TeamNade Ep10

The speaker and his friend discuss recent events in the world of esports, particularly in Call of Duty and Halo. They mention missing out on watching some matches due to personal commitments and express their excitement for upcoming tournaments. They also talk about their own experiences playing the game and how they have improved over time. The conversation is casual and filled with humor. What is happening, people? Team Nade, episode 10. We're back. Back with some brand new news, you could say. Here with the main guy, 4z98. What's happening, man? What's happening? I'm doing all right. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm not too bad. Not too bad. Can't really complain. It's been a decent little weekend. Works long during the week, but then you get to Thursday, and then it all comes crashing down. I do love that about those COD events, man. I can't lie. The Thursday start is so sick, because it's like, it's not even the weekend yet, but I get to watch high-level esports. You, my dear sir, missed the day, missed the Friday. No, I didn't. I didn't miss the Friday. I watched the Friday. I missed the Saturday. Ah, Saturday. My understanding, you missed the Saturday. I saw everything that was going on on Twitter, though. That was insane. Saw some mad clips. Why the fuck were you missing the Saturday? That's what my question is. A little birthday party, bro. Birthday party. Got out on the town. My man out again. Out again. This is becoming a hobbit. I don't think I like this. This podcast can't contain the people out. Anything Pentelden for next weekend, so it's fine. All right, but the Pentelden can change. It's a week away. You know what I mean? You could turn up tomorrow and be like, yeah, I'm going out again next weekend. I don't think so. Like, I have like two groups of mates that would go on a night out. And I've been on night out with them back a couple of weeks. Yeah, yeah. And it normally takes like three months to organize one, so. To be fair, if you went out next weekend, you wouldn't actually miss anything. No, this is true. I saw the Call of Duty's not back until, it's like another 18 days or something. Raging. Which is insane. Raging, you know? That's rough, that, man. But, I'd like to hear some news about said Halo. Because when is the Halo supposed to be coming back? Well, they haven't officially announced that yet, to be fair. Like, the event, the Optic event is like, I think it's the 15th of March to the 17th of March. Okay. That seems to ring a bell for me. But obviously they want to do all their qualifying events first. I saw that on the roadmap. They were talking about doing qualifying events. So, I imagine they must be starting pretty soon. But they haven't like, it hasn't been officially announced that it like, this is going to be that or whatever. Two reasons why I say that. LVT obviously do their Thursday, Thursday? Sunday night thing. Yes. The little 4v4 thing. So that was on yesterday. They had encountered some technical difficulties with the servers, which unfortunately meant a lot of the teams that were still competing couldn't stay competing in the tournament. They just had to put them off because obviously like time constraints and stuff. They had the 2v2 on the Saturday as well. Yeah, the 2v2. I didn't watch any of the 2v2 this week, I can't remember. I didn't watch, I watched like very little of it, but I did, I managed to log in just as Renegade was having a go at BooBoo, which I found quite funny. It was, they just like, I think it was Renegade and Snakebite who then lost against BooBoo and Spartan. And then just before they left, the Renegade and Snakebite left the game, Renegade went into the chat and was like, Jesse, you are so bad. Jesse, you suck. You're only good with the shock, literally. And then left. Oh mate, right. Mama went for it. It just was like no prisoners after that. I love that, Renegade. My guy's like, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's the thing. It's like that World Championship stuff, isn't it? Like they dropped that video of him on the Saturday night. And at the end of it, he's like, oh, I am gonna be a world champion. I am gonna be the best in the world. Yeah. And then on the Sunday, they go and do what no team has managed to do in Infinite. You know what I mean? Reset the bracket in the grand finals and then sweep it. Yeah. Insane levels. But then also like, that team's disgusting. Oh yeah, definitely. But anyway, yeah, LVT aside. Speaking of LVT, I'll say it now, obviously. The EU boys were competing yesterday. Tuned in to see Foe, which is Jimbo, Snipe Drone, Mighty's, Woom. Playing LagComp, yeah, LagComp, which is SLG, Seeker, Chick, and then Glory, which is definitely not the Quadrant roster. Oh no, no, no, no, no, definitely not. Definitely not. Absolutely not. Don't be silly. It's silly that you would even suggest such a thing. Who do you think you are trying to suggest that? Uneducated, that's what I heard. I know, I know. I have heard that before too, so. They were saying that I'm uneducated. Yeah, out of the two of us, you are definitely the uneducated one here. No, probably not. But then I did get told something, which I found quite amusing this weekend, which we won't go into. No, no, no, no, no, no. We'll leave that one just sitting there. Hold that. Um. Jesus. Oh no. Quadrant