Another weekend, another Call of Duty tournament, and another OpTic Gaming victory.
It’s becoming routine for Advanced Warfare’s best team to come out on top.
OpTic Gaming scored their third straight tournament win in three straight weekends in three different countries, a world tour through France, Britain, and finally California. It’s OpTic’s sixth win in seven tournaments, and sixth win of eight major events in Advanced Warfare, their only real slip happening at the massive Call of Duty Championship in March.
UMG California showed that OpTic Gaming won’t miss a beat with their new lineup. This was the first tournament Damon “Karma” Barlow played with his new team after Ian “Enable” Wyatt filled in for two events, and OpTic still managed to take the crown.
It wasn’t easy, though. Just like at Gfinity Spring Masters last week, OpTic had some competition. This time it wasn’t Prophecy, who took OpTic to a close five-game series at Gfinity, but FaZe, a team featuring the player they used to win two tournaments: Enable.
The new FaZe team featuring Enable, Austin “SlasheR” Liddicoat, Thomas “ZooMaa” Paparatto, and Cuyler “Huke” Garland threw a wrench in OpTic’s dominance when they beat them in a 3-2 series in the grand final, forcing the winner’s bracket champions to play a second best-of-five set. OpTic recovered by sweeping FaZe in round two, but it showed that perhaps their dominance may soon have an end.
Overall, UMG California showed that there’s plenty of rising talent in Call of Duty. While OpTic and FaZe feature relative all-star lineups, third place finishers Enigma 6 truly are enigmas of the professional scene, a squad of four players with zero experience at live Call of Duty events. While they’ve performed during the weekly 2k and 5k online tournaments, many felt they couldn’t maintain those results at live events. But they managed to beat pro teams Team Envy, OpTic Nation, and Elevate before taking a map off OpTic Gaming in the upper bracket finals, ending with an epic capture the flag bout.
(Sorry, this embed was not found.)
OpTic’s Ian “Crimsix” Porter dropped a ridiculous 50-bomb in CTF, helping lead his team to another championship and his 20th tournament win, moving him ahead of his former teammate Patrick “ACHES” Price on the all-time list. Porter is now the most accomplished player in Call of Duty history, at least in terms of volume of victories, and that’s no surprise considering his immense skill.
Crimsix has won 2/3rds of all cod tournaments he has played in. Congrats to 20!
— CoD Competitive (@rcodcompetitive) May 18, 2015
The win should quell any doubts that OpTic will continue their dominance with Karma in the lineup, though his first event with the team likely wasn’t as solid as he had hoped. Karma posted a 0.86 KD for the event, well below Porter’s 1.13, the next worst on the team. Still, the only number that really matters is where you place, and it looks like OpTic Gaming won’t be giving up their crown just yet.
