Post written by Matt “Mr.X” Morello, Call of Duty Coach of compLexity Gaming.
As you may or may not have heard, the qualifiers for Call of Duty Championships are about to begin. As a team, we have been preparing for this event pretty much throughout all of last year – in game and mentally. When I decided to join the team after playing in last year’s Champs, we made a promise that’d we’d “finish the mission” by winning this year.
To qualify this year, they’re doing two online qualifiers via GameBattles.com. The top eight from both of those qualifiers advance to the North American Regional Finals held at Full Sail University in Florida. This is a big change from last year, when there were 16 North American teams at Champs. This will be huge for the eight North American teams that advance to Champs because the teams from North America are considered much stronger than the rest of the world. Dealing with just eight will be much easier compared to last year, dealing with 16 North American teams.
To prepare for this event, we have been grinding about four to six hours of practice each evening. Whether its scrimming during the week, watching other teams at night, or weekend MLG 2K’s, it’s set in our minds to make sure we bring home this event. Recently, we’ve looked great online; we’ve won four of the last six MLG 2K tournaments, and also created some new strategies for Domination and Search and Destroy. Search and Destroy has become our strongest game type, which was not the case in Black Ops 2. This is because the pace of this game’s Search and Destroy fits our play style much better. Blitz is also a game mode that fits our play style well, in that it’s constant gun battles and non-stop fast gameplay. Domination has been a bit so-so for us lately due to the fact that the result will always be close with the way the points are allotted. We’ve been working hard and trying new strategies for Domination recently though, so that will help us win more consistently and in larger margins going into Call of Duty Championships.
Last years Champs went in very different ways for each of us. It was my first year playing Call of Duty after coming from other games, but I qualified to play. We were excited to qualify and take a few matches. Those matches and that event sparked my current career – coaching compLexity. I personally felt like compLexity at least years Champs was just as strong as Impact, but they needed some guidance and an extra push. After placing fourth, they decided to release TuQuick, pick up Clayster and bring me in as coach – moves that helped launch our win streak that’s still intact today. Karma from last year’s Champs was a member of Team Impact, who won the entire event. For Damon this was a huge event that helped establish him as one of, if not the best, Call of Duty player in the world.
This year, Damon wants to become the first repeat Call of Duty Champion and the rest of us want to attain what he achieved last year. There is a lot of pressure to win this one considering we have been dominant the last year, but we view it as just another event. We are preparing just as hard, if not harder, with the same mentality as always – hoping to finish off what we set out to accomplish last year.