roster, go, quick. Oh, the Quadrant roster. Yeah, well, anyway, right. So they were playing them, and then they beat them like three-one, I think. Okay. So move on in the series, and obviously then, I don't know if you've seen the clip, but there is a clip of Wootom doing Wootom things. Like, Giza picks up like a dirty triple, including like a thrust ninja, where he's like above the boy, and he like thrusts backwards to ninja him. Oh. It was insane. And then he goes down the LR, like pieces like the next guy. It didn't come up as an overkill, which is like a shame, because I guess there was too much time in between the kills. Yeah. And like, I can't even remember which team that was against. I couldn't really make it out, because I've only seen it on Twitter video, so the quality wasn't that great. But like, it was disgusting. You know what I mean? Really been enjoying these like, these 4v4 tournaments, because you're seeing like, feel like some of it is teams using it to like sort of see where they are, and some of it is just like players playing together. You know what I mean? Yeah, because it's the open stuff as well. Yeah, exactly. It allows just anybody to get involved in playing a 4v4 actual competitive game. And you can come up against the sort of big time players. Yeah, for sure, man. You might get absolutely slammed, but it's an experience. You know what I mean? Yeah, you might get absolutely slammed. But it's an experience. And when you get that one kill, that's all you care about. You know what I mean? Are you speaking from experience, bro? What do you mean? I remember what happened, bro. What happened when? When we played those FFAs. We both got absolutely embarrassed. Oh, yes. I remember that. I've got context for everybody at home. Me and Jain, or I think Jain inserted himself into a free-for-all, and then managed to convince me to do it. This was on, what, like a Tuesday or Wednesday? It was a Wednesday afternoon in April last year. Yeah. Managed to convince me to do it. I got, both of us got absolutely railed. I didn't come last in either of the ones that I played in. I did. I got like, I got a couple of kills, and I made sure I made it big. I was like, trying to skirt across about curve slides and everything. It seemed like I knew what I was doing. Still got absolutely barred. Did you have in your first fobby warlord? Yeah, I think I did, yeah. One of those. So that was always, that's trial by fire. That's like if you got chucked in the deep end as a child to learn how to swim. All right, I feel if you went and did it now, we'd still get absolutely barred. Well, yeah, yeah, you're right, yeah. It's one of them, man. I feel like we were speaking about this the other day in terms of Call of Duty, because we've been playing about our ranks. But like, it's insane when you come up against a player and you're just like, literally like, I've just been skill gapped. You know what I mean? Obviously we were talking about it in ranks to do with like rotations and knowing when, where to go and like spawns and stuff. But like, so like in those FFAs, where a lot of the time it's just a straight up one V one. To be fair, maybe that's why I kept getting peace because I was looking for straight up one V ones. You know what I mean? Rather than playing smart, I was just like, yes, now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Forward every time. I went into that just trying to kill anything I could. Yeah, exactly. I went in with no strategy. I was like, my entire strategy is just going to be to fly around the map, five and everything that moves. And it's like, you just get slapped. I like literally, I remember this one boy, like he just, I came in all guns blazing. He just like literally looked at me, put some mad move on me and I was just dead. And I was like, oh, right, okay. I just got fucking reversed with a battle rifle. That wasn't a battle rifle. And I, I feel like I'm better with the bandit than the battle rifle. I give it. Yeah, for sure. Tell me if it's a change of heart when it first got put in. The thing you're still right is like literally, you remember what I said to you on that first day when like I'd been playing for like two hours and you jumped in and you were like, what is this game? I don't want to play this anymore. Which I'm pretty sure is episode two of the team name podcast. You want to hear my review on the bandit when it first came in. Actually, we did discuss it on the pod, didn't we? And I said to you and I was like, I'll just give it a little bit of time. And like, now I like personally, I feel like I understand the game better now. Yeah. Like, because the bandit is so, it changes the game, like it makes it better. You know what I mean? I think it works a little better because obviously the game, the server is not trying to keep track of three shots every time you pull the trigger. Yeah, this is true, actually. It's keeping track of one. And plus, if you're in a gun fight, and it's a one-on-one gun fight, it's trying to track six bullets every fucking trigger pull. Yeah, exactly. It's a lot for the servers to handle. And it's stupid to say that, but like, it is. And these are servers that are already riddled with desync, et cetera, et cetera. That's good, there's a lot of fissure in it. Oh, you look at LBT yesterday, and their downtime. And their servers went