The new-look London Royal Ravens’ impressive start to the 2022 Call of Duty League season continued today with a 3-1 victory over the Seattle Surge.
London’s 4-1 record has them in a three-way tie right now with the Atlanta FaZe and Los Angeles Thieves for first place in the CDL standings with 40 CDL points. The Royal Ravens head into next month’s OpTic Texas Major, the CDL’s first major event of the season, with a ton of momentum.
London’s budding superstar Afro had another dominant performance today, this time posting a 1.22 K/D over the series’ four maps and dealing more than 9,000 worth of damage, according to Breaking Point. Every member of the Ravens went positive in this series, with Zer0, Nastie, and Gismo holding 1.15, 1.10, and 1.10 KDs for the match.
London have improved tenfold since they were swept by Seattle at the pre-season Kickoff Classic in January and are playing some of their best CoD at the right time. With their impressive run in the Major One qualifiers, they now find themselves as one of the top seeds ahead of the season’s first tournament. Afro credits their improvement to the team’s communications and decision-making.
“Our team has grown the most in our comms,” the second-year player said after London’s impressive outing. “We’ve been hearing all over the place our rotations have been absolutely dreadful so we’ve worked on that this week. Hopefully when we get to the Major, we’ll be somewhat complete.”
This loss caps a disappointing weekend for Seattle, a team who came into this weekend’s matches with an undefeated record but went 0-2 to finish their qualifier matches. With a 1-6 map count on the weekend, the Surge now head into next month’s major on a two-series losing streak.
Accuracy led Seattle in slaying with a 1.19 K/D over the series’ four maps, but it was a rough outing in the kills deparment for Seattle’s superstar rookies, Sib and Pred. They posted 0.75 and 0.76 K/Ds in the series. Up to this point in the season, the young duo has been extremely impressive. It’s unclear if this weekend is an outlier, but the Surge will need better production out of them if they want to get back to their winning ways from earlier this year.
Both teams will start in the winners bracket of next month’s Major, though the final placement for seeding is undecided. The OpTic Texas Major takes place in Arlington, Texas and will begin on March 3.
