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Koby Hanson's DraftKings DFS lineup picks for Call of Duty on 3/18/21. He analyzes the COD slates and top lineup targets for eSports DFS contests.
Hello there eSports DFS enthusiasts, and welcome back to RotoBaller's coverage of Call of Duty DFS contests for DraftKings! Welcome everyone to Stage 2 of COD League! Atlanta FaZe took home Gold as they beat everyone in their paths quickly and in the process made it look easy. They still have yet to lose and now the NY Subliners get a chance to take them out!
This is easily one of my favorite sports to cover here at Rotoballer because I play a ton of COD myself and I like to think I'm pretty good at it as well. I have been following the COD League for about five years now and I finally get to put all this knowledge to the test! My Name is Koby and I'll be here all season long to help guide you through the COD DFS world. Welcome back to another great weekend of COD DFS! We have a great set of games on this slate as Draft Kings has combined Thursday and Friday sets of games. We have Florida Mutineers taking on Seattle Surge, Atlanta FaZe taking on NY Subliners, LA Thieves take on Toronto Ultra once again, and last but not least Minnesota Rokkr take on Paris Legion.
Today I'll be bringing you my COD DFS advice, analysis, and lineup picks for eSports DFS contests on DraftKings for Thursday and Friday, March 18th-19th, 2021, at 3:00 PM. Feel free to follow me on Twitter @DFSKoby or find me in the slack as I am happy to engage with readers and try to answer your questions!
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Call of Duty: Toronto Home Series
Best of 5
- NY Subliners (+325) vs. Atlanta FaZe (-500)
- Seattle Surge (+335) vs. Florida Mutineers (-500)
- Toronto Ultra (+110) vs. LA Thieves (-140)
- Minnesota Rokkr (-165) vs. Paris Legion (+120)
Slate Overview
Atlanta is coming off a super hot start of the year finishing Stage one 8-0. They are beating teams with ease and that's probably what is going to happen here against the Subliners. Subliners probably have one of the best chances to upset Atlanta but they are going to have to play perfectly as FaZe will take every mistake and turn right back to you and sink you. Subliners best chance to win here is to take a map of Hardpoint. Otherwise, they might be toast when it comes to SnD and Control, Atlanta has been extremely good.
Seattle, oh poor Seattle. They just suck. Octane and Gunless carry this team so hard but it's just not enough to carry this team to a win. Prestinni and Loony just aren't good enough to bring this team to the next level. Florida on the other hand could be a sleeper team and I have said all year they could be a contender and they are starting to look better. If they start to play better in Stage 2 we could see that become a reality but for now, they need to make quick work of Seattle. I'll take them to sweep. At most Seattle wins in SnD.
LA Thieves had an unfortunate ending to their Stage 1 series as they got blown out by Optic and LAG. They did however beat Toronto into submission in between those two losses. I expect them to do the same thing. Toronto is just not quite good enough to hang with the big teams and will more than likely be a mid-tier team all season long. Slasher and TJ have been playing very well this season and Kenny has been on the downward trend. Temp has been overlooked though and has been a sleeper on Thieves so far this season.
This one is going to be interesting. Both of these teams are right on the edge of being a mid-tier to a low-tier team. They both have their advantages in certain game modes, as Paris is better in Hardpoint and Minnesota has been better in SnD and Control. I do see this game going to 5 games with a 3-2 win by Minnesota. This could be a high kill upside game and picking players from either team is definitely in play here.
COD DFS Basics
- Like in CSGO, players receive two points for a kill and are penalized -1 for dying. Therefore, the simplest stat to look at here is K/D ratio. However, players can also earn fantasy points for planting or defusing bombs (three points each) in Search and Destroy rounds, so there are some players who we can target for other skills besides their ability to kill the opponent.
- You need to roster a team slot on both sites. Teams accrue fantasy points for games won (+4), matches won (+10), and Search and Destroy rounds won (+.5).
- Teams will be playing best-of-five matches on a rotation of various game modes. Those modes and the order in which they are played are as follows: Hardpoint, Search & Destroy, Control, Hardpoint, Search & Destroy.
- In hardpoint rounds, players with positive K/D ratios are usually the highest scorers and these rounds are often the bloodiest.
- They also have changed a game mode from Domination to Control for League play. This is going to be a lot different in gameplay as it's round-based and not the first one to 200. They play first one to 3 round wins. You win by capturing both points or killing the enemy team until they run out of their lives. One team defends and the other attacks.
- There is a sweep bonus this year as teams and players both can get a 20 point player sweep and a 5 point team sweep. In the chance, they do sweep they also get granted a bonus of 20 points for not playing hardpoint and a bonus of 5 points for not playing the final Search and Destroy map. So that adds up in a sweep to a total of 45 extra points which are going to be very crucial this year.