down, yeah. Servers went down. That was the reason why they had to cancel a load of people out. Yeah. From the tournament, because the servers went down for such a long period of time that they were just like, it's not sustainable for us to continue this competition. Yeah, because it was still ongoing when I went to bed at midnight. Yeah, to be fair. It would just continue even longer. Fair enough, it's American teams, but there's an American and EU, and elsewhere, but it's still like, you start to get, if it was still doing, it would probably still be ongoing in the middle of the day today. Say we're doing it all the way through, you know what I mean? Potentially, yeah, because it's like, I don't know, I feel like they must stream for like, somewhere between eight and 12 hours every Sunday. The, over there, the last, I don't know when that button is on. One of the, I think it was, the Saturday one was on for 24 hours. Oh yeah, they do that as well, though, like sometimes they'll just leave the stream on. Like when there's like a Halo LAN event, the stream will just continuously go, yeah, for the drops and stuff, which I think is sick, like I do rate LBT for that. From what I have of the drops, there's no variation, you know what I mean? Yeah, they do need to come up with some new stuff, and it does need to be, for me, I like weapon coatings. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I'd love some new weapon coatings. I'd love some, you know, like weapon kits, maybe. Yeah. Like, that'd be sick. Or, you know, like where it like, changes part of it. Like there's a new sniper rifle coming out tomorrow, which looks like a rail gun, it looks nuts. Speaking of tomorrow, I think they're resetting the ranks tomorrow. Yes, they are. Well, they should be. They normally do. Which is always fun. That's exciting. Are we gonna do the five games together? Yeah, we've got to. We'll do that tomorrow. My guy. Get that done. Hey, I hate it when you go off and do it on your own, and I'm like left, trying to do all my ones. I hate it. I genuinely hate it. I can't help it, man. I understand you're far better at doing ones, like you're playing on your ones on Halo. Like, I understand that. But for me, no. No. I could do it. I did it for a while, and then, no. I prefer doing it with like, people, because you can, like I live for the competitive call-outs, and the team play, and whatever else. But doing it on my ones, trying to play with randos is just incredibly difficult. And I get to become very demoralized. Yeah, I feel the thing is with it, is like, yeah, the random teammate is always gonna do something. Like, more times than not, when I play on my own, the teammate will do something, and I'm just like, why have you done that? I think it's the lack of communication you have. You know what I mean? Like, fair enough, you could go into the game chat and talk to each other, and do it. But the nine out of 10 times, they're either not gonna speak, or they're just gonna shout abuse at you, because they don't agree with. So, the lack of information means that you make plays based off what you think is knowing, and they make plays off based off what they think is right. And half the time, it'll, unless you win your ones, it'll break the wrong way for you. Yeah, I feel like that's the thing, man. You just have to try and control what you're doing. You know what I mean? Like, just like, whatever your situation is in the game, whatever they do is kind of irrelevant. Like, just make plans based upon what you can control. Yeah. One thing I am glad about. What's that? I'm not a woman trying to fucking go into pubs. The amount of abuse that you would get. Oh yeah, it'd be wild. You get enough abuse as it is, as males. But you go in there as a female, you'd get even more, and it'd be the same standard sort of abuse. You know what I mean? I feel like it'd be 10 times as worse. So, it's the only policy that I can take away from getting abuse off random friends' donnies online. Is there a report button? You know how they called you with a report for voice communication? Do they have that? I think there is, yeah. I'm pretty sure there is a way for you to report. Is it gonna be in the profile? I see, I don't know, to be honest with you. I've never seen it. I don't think it comes up like a Call of Duty thing. But I also remember a while back, basically, wherever it was, where you went and clicked on it, and you clicked report, and then it would then open up the, so say you did it on the Xbox, it would open up a web browser. Yeah. And then you would have to go and log into Waypoint, and do something else, and upload some screenshots, and do a photo, and a recording, and it's just like, well, if I wanna, if I'm sat in a game, and someone's smack-talking me. Yeah. You know what I mean? I don't wanna, not necessarily smack-talking, but you know what I mean? Someone's gunning for me. Yeah. It's literally just like, oh, well, reported. But then I still wanna play the game. Yeah. You know what I mean? I don't wanna spend nine years of my life filling out forms. Yeah, trying to flick through all that. Because the browser on the Xbox is terrible. Terribly designed as well. It's trash. Yeah. It's bad. But I'll tell you what we did have this week as well. Do tell me. We had the return of scrims. Oh, boy. Which is obviously the second reason as to why the start of the season is evidently around the corner. Yeah. If the pro players and the top tier people have all started practicing again, then it's getting close. You know what I mean? Yeah. Some interesting scrim results. Space Station, Native Gaming, 13-2. Space Station is a pretty wild one. Pretty dominant. Native Gaming took nine games to Sentinels 8. Okay, interesting. Which is pretty interesting. I think that's gonna be this year. I think Sentinels, Native Gaming, Shopify, Quadrant are all gonna be around that same area. You know what I mean? I think they're all gonna be fighting out for those top four spots. Because personally, I still have Space Station, OpTic, FaZe as the top three teams in the league. