If you’re a professional Call of Duty team, the open bracket is a fate to be avoided at all costs.
Even for good teams, kicking off a tournament with an extended run of best-of-threes carries risk, with very little room for error. With a strong placement at the first event key for a team’s entire season, the last thing pro teams want is to have to run the open bracket gauntlet before even reaching the championship stages of the tournament.
For some high-profile teams and players, however, it seems the open bracket awaits at CWL Dallas. The teams that start in pool play for the first major event of the season will be determined by Pro Points, and with only one 2000 Series tournament remaining per region before the cut-off, we’re already seeing which teams are likely to miss out.
The following five teams are all squads with a majority of players who competed in last year’s Global Pro League, and spent most if not all of the season comfortably within the top sixteen. If all of these teams do indeed end up playing through the open bracket, then already at least one will be assured of missing out on pool play – even without accounting for potential upsets from other teams.
FaZe Clan
(ZooMaa, Attach, Priest, Replays)
The new FaZe squad haven’t had a great start to the season. Having had something of a misfire in the first 2K of the season, going out in the top-32, FaZe found themselves in the path of eventual top-four finishers EnVyUs for the second 2K of the season, resulting in yet another top-32 finish.
The result is that FaZe are thousands of points off the pace when it comes to qualifying for pool play. While it may not quite be mathematically impossible for them to catch up with a win in the final 2K, the reality is that in all likelihood they’re headed to the open bracket.
The new FaZe squad is a team that has, for the most part, plenty of experience together, and so between a mixture of co-ordination and raw talent they shouldn’t be too troubled by most of the open bracket matches. The danger for FaZe, however, will be the final qualifying games for pool play – depending on who they face, FaZe may need to find a level they’ve thus far failed to demonstrate in meaningful competition.
–
Echo Fox
(Faccento, Gunless, Saints, Assault)
Echo Fox suffered the same fate as FaZe Clan in the first two 2000 Series tournaments, placing in the top-32 of both. Being a few hundred points below even FaZe, Echo Fox too have no realistic chance of breaking into the top-10 to reach pool play in time for CWL Dallas based on their form.
Unusually, Echo Fox are an entirely new team – where most teams are built around an existing core, or reuniting players who competed together previously, the new Echo Fox squad is brand new. As a result, they’re building from the ground up, figuring out how each other play while simultaneously learning the new game.
As such, it’s perhaps not entirely shocking that they’re not as quick off the mark as some more established teams, but it does mean that they’ll be in a tougher position come CWL Dallas. No matter what, by then they’ll have to have figured it out – failure in Dallas could end this team before they even really got going.
–
Renegades
(Shane, Reedy, SunnyB, Watson)
In Europe, too, there are some big names in serious danger of playing from the open bracket for CWL Dallas. Though Renegades have never found much success in Call of Duty, this season they’ve picked up a British roster with plenty of pedigree.
Reedy, Watson, and SunnyB might not have dominated Infinite Warfare, but they did play in teams that featured in both stages of the Global Pro League, and all routinely featured at the highest level of competition. Shane, meanwhile, has been absent from the elite in recent years, but in the previous boots-on-the-ground era was frequently found in Europe’s greatest teams.
Unfortunately, the new Renegades squad will in all likelihood be starting the WWII season on the back foot. Having finished in the top-32 of the first EU 2000 Series tournament, Renegades improved in the second, but only to top-16. With only five pool play spots on offer for Europe, it leaves the team at a sizeable deficit. Short of a massive result in the final 2K, it seems Renegades are headed to the open bracket for the first event of the season.
–
eUnited
(Clayster, SiLLY, Prestinni, Arcitys)
Unlike the other teams on this list, eUnited haven’t had any stand-out poor performances. They placed top-sixteen in the first 2K Series tournament and picked up the same placement in the second, losing to Luminosity.
Unfortunately for eUnited, with only 10 spots available for North American teams in pool play, averaging in the top-sixteen might not be enough to make the cut.
The team currently sit in thirteenth place in the North American standings. In terms of Pro Points, they’re less than 300 points away, but if all teams continue to grind out their GameBattles matches – which, it has to be assumed, they will if they’re anywhere near the cut-off point – that still means eUnited have to out-place three of the teams that are currently ahead of them in the final 2K before the cut-off.
A pool play spot is well within eUnited’s grasp, but without a strong performance in the final 2000 Series tournament, their fate may well depend on the results of the other teams on the bubble.
_
Millenium
(Gunshy, MarkyB, Peatie, Urban)
Millenium’s woes from the end of Infinite Warfare have so far continued into WWII. After a blistering start to the Infinite Warfare season, the team fell out of the Global Pro League and have largely been unable to break back into the elite.
Roster changes for the new season have put together a squad on paper that should be keeping up with Europe’s best, but so far the team have been unable to keep pace in the Pro Points race, like Renegades placing top-32 in the first EU 2K and top-16 in the second.
With Gunshy on the squad after a two-year hiatus from competition, Millenium arguably have some excuse for a slower start, but like every other team on this list it will only hold up for so long. In all likelihood relegated to the open bracket for CWL Dallas, Millenium will need to show up in a big way if they’re to catch up for the first stage of this year’s GPL.
Source:
https://www.dexerto.com/news/five-high-profile-teams-miss-cwl-dallas-pool-play/39344