November 6th, 2023 | Issue 114

Welcome! Virtus Pro comes back for online play, Valorant Offseason spins off well and CDL finish schedules. Check it out!

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In today's edition:

• Call of Duty: CDL Schedule
• CSGO: Onliners Are Back
• Valorant: Practice Time
• Halo: Pznguin
• Top/Bottom Frag
• Upcoming Events
• Tweets of the week
• The Esports Archive

- Thomas and Chris

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Call of Duty: CDL Schedule

• Rumored rosters for two of the final CDL teams:

— Carolina Royal Ravens: 'Clayster', 'GodRx', 'ReeaL', and 'Gwinn' (per his Mother)

— Las Vegas Legion: 'Attach', 'Standy', 'Nero' and 'Purj' (head coach Fenix)

• The CDL 2023/24 schedule released this week ​Major 1— Boston — Qual: Dec 8-Jan 21— LAN: Jan 25-28​Major 2— Miami — Qual: Feb 16-Mar 17— LAN: Mar 21-24​Major 3— Toronto — Qual: Apr 12-May 12— LAN: May 16-19​Major 4— Charlotte — Qual: May 24-Jun 16— LAN: Jun 20-23​Champs— Dallas (Rumored) —July 11-14
• The Community is widely displeased with the illustrative schedule given the lack of a Pro-Am, only 4 Majors and a split Major 1 stage around Christmas/New Years
• Other League news:

— Control is the official third game-mode

— Two extra online matches per stage with One less Major

— Winner’s Final is now the second match on Sunday instead of first

— LAN has a greater point weighting than online now (but not by much)

• Challengers:

Uli, Davpadie, Yeez and Wrecks have formed a team

Assault, Exceed, Havok and Brack have formed a team (coached by Mayhem)

• KOI and Infinite Reality (parent company of Royal Ravens) dissolved their partnership, officially eliminating EU COD ​
• According to ZooMaa, he's "95% sure" the CDL will be a YouTube exclusive league​

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CSGO: Onliners Are Back

• Virtus Pro returns as the most annoying Online team to play against as they won Roobet Cup 2-1 over Monte and placed second in the Thunderpick World Championship. FaZe won the TWC and have only lost one official match in CS2 so far. Who would have thought that the team with one of the highest average ages would be dominating CS2 like this.
• More roster news hits this week, and boy it keeps heating up:
  • ​Cloud9 sign 'Boombl4' permanently, reunited him with 'electronic' and 'perfecto'. This team lacks an AWP but it looks like it isn't necessary in the current CS2 meta. This team made it to top four of Thunderpick World Championship before falling to FaZe.
  • ​NIP bring in 'alex' from Movistar Riders as their new IGL. This is an interesting move from NIP as they move more towards international and away form their Swedish roots. On the flip side, it is rumored that Fnatic is looking at 'Brollan' and 'Hampus' as they want to move back to their Swedish home side.
  • ​Vitality release 'Magisk' and are set to sign 'mezii' as their new fifth. He is already registered to play with Vitality for Blast Fall Finals. Both sides are going to be benefiting from this as 'Magisk' is going to Falcons to join 'zonic' and 'mezii' can take a step up and play with the best player in the world.
  • Falcons have made several changes. First they released their entire roster except for 'BOROS'. They are rumored to be signing 'NiKo', 'Snappi', and 'Magisk', a star studded roster that needs an amazing AWPer to round it out (ahem 'S1mple'). This team wants to win championships and this is the roster to do it with.
  • With 'Snappi' heading to Falcons, ENCE is reportedly turning towards 'gla1ve' to become their new IGL. A great look from both sides as 'gla1ve' needs a chance to prove himself again and ENCE can save a lot of money in buyouts and pick up a guaranteed winner.
• ​NRG is looking to get back into CS with a new roster and they already have a core in mind. This is very exciting for NA and I would hope they look at the Forsaken roster and pick up 'oSee' from Liquid to round it out. These teams can really become top contenders in NA and the more organizations that return, the better the scene will be in the long run.

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Valorant: Practice Time

• ​Red Bull Home Ground 4 ended with a bang as Fnatic beat Cloud9 3-2 in the finals. 'OXY' looks disgusting as he almost dropped 100 kills over the finals, but he alone couldn't carry. It is a good sign that Cloud9 can immediately perform at this high of a level against the top team of 2023 with a stand-in. I think this event is great practice for all teams who played and it gave the younger players some stage experience. Can't wait for #5!
• ​The Sentinels Invitational was claimed by.....Sentinels. They looked good even though they needed to use 'Zellsis' as as sub on each map due to some players being sick or unavailable. But the more promising results are from the Challengers teams and G2 who got some great LAN reps and will definitely be using this practice to bolster their performances in VCT and Challengers.
• Challengers teams got more reps at Soar Gaming's LAN in California as OXG Esports took the title over MxS 2-1 in a banger of a third map.
• ​100T officially add 'eeiu' as their fourth player and trial 'Nature' as their IGL. I think 'eeiu' is a solid pickup but 'Nature' could use some work. Not playing that well at Red Bull Home Ground 4, they have a lot of work to do in the offseason before they are VCT ready.
• ​Liquid came ready to play for 2024 as they signed 'Enzo', 'Mistic', and 'keiko' from Apeks to round out their roster. The best players of the tier 2 EMEA scene, these guys are definitely going to bolster this roster that has yet to raise an international trophy.

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Halo: Pznguin

• Surprisingly, after phenomenal placing this past season, HCS' silver-surfers Spacestation release core-player 'Pznguin'
• ​'Spartan' confirms Sentinels are not making any changes ahead of Season 3
• HCS release a "5 years of Halo World Championships" graphic that brings back some much needed nostalgia

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Top / Bottom Frag

• Top Frag: This was utterly disgusting​
• Bottom Frag: The amount of whiffs on a 1HP player here is absurdity.​

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Upcoming/ongoing events:

• November 8 - November 12: CS Asian Championship
• November 22 - November 26: Blast Fall Finals
• December 8 - January 21: CDL Stage 1 Qualifiers

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Tweets of the week:

• ​On this day in 2013…​​Call of Duty Ghosts released​
• ​North Carolina provides matching funding / tax credits for esports events hosted there, which is why the CDL and HCS have hosted there every year​
• ​Sickest snipe clip I've ever gotten holy f**k​
• ​100T announced they are spinning off Juvee and 100 Thieves Game Development studio, and reducing the size of the overall 100 Thieves team, as they look to focus on their core business

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The Esports Archive

Last Time Cloud9 played in a Red Bull event, they made the finals. Looks like they are going for the repeat.

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Round 11:

Sincerely, thank you all for reading our newsletter. We would love feedback from you all on what you liked and what you are looking for in future issues. Please fill out this survey below and share with your friends!

Best,

- Thomas and Chris