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm happy to be proven wrong at any point because that'll make some amazing viewing. I feel like Quadrant and Sentinels do have the potential to get into that. Yeah, for sure. Sentinels, definitely. Quadrant, I'm not too convinced about. No? To be perfectly honest with you, no. I mean, obviously, if they stick with Glory, which I think they will do, they've had a couple of good showings competitively and a couple of bad showings competitively. Like they scrimmed Foe this week. This week, which is obviously the Jimbo team that we've mentioned before. And they, you know, Foe took 11 games off them to their four. And then they also got beat in the LVT thing, 3v1. You know what I mean? So it's like, if that is gonna be the Quadrant roster, there's, I don't think they're gonna be as dominant as they were before. Do you think that Legend has that much of, was that good of a player for them? Oh yeah, Legend's that guy, bro. 100%. I think, you know, partly the other thing as well might be a potential language barrier. Okay, yeah. Because obviously, the three guys that are on Quadrant are all French. Glory is Irish. So it's like, Oh. Obviously, like all three guys on Quadrant can speak perfect English. But it's still gonna be getting used to that new way of some English you can rely on. Yeah, the new sort of tone and. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because it's like I said, it's mostly the same, but there is slight differences and certain things will be harder to understand. Yeah. Like, for example, I know Snape, I said, when they first played, I was like, oh, I don't know how to speak English. Snape, I said, when they first played with Renegade on LAN, like when they first played with Renegade at LA anyway, the comms were just different. You know what I mean? And like when they played with him on LAN, like he was saying that like, he wasn't prepared for Renegade's intensity. Basically, like he came through, he was like super loud and like this, that and the other. He just had to like, that was like unsettling for him as a competitor because it's something different in their area of control. You know what I mean? Like, so it's like, it can happen to everyone. But then also at the same time, it's Quadrant, like those are still the four best players in the EU, as far as I'm concerned. Oh yeah, definitely. You know what I mean? If you're on Quadrant, you're one of the four best players. So, but Legend is that guy, bro, a hundred percent. I went back and watched that, the 2v2 from a couple of weeks ago when he won it with Bound. And like, the level is like literally right there. Like up there with the top tier individual players. You know what I mean? Yeah. Any other shows? We can look forward to that. Oh yeah, we got to see Opsit Gaming. Let's go. As a four for the first time. The result was pretty dominant, I can't lie. They did take 13 games off Cloud9, who took none off Opsic. Jeez. So, without wanting to be disrespectful, because that isn't the way that this is intended. There we go, strapping. So, you know, if someone's about to say some disrespectful shit. Well, Cloud9, like I feel like there's a couple of roster changes there. Yeah. But there's two different calibers of team, in my opinion. You know what I mean? Like Cloud9, like don't get me wrong, good team. But Opsic are a top three team. Like, they're better. They are. But they're just better. This is the issue that I had, because obviously I said to you that they were, because that was on, was that yesterday? Saturday, I think, the 27th. So obviously you were out and I was messaging you as it was on. And I clicked onto it and I was like, the only time that they stream the scrims is when it's against quite a lesser team than themselves. Yeah. Which, there's probably four bigger reasons than I understand or know about, in a sense of trying to hide their actual play calls and whatever else. But, and then trying to like see how they gel together that's probably scrimming it, streaming it. But I always find that it's like, it's kind of like, in a way, just a little bit disrespectful to the lesser team, because it's just them getting slammed over and over and over. You know what I mean? I mean, it is 100%, but you also kind of have to look at it from their perspective. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so say like Cloud9, right? Like, they're getting practice against a top three team. