New York Subliners Win CDL Major 1

The New York Subliners shocked the world on Sunday, December 19, when the young core of Call of Duty players won the Call of Duty League (CDL) Major 1 title. The Subliners defeated Seattle Surge in the grand finals 4-1 and became the first Major winners of the 2023 season.

New York Subliners entered the 2023 Call of Duty League season with a new roster, after the organization decided to start fresh following a disappointing and fairly unsuccessful run through the 2022 season. Although the Subliners showed some promise in 2022, they failed to achieve much, with their best result coming from Major 4, where they placed fourth.

Most of the Subliners’ lack of success had to do with the internal drama and poor synergy, so it makes sense that the Subliners decided to freshen up its roster. For the 2023 season, New York Subliners decided to keep Paco “HyDra” Rusiewiez and Matthew “KiSMET” Tinsley, and added Cesar “Skyz” Bueno, Preston “Priestahh” Greiner, and Elliot “WarDy” Ward.

The new-look squad consists mostly of younger talent, with no veteran figure, marking the first time in the Subliners’ history that the team decided to bet on raw talent without leadership. This brought up many questions, namely how long New York Subliners will need to start performing up to par.

Early into the season, things didn’t look good, as the Subliners lost their opening CDL Major 1 Qualifier matches against London Royal Ravens (0-3) and Toronto Ultra (1-3). But the young core bounced back in the final week of the qualifiers with wins against Los Angeles Guerrillas (3-0) and Boston Breach (3-2) to end the Major 1 Qualifier in ninth place.

Upon finding some traction in the qualifiers, New York Subliners managed to carry their momentum into the first Major. They showed up with wins against the Guerrillas (3-0) and Minnesota RØKKR (3-0), thus finishing the group stage in the first place, now holding a four-game winning streak.

But their run of dominance didn’t stop there.

After winning the first stage of CDL Major 1, New York Subliners entered the finals in hot form, now holding a four-game winning streak, despite looking terrible in the earlier rounds of the CDL Major 1 Qualifier. Yet, the Subliners showed that their run wasn’t a fluke with another dominant victory against Florida Mutineers (3-1) in the first round of the winner’s bracket.

Unfortunately, their run came to an abrupt stop in the second round of the CDL Major 1 winner’s bracket, where the Subliners had to admit defeat to Seattle Surge, who knocked them down to the loser’s bracket with a 3-1 victory.

Despite the painful loss, the Subliners kept their wheels spinning in the lower bracket, where they defeated Las Vegas Legion (3-1), Toronto Ultra (3-2), and the former CDL champions, Atlanta FaZe (3-1), to book a spot in the grand finals.

On the big stage, New York Subliners reunited with Seattle Surge, who looked unstoppable so far in this tournament. But despite the Surge’s dominant victory in the second round, the Subliners found the right recipe to take their revenge.

The CDL Major 1 grand finals kicked off with an incredibly close victory for the Subliners, who took the series lead with 250-248 on Hotel-Hardpoint, to which they added two more points on Mercade-S&D (6-4) and Hotel-Control (3-2) to go 3-0 up. Seattle Surge struck back on Mercado-Hardopint with 250-231, but at that point, it was too late, too little.

The Subliners, while having to dig deep to defeat the Subliners on Embayssy-S&D with a dominant 6-2 victory, to close out the series at 4-1 and win the organization’s first Major trophy.

By winning CDL Major 1, the Subliners secured $200,000 in tournament winnings and 65 CDL points, which sits them atop the standings with 85 total.