With the Call of Duty League Stage 3 Major behind us, the Stage 4 groups and schedule are now set. The OpTic Chicago, Florida Mutineers and Los Angeles Thieves will host their home series before the Stage 4 Major will take place. The Stage 4 Major will be the first offline event since 2020.
As usual, the top teams got the first selections of whom they wanted in which group during the Stage 4 group drawings. Group A will consist of Stage 3 Major winners Atlanta FaZe. This is along with OpTic Chicago, LA Thieves, Minnesota RØKKR, Paris Legion and Seattle Surge. Outside of Atlanta FaZe, the remaining five teams in Group A will be hard to judge the skill of due to their inconsistency.
Group B is known as the group-of-death this time around, with four powerhouse teams and two wildcards. Stage 3 Major finalists New York Subliners will join Stage 2 Major winners Toronto Ultra in Group B. Dallas Empire, Florida Mutineers, Los Angeles Guerrillas and London Royal Ravens fulfill the remaining four spots in the group. Both Dallas and Florida are looking to show that they can still be a top team while LA Guerrillas and Royal Ravens will have a lot of unanswered questions in Stage 4.
CDL Stage 4 schedules
OpTiC Chicago will open Stage 4 with their home series on Thursday, May 27. Atlanta FaZe will take on on Paris Legion. While this match is an opening match for the Chicago home series, it’s expected to go the way of FaZe; who has looked superior to Paris as they continue to struggle.
That following match will be the Toronto Ultra vs. Florida Mutineers to conclude Thursday’s games. Florida has been on the rise since the Stage 3 Major after adding Colt “Havok” McLendon to the starting roster. However, Toronto Ultra still appear to be in top-tier form after Stage 3 where they went 5-0 in groups.
OpTic will play their own match on Friday in the final game of the day against Minnesota RØKKR. Then, Atlanta FaZe will take on OpTic in the final match of their home series on Sunday, May 30 to see who is a top team.
#CDL2021 Stage IV is upon us!
Take a peek at the full schedule for all three Home Series ⬇ pic.twitter.com/E79W8VdeOs
— Call of Duty League (@CODLeague) May 21, 2021
Unlike during Modern Warfare, the two Los Angeles teams will have separate home series events. The Florida Mutineers will host the first home series during Week 2 of Stage 4; the action kicking off on Thursday, June 3.
Atalanta FaZe will open the weekend with a match against Seattle Surge. Seattle recently lost Jacob “Decemate” Cato after only playing a few matches with him which puts Seattle back to square one for creating a solid team. While there is still hope for Seattle Surge to take a map off FaZe, they are nowhere near favorites to win. Next, Dallas Empire will take on La Guerrillas. The action continues on Friday with LA Thieves vs. Paris Legion and New York against the home series hosts, Florida.
The LA Thieves home series will begin on Thursday, June 10 and finish on Sunday, June 13. This will be with an anticipated rematch between OpTic Chicago and the Thieves. To start things off, Toronto Ultra will take on the LA Guerrillas. OpTiC Chicago will then go against Seattle Surge.
Friday’s matches will have the Subliners versing the London Royal Ravens. Finally, the home series hosts LA Thieves will be up against Minnesota RØKKR. LA Thieves recently added Cuyler “Huke” Garland to their roster which has been a roster change ith mixed emotions after they fell short at the Stage 3 Major. Minnesota RØKKR has also gone through its fair share of struggles and brought back Michael “MajorManiak” Szymaniak after a disappointing Stage 3. LA Thieves appear to be stronger than RØKKR with Huke but only time will tell who comes out on top.
A new dawn for the CDL at Stage 4
After the three weeks are finished, the Stage 4 Major will kick off with the first offline Call of Duty event in over a year. All twelve teams will convene in Texas to compete in a socially distanced and fan-less offline tournament. The CDL has been unable to host offline events since March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With online events going on for over a year now, many teams have felt that the competition has been less than fair. With the Stage 4 Major happening offline, teams will be able to really show what they are made of.