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's sort of like, and you know, with this streaming thing, like I'm not really sure why specifically they would choose to stream that. Unless they're going to start streaming all of their scrims again. Because that was a thing that a lot of people did like right at the start of Halo Infinite, and then it slowly like disappeared. You know what I mean? I wish they would stream all the scrims, so you can see how they fare against every team. Yeah, it would be really interesting. But they don't do that. It always just seems to be the lesser teams. And I find that just a little bit, I don't know. I'm not a huge fan of it. I don't know. Stream all of them or don't stream any of them. I feel like potentially that could have been a, we are here, we are practicing. Look, this is what we're doing. You know what I mean? Because obviously, as we found out this weekend, the Green Wall, they're intense people. They are intense people. Very intense people. Very. I think that's, I'm thinking about my man with the shoeie, bruv. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. What's he called? Boozer. Boozer. Boozer. My man, with the helmet and the shoeie and the mad glasses. Right. Oh, my man, yeah, my man, yeah. To be fair, right, fair play. I said that, yeah, it's mad. It is genuinely mad. Um, so. Oh, I just clicked on that. What are you doing? There we go. No, sorry. There was like a weird noise on my computer. I was seeing what was happening. It's me talking to you. No, it's not. No, it's not that. It was like a beef or something. I thought something had randomly unplugged like it did before. No, that was me moving your Discord channel. That's what that was. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. Very similar sound, to be fair. Really? Fuck off. Well, it was, because it was like, I've got my, um, because it wasn't playing through the headset. It was playing through, like, a screen. Which is a bit of a standard word. You know what I mean? Right. Okay. Well, I got the headset on, obviously. And you were chatting bollocks about something. What do you mean? I don't know. I don't know what we were talking about. Oh, my. No, then. Not now. Obviously, I know what we're talking about now. Like, then. Oh, then? When the thing went off, like. It's irrelevant, anyway. I don't fucking know. We chat so much fucking shit to each other every single day. I lose track of what we actually talk about. Yeah, you're getting sidetracked, bro. That's part of this entire podcast. It's not a staple. Oh, dear. We've toned it down a lot in the past few weeks. Yeah, we do have to go back to it every now and then. It's still there, you know? Is there any other Halo news for the? I don't think so. I think that's pretty much it on Halo. I mean, there's probably some other stuff that I'm. There is the, before we started recording, you mentioned, what was his name? Wootom? Is that the right one? Have you mentioned Wootom? Yeah, we talked about Wootom, I said about him in the Ninja. Oh, yes. In the three-piece. Honestly, I'm listening, promise. Jesus. Oh, dear. But yeah, oh, obviously new season of Halo tomorrow, which is new battle pass and new event pass. The event pass is all like Halo Wars cosmetics and stuff, I think. Okay, that's good. Get cross-core shoulders now, which is gonna be sick. Do you think that the new skins are gonna release? Yes, they are. The new team skins, are they? Yes, they are. All right, let me check my bank real quick. That's getting purchased. Make sure I've got the cashish for it. Oh, SSG skin. That skin is disgusting, bruv. Yeah, the Sauron eye. It's worth paying just for the visor. Yeah. The visor's insane. I want for everybody to be running that. Oh, yeah, everyone's gonna have it. Everyone will have it for a week and then no one will use it. You know what I think it's gonna look sick on? You know the armor core? And it's like the bloke. Obviously, it's a bloke. You know what I mean? Obviously, it's a Spartan, isn't it? So it's obviously gonna look like a person. Anyway, the one where they launched it was like all the cyber security intrusion stuff. Chimera, I think it's called. Right. The aesthetics on it gives you like the mad muscled arms and shit. Yeah. You know which one I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. You can get them like the color matched chest, shoulders, knees, like things for it. So like whatever visor you put on, it goes on those bits as well. I think the SSG visor is gonna look insane on that armor core. Nice. I think that'll look cool. Well, I can't wait for tomorrow to see all the different combinations we'll come up with again. Everyone will just be running that. Yeah, probably. Nearly. But yeah, I think that's it for Halo. What are you saying, bro? What's the call that you've been saying? Because it was a quiet weekend for this weekend. Quiet weekend? There wasn't a lot going on, was there? What the, what? What? You've been sleeping, you've been living under a rock. Is that hangover still on you? No, the hangover is not still on me. Yeah, but it is. I don't have a hangover. I didn't have a hangover yesterday either. Oh, mate, I talked to you yesterday. You are nae great. No, I was fine. I feel like I came back into the day, you know what I mean? The longer the day got, the more awake I felt. Yeah, because the hangover is believing you. Exactly. At the time, you were nae in a great way. No, I was pretty rough. I jumped on the mic. I was