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COD DFS Captain Considerations
Owakening: Oh have I been waiting for the day I get to talk about Owakening again. Simp of course is a great play and just about everyone knows that, so I'm gonna skip him as you are probably sick of me talking about him. Owakening on the other hand has the perfect matchup to go off tomorrow. Seattle has been extremely poor and their only good game mode is SnD, which happens to be Owakenings best game mode where he ranks 2nd in SnD K/D at 1.37, 1st in Kills Per round at .97, and 2nd in 1st blood Leaders at 25% of rounds. He is an absolute monster at SnD and leads his team in both other game modes in kills and overall K/D. This matchup I can see it ending in 3 or 4 for sure if Seattle can sneak an SnD win as they did during the Major winning 6-5. He has an overall K/D of 1.10 and is a top play on this slate.
Slasher: Slasher has been one of the most consistent players on the Thieves this year. He has had at least 80 DKP in all but one match this season so far and 5 matches with 100+. With the meta gearing towards players that use ARs, this is going to increase in Slasher's favor a lot. I love the upside we are getting in him plus he might go low-owned with all the possible options we have at captain. The discount we get on him is nice as well. Last outing against Toronto he had 127 DKP with 60 kills. I could see something like this happening once again for Slasher as he has the ability to break a slate in matchups like this. He has an overall K/D of 1.05, he also leads the league in average time spent in the hardpoint at almost 90 seconds a game. That's an extra 9 points or 13.5 in the captain spot. On his team, he leads in both Hardpoint and Control K/D and is getting quite a bit of kills as well. Slasher should be considered highly.
Other captain plays: Simp, Cellium, Accuracy
COD DFS Value Plays
Temp: Temp is in the perfect spot for a big day. Against Toronto two weeks ago he dropped 60 kills in a route of Toronto. He has been a little bit off and on but I think that the matchup is something we can take advantage of. At the cheap price of 7.2k, he has quite a lot of upside averaging 90 DKP per match and has 4 games of over 100. For 7.2k I'll take that all day. Hopefully, we can get a nice win for LA Thieves out of this one as Temp could score well. He averages a 1.00 K/D and 22 KP10M in hardpoint, and 19 KP10M in Control. He struggles in SnD but against Toronto, I'm not too worried there.
Skyz: This is the high end of the value side of things but I think it's still warranted. A lot of players are going to look immediately too Owakening and Neptune who are both playing great right now. But Skyz on the other hand has been on the lowkey side and has silently put up some nice numbers. He struggled at the beginning of the season and that brought his K/D down but has returned to last year's form in his last few games as he has dropped 90+ DKP in 4 of his last 5 games. They have yet to have a game where Florida has swept an opponent but this could be the game they do it. If they don't I still like the upside that Skyz brings at his price and should be looked at heavily in a Florida stack.
Other value plays: Priestahh, Majormaniak, Classic (GPP), Slacked (PUNT), CleanX (GPP)
COD DFS Stacks
Florida: I hate saying this because Seattle is my team but Seattle sucks. They really do. They have one win on the year against none other than the winless London Ravens. Florida just played against Seattle in the first matchup in the Major. Florida won 3-1 with their only loss being a super close SnD match ending 6-5. If there is any chance Seattle wins here they have to win one hardpoint match cause they haven't won a single control game this year. I'm taking Florida to sweep here but wouldn't be surprised to see Seattle take SnD again and force a game 4. Owakening, Neptune, and Skyz are all plays I would focus on. Slacked hasn't been great but has improved but is really only worth grabbing him if you are confident Florida sweeps as he doesn't get many points from kills and is more likely to go negative than any other player on Florida.
Minnesota: I like this play especially in GPPs, I think it has very high kill upside and I think the game goes to 5 maps. Minnesota has proven they are very good at SnD and Control but struggles in Hardpoint. They may struggle but they are very capable of getting high amounts of kills in hardpoint still even if they are losing. Accuracy and Attach are very good plays here and their prices are not overly high either. I'm not sold completely on MajorManiak but he has shown upside in recent games scoring over 100 DKP in his last two. His price is still a little high for me and at that point, Priestahh becomes more interesting to me as he has the ability to boom in some spots but also can completely bust on the day. Although he is about 1,200 cheaper so the reward might outweigh the risk this time.
Other Team Plays: Atlanta (CASH), LA Thieves, Paris Legion (GPP)
Summary
- TLDR: Florida 3-0, Atlanta 3-0, Minnesota 3-2, La Thieves 3-1
- Florida and Atlanta will be the two teams people will look to stack most of especially in cash games. Thieves might go overlooked due to recent struggles but they played Toronto recently and smoked them in a sweep so they could be a lower-owned pivot to look at.
- Minnesota/Paris is going to be GPP galore as either of these teams have the potential to pull out a win here. Aqua and Skrapz would be the first two I look at on Paris, Accuracy, and Attach for Minnesota.
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