Welcome to Call of Duty DFS: A Primer

Welcome to Call of Duty! Call of Duty is a new addition to DFS websites, though CoD (Call of Duty) itself has been around for a while. You can find competitive CoD tournaments on sites that were played way back in 2008. From that point up until this last season, CoD was played in non-franchised leagues. Now that 2020 is here and as CoD tries to legitimize itself as an esport, they started a franchised league called the ‘Call of Duty League,’ or CDL for short.

The CDL is composed of 12 teams who all bought their way into the league in the same style of the LCS or Overwatch League. In alphabetical order, the teams are as follows:

— Atlanta FaZe
— Chicago Huntsmen
— Dallas Empire
— Florida Mutineers
— London Royal Ravens
— LA Guerillas
— Minnesota Rokkr
— New York Subliners
— OpTic Gaming LA
— Paris Legion
— Seattle Surge
— Toronto Ultra

The CDL has already held five events hosted by five separate franchises so far. Up until the last two events, CDL Dallas and CDL Chicago, each event was played on LAN (local area network) which provides the best possible competitive experience for any esport. Because of the current happenings in the world, the league has resorted to playing the rest of this season online with online servers. The Dallas Empire won the last event, beating the Atlanta FaZe in the final.

The next event is hosted by the Florida Mutineers. This Florida team is coming off a win at their last event they participated in (CDL Dallas). As with every CDL event, only eight of the 12 teams are represented. At this event we have the ATL FaZe, FL Mutineers, LDN Royal Ravens, MIN Rokkr, NY Subliners, OpTic Gaming LA, PAR Legion, and the Toronto Ultra. Before I dive into the team matchups for Friday, let me try and help you understand how CoD is played in its competitive form.

Call of Duty Game Modes

Competitive CoD is played with three different game modes in a best of five series. This alone makes the esport very unique and adds layers of things to consider. The three game modes are hardpoint (HP), search and destroy (SnD), and domination (DOM). They are played in every series in the following order: Map 1 – HP, map 2 – SnD, map 3 – DOM, and if the series needs it, map 4 – HP, and map 5 – SnD.

We can start off with HP. This game mode is based around objectives around the map called “hills” each hill lasts 60 seconds and a team gets one point for every second they control the hill. Opponents can contest the hill which pauses the five-minute game clock but continues the 60-second timer on the individual hill. There are numerous locations of hills on each HP map and the rotation continues until either a team reaches 250 points (250 seconds of them being in a hill) or until time runs out on the game clock and the team with the most points wins. HP, along with DOM, are called ‘respawn modes’ in these game modes, each player has unlimited lives. A player can kill and die to other players as much as possible. This point is key for a later paragraph.

Search and destroy (SnD) is very closely related to the competitive game mode played in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. SnD is played with two bomb sites, one team on offense, and the other on defense. The offensive team’s objective is to either A. plant the bomb at one of the two sites and have the bomb explode off its timer, or B. eliminate the other team. As I mentioned earlier, the respawn modes gives each player unlimited lives, in SnD you are given one life each round. After each round, the teams flip sides and are either put on defense/offense. This is played until a team reaches six rounds won.

Lastly, domination (DOM) is a game mode played with two rounds and with each round having a five-minute timer. There are three flag locations placed on the map, one being in each team’s beginning spawn location and the other flag placed in a neutral location. A team will get one point for each flag held every game tick, which is every few seconds. These matches last 10 minutes, in game, no matter what.

Call of Duty DFS Scoring

I think it will also be very informative to translate DraftKings’ scoring system to these game modes. Each player, independent of game mode, receives +2 Pts for each kill they receive and -1 Pt for each death. Also, players will gain points for each objective they perform in each game mode. For SnD, players will receive +3 Pts for each bomb plant or bomb defuse. For HP, players will receive +0.1 Pts per 1 second of capture time in HP, more commonly referred to as ‘hill time.’ Lastly, for DOM, players will receive +1 Pt for each flag capture. In a DK lineup for CoD, you are also required to roster a team. Teams receive points in the following ways: +10 Pts for a series win, +4 Pts for a map win, and +0.5 Pts for each round of SnD won. To math it out, each team can put up a maximum of 28 pts in a series. This works out like this: +10 pts for series win, +12 pts for winning three maps in a best of five series, and if the team wins both of the SnD maps (maps two and five) they get +6 pts for winning the 12 rounds required to win two maps of SnD.

Basic Tips for Call of Duty DFS

1. Avoiding the 3-0 series.

The sentence above speaks for itself. Avoiding the 3-0 series will instantly give you a leg up on the people who end up having players involved in a 3-0 series in their lineup. The reason why 3-0 series are so detrimental is that in CoD DFS, you get penalized for being apart of quick series. You do not get additional points for rounds not played bonus or match not played bonus, your players only get points for maps that are played. This is why game stacking is the meta right now for CoD DFS. Correctly predicting which games go at least four maps and hopefully five maps is massive for success.

2. Giving some trust to betting lines.

Sites like Bovada and Betonline give lines for CoD esports. Although I do not think these lines in general are things to live and die by, I do think you have a good sense for nailing down how many maps a series will likely see. As mentioned earlier, correctly predicting which series get extended run is critical. Looking at sites that offer the over / under lines for maps played can only help us predict this. Looking for series that have the o/u of 4.5 is the first step and targeting the games that are closest to even money on the over side is what we should be doing. On the contrary, targeting games that are listed at o/u 3.5 maps could give you an edge in GPPs but there is also a reason those games are listed that way.

3. Kills, kills, and more kills.

Think of objective stats such as hill time in hardpoint, flag captures in domination, and bomb plants and defuses in search and destroy as “fluff” points or things we look to as tie breakers. While having a player dominant in acquiring hill time is great, it is the secondary stat we should be looking at. A player that gets us the most kills on a consistent basis will always be towards the top in scoring, if we say all series go the same length. Something else to also keep in mind since we get negative points for deaths is K/D, or kill death ratio. It’s simple: You lose a point for each death, so the better the K/D ratio your player has, the more likely they are to put up high scores.

Call of Duty is very new in the DFS world so my job is to get you on your feet in terms of understanding of the game and what teams and players we should be targeting. Learning any new sport, or DFS sport for that matter, is tough but now with a simple understanding for the game and what we should be looking for, you will have a leg up on the competition. Again, since CoD DFS is still such a very new thing, acquiring an edge on the field as fast as possible can only lead to quick success.

About the Author

YesItsBQ
Brandon Qualkenbush (YesItsBQ)

Brandon Qualkenbush is a Call of Duty DFS ethusiast and has competed in multiple competitive leagues at the amateur level. He has also coached an amateur team as part of his passion for the game. Brandon has been participating in Call of Duty across its various iterations since 2007, and is excited to contribute his knowledge of the game to the DFS community.