RADIO
Koby Hanson's DraftKings DFS lineup picks for Call of Duty on 4/08/21. 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 to the 2nd Major of the year! It's great to be back and ready for another fantastic tournament, let's see if someone other than FaZe will win it all this weekend. First things first! We had two games today to decided to round out the winners/losers brackets as Thieves smoked Paris Legion and Florida Mutineers made quick work of the LA Guerrillas. Both of these teams that won moved on and are set to have matches in tomorrow's slate of games!
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! The first slate for us DFS players begins tomorrow! We have some close games to go over, Dallas Empire takes on the tough NY Subliners, Optic gets a warm-up match against Toronto Ultra, LA Thieves rebranded and got an easy dub today and now get the London Royal Ravens ahead of them. Lastly, Florida Mutineers get a rematch with Seattle Surge!
Today I'll be bringing you my COD DFS advice, analysis, and lineup picks for eSports DFS contests on DraftKings for Thursday, April 8th, 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: LA Guerrillas Home Series
Best of 5
- New York Subliners (+120) vs. Dallas Empire (-155)
- Toronto Ultra (+215) vs. Optic Chicago (-300)
- LA Thieves vs. London Royal Ravens
- Florida Mutineers vs. Seattle Surge
Slate Overview
I actually think the wrong team is favored here. NYSL has been so impressive in this Stage going 4-1 and their only loss came to the hands of Atlanta FaZe. Dallas has been a little all over the place, They went 3-2 with one of those wins being insanely close to being a loss. They just haven't looked as great as they did in Stage 1. Subliners have just looked so good and I think they are going to be one of the teams to beat. All of NYSL is playing really well right now and is working as a core to get big wins. Should be a great game to start tomorrow off.
Optic has rebounded and looked fantastic in the process. Who knew they just needed to smoke Seattle to get back on track, cause I definitely didn't. Toronto has struggled all season long, they have looked better with Insight but I still think they are missing pieces and aren't ready to compete with the big dogs. Give me Optic by sweep.
Thieves looked so much better in their recent addition of Drazah back to the roster from last year's team. And he killed it bringing this team back to life. This team looked so good together as they swept Paris out of the tournament. Venom is in a great cheap spot along with Kenny who looked great today. Drazah hasn't been added to the player pool yet from DraftKings, so they still have Slasher in there, Do not play Slasher, He will score you 0 points. Kenny is back from Covid and TJ looked much improved today. I think Thieves are the better team here against a London team that has lost three straight.
The rematch nobody wanted but we go anyways. I like both of these teams so I'm very hyped for this match. Seattle has looked much better since the update and Florida has bounced back and forth but looked great in their sweep of LAG today. This should be a close game but if it goes anything like before, Seattle will win this one with their only struggle coming in Control as usual. Skyz and Owakening are elite in respawn game modes though and should score well still if this match does end up going the distance.
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
Clayster: Okay I agree, I don't love going back to players after one of the worst games of their career but Clayster is a different breed, He is one of the OG COD players and has always been one of the top tier players in the world. The last time he had a poor game was against Atlanta and in the next game, he dropped 145 DKP. I'm definitely not going to discredit Clayster no matter how bad he screwed my lineups. I like Clayster in tough matches and this one against Dallas should be just that. The last outing against Dallas went 5 rounds and he finished with 111 kills and 138 DKP. Clayster is in a great spot to make big moves and score very well. And he is quite the discount compared to some of your top plays on the board.
Dashy/Envoy/Formal: Pretty much the entire Optic team, I know. They are all playing very well. After a couple of poor games, they rebounded extremely well and all three of them are putting up insane numbers! They all have put up 120 DKP or more in their last two games. They are also getting a great matchup against Toronto who has been very up and down this season. They are going to be chalky but for good reason. They everything aligned right now to make a big playoff push and give Atlanta a run for their money. The only issue I see with these three guys. Is their price, they are all 9,600$ or more and that's quite a bit. I do recommend trying to get at least two of these guys in your lineup because it could be the difference between seeing the $$$ or not tomorrow. All of them have 1.06 K/Ds or better and I imagine this game more than likely ends in a high kill sweep by Dallas or an even higher kill 4 game match. Should be a good one to load up on.
