JKap and Gunless benched ahead of Call of Duty League Florida Home Series
Chicago Guntsmen and OpTic Gaming have announced they're benching two of their players in Peirce "Gunless" Hillman and Jordan "JKap" Kaplan ahead of the Florida Home Series in a bid to find better success in the second part of the 2020 Call of Duty League (CDL) season.
Chicago Huntsmen, currently the second-strongest team in the CDL have decided for a massive roster change this Monday, when they moved Gunless to the bench in favour of Jordon "General" General, the 2018 CWL Pro League All-Star unveiled on his Twitch stream.
"I didn't even know I was benched until today," said Gunless.
"The only reason I learned everything was happening was fucking from literally other people. None of my teammates wanted to say a word to me on what was happening to me.”
His replacement, General has begun his professional CoD career in February 2015, when he joined Onslaught eSports and later in March 2015 left for Enigma6, where he spent well over four years, before joining Chicago Huntsmen in December 2019. His career-best achievement came last year, when he placed fourth at the 2019 Call of Duty World League Championship after Enigma6 lost to the eventual finalists 100 Thieves in the finals of the Losers' bracket.
When General arrived at Huntsmen as a substitute, he stated that he will "keep his head down" and work hard until he proves worthy to be given an opportunity to play with the main roster and it seems like his time has come now.
The main reason behind Huntsmen's roster change is a streak of poor results, which saw Huntsmen lose the momentum they have gained at the start of CDL Season. Huntsmen started the season with two wins over Dallas Empire and OpTic LA at the Launch Week, to which they added a title-winning run at London Home Series, where Seth "Scump" Abner and co. took down Dallas, LA Guerrillas, Paris Legion to hoist their first trophy.
Things, however, started to turn grim for the Chicago team at the Atlanta Home Series, where they suffered their first defeat of the season against Florida Mutineers. From then onwards, Chicago have entered a freefall, as they suffered three more losses and finished Dallas, as well as their own Home Series third-fourth.
Despite their significant drop in form, Chicago are still occupying a second place on CDL leaderboard with 130 points, which sits them 20 behind Dallas Empire and 10 ahead of Atlanta FaZe. Nonetheless, with their poor results in recent fixtures, roster changes were imminent, as another poor showing at the upcoming Seattle Home Series would almost guarantee Chicago will to drop out of top-three.
Chicago Huntsmen, however, are not the only CoD team that will enter Seattle Home Series with a changed roster. OpTic Gaming, who are currently sharing the last spot in the CDL standings have come out with an announcement they're benching the two-time world champion JKap, who will be replaced by Martin "Chino" Chino.
This will reunite Chino with Kenny "Kuavo" Williams, with whom he previously played at Team Kaliber and won two championships in CWL Dallas Open 2018 and CWL New Orleans Open 2018 during CoD: WWII season.
Chino has begun his career as CoD pro in December 2012 with HeXp Gaming. He later played for Dare Rising, ConqueR, Team JusTus, Elevate, Curse Youth, WiLD Gaming, VanQuish Gaming, Noble VanQuish, Rise Nation, Curse, Dream Team, Ground Zero, Renegades, G2 Esports, Ghost Gaming, Enigma6 and Sicario, before he got picked up by OpTic Los Angeles as a substitute player in December.
Unlike Chicago Huntsmen, who started their 2020 CDL season strong, OpTic struggled from the get-go. Ahead of the inaugural Call of Duty League season, OpTic were widely regarded as one of the strongest rosters in the league, but they failed to live up to those expectations, seeing how they accumulated only 20 CDL points so far this season. That sits them tied with LA Guerrillas, New York Subliners and Toronto Ultra for the last place in the league.
As already talked about, when OpTic decided to switch out between Brandon "Dashy" Otell and Austin "SlasheR" Liddicoat as the team's main AR player, OpTic biggest problem is that they have too many assault rifle players, while Modern Warfare meta only requires each team to have one player on M4.
“We’re looking at a variety of role changes within the team,” said OpTic general manager Eric "Muddawg" Sanders in an announcement video.
“It’s not lost on us that we have two of the most talented main ARs in the game in SlasheR and Dashy, but obviously we’re in a meta that only allows for one assault rifle at the moment, so we’re trying out a variety of scenarios to figure out what’s best for the team.”
Although Chino has been predominately an AR player throughout his career, he will use the MP5 submachine gun in his debut for OpTiC on Friday, May 8, when they face off against London Royal Ravens at the Florida Home Series.
