to win a Search and Destroy map against OpTic, but in the end, Empire couldn't keep up with OpTic in respawn game modes (Hardpoint and Control).
Top 3
Now we advance to Top 3 and Toronto Ultra faces off against OpTic in an electric series.
Dashy (on OpTic) played some of the best Call of Duty I've seen in a while and it even got me a little appearance on the broadcast.
To counter Dashy, Insight, a rookie on Toronto Ultra, played OUT OF HIS MIND and Ultra was ultimately able to beat OpTic.
Grand Finals
Toronto Ultra vs Minnesota Røkkr - many people didn't expect Røkkr to advance to the finals especially in the winner's bracket. But they played extremely well and showed up to Major V.
This is the biggest problem with the format of these Majors - Toronto Ultra is scorching hot and fully warmed up coming into their match against Minnesota. Minnesota, who got the benefit of having "a bye" for Sunday until the Grand Finals, can only warmup against their coaches. It isn't the same energy. It's not like traditional sports where the less games you play, the more rested your players are. It's quite the opposite in gaming and we saw this come to fruition when Ultra were dominating Minnesota and took a commanding 4-0 lead (Finals are best of 9).
Minnesota is led by Veteran Attach, who knew they just had to take it one map at a time. So, that's exactly what they did and slowly started peeling away at the Ultra lead.
4-1, 4-2, 4-3 and all the sudden Minnesota wins a Hardpoint to tie the series at 4-4!!! Are you kidding me!? This comeback would be crazier than when the Pats beat the Falcons in the Super Bowl after being down 28-3.
It all came down to a Search and Destroy map on an infamous Call of Duty map known as "Raid" (this map was also in Black Ops 2, an extremely popular Call of Duty of the past).
If you can, listen to that clip above with sound. CHILLS. CoD LAN with fans >>>>
Røkkr won the Search and Destroy map, completing their improbable 5 map reverse sweep to secure the Major V Championship. The clip below is a bar that held a watch party for Minnesota.
Unreal energy. What a moment for Minnesota.
Wanna know what makes it even sweeter? The entire time, the social media team for Ultra was trolling Minnesota claiming the Grand Final maps were "easy breezy," oh this map "we end it here," "We kinda had to give them at least one" to make it interesting.
KARMAAAAA - this is Jake the Jinx to the max.
Attach gives his thoughts after completing the greatest comeback in Competitive Call of Duty History.
What a build up for Champs, you couldn't script this any better. The teams have (3) weeks to prepare until Champs (Aug 18th- 22nd) and it's going to be absolutely electric.
Who's taking it home in CoD Champs? You know who I'm pulling for…
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