Other captain plays: Shottzy, Octane, Gunless, Kenny, Asim
COD DFS Value Plays
Prestinni: They priced Illey up what am I supposed to do now? Oh, Prestinni is still dirt cheap? Duh, the dude has been straight killing it since the meta change and has helped lead Seattle to a couple of wins since then, They almost went 4-1 in Stage 2 if it hadn't been for a couple of close game 5s against Dallas and the new and improved Minnesota team. He has had 3 100+ DKP games since the update and 2 games just under 100. And that was with them getting blown out one game against Optic. In the last outing against Florida, Seattle won 3-1 and Prestinni went off for 104 DKP and 77 kills. Prestinni is in such a great spot and with most people going to be targeting the first three games, I could see the last game going unowned. Prestinni has been sub 20% ownership nearly all season, I can't imagine that changes too much. Like Illey, I'm going to be on Prestinni until they either price him up or he starts to play badly.
Venom: Venom has not looked good so far since entering the Pros, he was great in the Challenger scene but has disappointed so far, until today. LA Thieves finally got a win since he made his debut, and with the help of Drazah, I think it really will improve Moral and confidence back into these guys. They get a good matchup against a struggling London team, who has lost three straight. He went +3 on the day with a sweep which is definitely something that could be repeated, and if it does we could getting 90+ DKP out of Venom who is 5,800! I haven't seen someone below 6k I think all year! If he can come out and play well like he did today, he will definitely hit value and be worth the punt of grabbing him.
Other value plays: Scump, Gunless, Skyz, Illey, Kenny
COD DFS Stacks
Optic Chicago: Optic will definitely be the cash stack and for good reason, they are expensive though which could deter people from stacking up on them, forcing them to punt somewhere else. Or adding scump into the mix cause for once, I don't mind that at all. Scump has looked better in these last two games, but I do think he is more sweep reliant than the other players are, as he doesn't tend to get as many kills as the others do. If you believe as I do in Optic sweeping here then Scump might be an awesome option to grab in your lineup especially with how cheap he is at only 6,600. If I had to rank these guys, I'm going Dashy, Envoy, FormaL, Scump. Honestly FormaL and Envoy are interchangeable though. Toronto did look good against London but looked horrible against NYSL. So depending on which team shows up could change how far this match goes. If this game does go to 4 it will more than likely be because Toronto beat them in SnD, that's really the only advantage I see Toronto having in this matchup.
LA Thieves: Who would have thought I would have been talking about LA Thieves in this tournament. I seriously didn't until I saw a change they made. Slasher was benched (definitely the last player I saw getting benched), If any of y'all played last year, you will remember Drazah joining the roster towards the end of the 2020 CDL season. Drazah made huge contributions to this team and gave them a real shot at a championship, he was brought back in yesterday for their first match against Paris and oh he made an impact once again. He helped lead this team to a 3-0 demolition of Paris. They won SnD 6-0, and Control 3-0. It was an absolute blitz attack from Thieves and I think this change made them even better. Drazah went +22 on the day and had a 1.72 K/D in his first match of the season. The whole team even ended up going positive. London looked good at the beginning of the stage but immediately regressed and haven't looked great since their last win. I don't expect London to turn it around, Thieves with their newfound confidence and momentum should be able to take it Royal Ravens and put them out of their misery. The only disadvantage is DraftKings failed to put Drazah in the player pool and failed to take Slasher out. So know Slasher is not playing tomorrow and will score you 0 points. Kenny is in a good spot as he went +14 on the day and is fairly cheap as well. The player I'm very interested in though is Venom. He looked a lot better today and went positive for the first time in his CDL career. He is far too cheap and in too good of a spot to be 5,800. I also think with how poor his recent performance has been he might go extremely low-owned!
Other Team Plays: NYSL, Seattle, Dallas
Summary
- TLDR: NYSL 3-1, Optic 3-0, LA Thieves 3-1, Seattle Surge 3-1
- Optic Cash (BUT EXPENSIVE)
- LA Thieves and NYSL are definitely places I like as well.
- Seattle and Florida game will go pretty much unowned so, this will be your GPP game to look at. I do expect it to go 4 games so either team is something to look into. Skyz and Owakening for Florida, and Octane, Gunless, and Prestinni for Seattle!
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