With traditional sports on hold for now, esports has taken the front seat in DFS, and we now have Call of Duty to play. The Call of Duty League has 12 teams, who play on a rotating basis for each tournament. The teams are 'city-based' and host a home weekend series, which features eight teams.
Call of Duty League: The Basics
Each matchup is always a best-of-five series, with three different game modes. Hardpoint is a king of the hill style game modes. Search and Destroy aka SnD is a round-based game mode -- similar to a round of CS:GO. Finally, Domination is a capture and control game mode. Hardpoint and Domination are known as respawn game modes, as opposed to SnD -- where you only have one life per round.
Hardpoint is always played in Game 1 and Game 4 during the series. Search and Destroy is always Game 2 and Game 5. Domination is only Game 3.
Call of Duty DFS: Rosters
There are seven roster spots for COD DFS, starting with the MVP spot, who receives 1.5x points. There are then five normal player spots, which receive normal points, and the last spot is for a 'Team.'
This is almost identical to what we have in CS:GO and is very straightforward. In terms of players and their actual teams, they have loosely defined roles, which will be referenced on a slate by slate basis.
Call of Duty DFS: FanDuel Scoring
The scoring system awards points for the different game modes, which will allow you to target different players who excel at different things.
| Player Stats | FanDuel Points |
|---|---|
| Kills | 2 |
| Deaths | -1 |
| Bombs Planted/Defused (Only in SnD) | 3 |
| Captures (Only in Domination) | 1 |
| Capture Time Per Second (Only in Hardpoint) | 0.1 |
There are some players who are known more as 'objective players,' who prioritize captures ahead of kills and could easily finish a game of Hardpoint with over 100 seconds of capture time. This gives them a boost since they might fall behind in the kills category.
| Team Stats | FanDuel Points |
|---|---|
| Games Won | 4 |
| Match Won | 10 |
| Search and Destroy Round Won | 0.5 |
Team scoring is also very straightforward, and it will be important to find teams on the winning side of things. It should be noted that in order to win one game of Search and Destroy, a team needs to win six rounds. That would give them three points in a winning effort, then an additional four points for the Game Won.
Final Thoughts
As we get deeper into Call of Duty DFS, we will find what is optimal and how to attack each slate. Initially, it should play out somewhat similar to CS:GO, stacking two winning teams as a general concept, along with finding players who could be in series that go a full five games. There are plenty of different esports offerings on FanDuel, and Call of Duty makes a great addition.