Roster Changes After Call of Duty XP

In Call of Duty eSports, contracts, trades, and signing work similar to professional sports,, but different at the same time. Instead of a trade deadline and restrictions in place, teams and players can do anything after a tournament. So this creates what we call “Roster Mania,” where in the weeks after big tournaments, many roster changes are made, and some in the past couple years have proved to be game changing. Here, we are going to highlight some of the roster changes made after Call of Duty XP.

Splyce, who placed an incredible 2nd place at CODXP, made a surprising, but helpful roster change. They dropped Joee and Rated, who are two great onjective players who can clean up the slack, to pick up Joshh, who has been pretty dominant in the AR department lately, and Jurd, who has been hands down the best EU player over the past couple years. This could help them further elevate themselves as being one of the only European teams ever that can compete just as well as the American teams. An announcement on their fourth is soon to come.

Epsilon released a statement after the tournament saying that their players could go as they please. After a poor placinng at CODXP, that might have been a good choice.

Renegades, a team that barely qualified for CODXP, dropped KiLLa and picked up Ivy in an attempt to make it into the pro league for Infinite Warfare.

These are just some of the roster changes that are likely yet to come as the Infinite Warfare season starts. Stay tuned for more information and any COD eSports news.

Team EnVyUs Wins Call of Duty XP

Call of Duty XP was held last weekend, September 1-4, and the action that came from it i
didn't disappoint. The top 32 teams from around the globe competed for the largest prize pool ever awarded in Call of Duty. So let's get into the tournament...

Pool Play started on Thursday, September 1. Teams from each of their respective pools would play three games to decide the bracket play, playing each team in their group once. Many upset teams ended up winning their groups, like FAB Games winning over Rise Nation, compLexity winning over OpTic Gaming, and Splyce winning over Luminosity. Many teams that were favored in the tournament would be disappointed with their pool play finishes going into bracket play.

Bracket Play began late Friday night with EnVyUs playing OpTic Gaming, winning that aeries 3-1. That sent fan favorite OpTic into the losers bracket. Saturday was filled with tournament changing upsets, with Splyce defeating Rise Nation and FaZe, and FAB defeating Cloud9 and Luminosity. OpTic would fall in the losers bracket to Cloud9 finishing 7th place. EnVy, however, would cruise through, losing no matched through Saturday.

Championship Sunday was upon us. The Winners Bracket Final consisted of two of the three most doninant teams in Black Ops 3, EnVy and Rise Nation. Rise would fall to EnVy in a dominating 3-0 performance. Then in the Losers Bracket Final were two European teams that had made it further in a tournament than any EU team in history, Splyce and FAB Games. The series was a bit closer with Splyce defeating FAB Games 3-1. Now we get into the Grand Final, Team EnVyUs vs. Splyce. This would be a best of 5 series like all others, but if Splyce wins the series, they have to play another series and win to be crowned champions, while EnVy would only have to win one of the two. Game 1 was close, with EnVy edging out Splyce in the hardpoint, 250-196. Game 2 though, gave Splyce hope. They dominated EnVy 6-2 in the search and destroy forcing at least a Game 4. But EnVy would finish their run off by winning the next two games and the tournament, taking home $800,000.

Congratulations to Team EnVyUs on winning CODXP 2016 and becoming immortalized as Call of Duty champions. I will be covering any roster changes, any Infinite Warfare eSports news, and the upcoming UMG Orlando tournament in the next blog.