OpTic Texas Wins First CDL Major

The first bigger tournament of the Call of Duty League, Major 1, has just been concluded, and OpTic Texas has been crowned the winner of the event. It was quite an exciting event, Esports Arena Arlington was a fantastic host, and we cannot wait for what CDL has in store for us in the future. However, before we get to see some more Call of Duty action that is to come, let us discuss OpTic’s road to success.

Image Credits | OpTic Texas

A bumpy beginning

Considering that they won the event, one would expect that OpTic dominated the whole thing from start to finish. But that is actually far from it. In fact, they lost their first two matches in the online qualifier for the Major 1 tournament. With this rocky start, no one really thought of them as worthy contenders, but then they redeemed themselves with three consecutive wins, proving everyone who doubted them wrong.

Starting the event strong!

The first match of the event that OpTic played was against Seattle Surge in the Winners Bracket, and they dominated the match with a strong 3 – 0 victory. Afterward, they faced the favorites and winners of the previous CDL, Atlanta FaZe. While the match started with the score 2 – 0 in the favor of Atlanta FaZe, OpTic Texas managed to pull off an impressive reverse sweep, giving some of the best Call of Duty gameplay to everyone who was watching the event.

Upon defeating the favorites of the event, OpTic found themselves against London Royal Ravens. While Royal Ravens were not the favorites of the event, it was quite an interesting match for the spectators, as everyone knew they had bested OpTic recently. This was the moment, the comeback story that OpTic needed to prove they turned their gameplan from the qualifiers around and that they are set to win.

Things did not start well for OpTic, as they suffered a hard defeat, and Royal Ravens took the 1 – lead. However, the defeat did not seem to bring OpTic down at all, as they dominated Royal Ravens on the following three maps, winning the match 3 -1, and with that securing their spot in the Major 1 Grand Final.

The big rematch!

While OpTic did win against FaZe during their journey to the Major 1 Grand Finals, they would face them once again, as FaZe climbed their way to the final match of the tournament through the loser bracket. The last match was a best-of-nine, and OpTic won the first map on Gavutu Hardpoint with a score of 250 to 130.

However, FaZe did not back down, as they quickly won the second map on the Desert Siege Search & Destroy. The third map was quite interesting, as OpTic displayed some incredible defensive play, but eventually, the final round of the map had to be replayed because Arcity had some PC issues. Even after having to replay the final round of the map, OpTic came out victorious.

Tuscan proved to be the bumpiest ride of the rematch, where OpTic started things off by increasing their lead to a total of 3 -1 so far before Faze struck back and bounced back to the total score of 3 – 2. The next map was Berlin Search & Destroy, which seemed to be in favor of FaZe, as their two wins so far have both been on Search & Destroy.

To everyone’s surprise, Optic was not scared of the two defeats they suffered in this mode against FaZe, and they managed to win the whole series with the final score being 5 -2. The whole series was full of crazy clutch moments, and words just cannot describe how great these Major 1 Grand Finals were, and we suggest you watch them all!

The MVP of the event

Because there were so many epic moments in the last match of the event, it was quite hard to predict who would be the CDL MVP. In the end, Brandon “Dashy” Otell from team OpTic was the one who received the title. Over the course of the event, his K/D was 1.31, with the highest being in Search & Destroy, where it was 1.53. He really delivered when his team needed him, and he well deserved that MVP title.

Where next?

With Major 1 concluded and OpTic Texas being the winners, they are certainly the team to keep an eye on for Major 2. Even if they had a clunky start, they redeemed themselves in the eyes of their fans as best as possible. Major 2 will take place in Minnesota, and the event will begin on March 31st.