like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the fact that the first thing I was like, yeah, right. And you were like, I'm hanging. I feel rough. You went to me, how are you feeling? And I was just like, oh, man. I felt good. Death warmed up at that point. I would've just done something I like. But no. I've just injured myself. I'm sat completely still in my chair, but I've somehow managed to work myself. You're always attention-seeking, though. You get onto the con and all of a sudden, oh, my leg! Shut up. Let me have my time. Okay. Go for it. What do you mean, okay? No, no, no, I seem like I'm sick. Fuck, ow. That wasn't what I was doing at all. I just genuinely can't straighten my fucking leg at the moment. Ow, there we go. No, I'm all good, man. All right, go for your life. Tell me about the cod, because there is some important questions that need answering. Yeah, right. So for everybody, and you who was living under a rock, major one, Boston Breach. We finally had our first major. Now, several talking points to take from the major. What would you like to talk about first? Would you like to talk about some of the talking points, or would you like the scores for the weekend? Yeah, run me through the scores, man, because there was one thing that I wanted to speak about, right, but that would be more of a, that's a later on into the segment thing. Okay, okay. You know what I mean? Not right now. Okay, okay, right. Go for it, bro. We've got four days of scores, so bear with me, everybody. This is gonna take a little bit of time to get through. Probably a lot of information I'm gonna throw at you. Okay? This might be a really stupid question, bro. Yeah. But every team in the league plays at the major, don't they? Yeah. It's only champs where some of them don't qualify. Yes, that's right. Okay, cool, yeah. I wasn't sure, because I was trying to work out how many teams were in the league the other day. I couldn't, I couldn't work that out, and you know what I mean? But I wasn't sure whether they were all competing or not. It's like 12 or 16 or something, isn't it? 12 teams in the league. 12 teams, okay. Yeah. So, we've got 12 team scores to get through on this first couple of days. So, here we go. So, on Friday the 25th of January, we had phase three, LAG nil. You mean Thursday? That's the one. Thursday, 25th of January. That's fucking, hang on. I'll back out, yeah. Funny. Thursday, 25th of January. Phase three, LAG nil. Phase looked absolutely disgusting in that series. As much as I agree with that, I also disagree, because it was LAG, and they're not... No, they're not great, but the phase looked absolutely insane. Yeah. All right. And then we got New York Subliners nil. Rocker three. Big upset on game number two. And you know, they brought them onto the stage as the reigning world champions as well, man. Oh, of course they did. And they had to. Yeah. And then they got slapped, bro. Oh, man. New York, I think Rocker put out a tweet, I think it was accuracy on the phone, that said potential fraud, the New York Subliners logo on it. New York Onliners. Yeah, and there was the other one after Awakening got a three-piece, they were like, New York Onliners. Just, ah, unreal. Then Ultra three, surge nil. Not really much of a surprise there, in my opinion. And then Heretics nil, Optic three. They took that last game, it was the last game that Heretics played, I think. Oh, no. So the last time they played was on the Friday before, the 20th, five days previous to this major, and it was three nil, Heretics. Optic came back out and swept them out of the fucking building, straight to the elimination bracket. No prisoners, got them out. They did it when it mattered, Optic. Optic looked really good in that series. Oh, yeah. Well, that whole Friday, Thursday, sorry, there was only three nil games, all the way through. That's actually nuts. It just happens, though, you know what I mean? I'm surprised by the Heretics game, and the Subliners game, more than anything. Those were the two top teams that didn't have been that easy to sweep. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing is, though, with the Heretics, we were speaking about the Heretics for a couple of weeks before this, and, you know, we were both saying, are they good, are they not that good? We don't know, we can't tell. The first big team they played against was Optic, and they won three nil. But then, playing on LAN is an entirely different beast. Yeah, exactly. Especially, I feel like playing against Optic on LAN is completely different as well. Oh, yeah. It cut us off the crowd, didn't it, you know what I mean? Yeah, the crowd. That's how that started. Didn't have a lot to do with it. Yeah. As we said, MabuzaBoy, and there was heaps and heaps of people rating Optic, and the noise they make, and how much they get behind the team is unreal. Moving on to Friday, the 26th, LAG 3, LAT 1. Heretics nil, Legion 3. Heretics, into winners bracket, 3-0'd in both games. It's a double bubble, it really is. It's a double bubble, Terry. That'll be double bubble, double bubble. It's a double bubble of failure. Genuinely, that was one of the biggest surprises that weekend, was how quickly the Heretics turned up, played one game on two different days, and didn't even win a map. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's crazy to me that they've done that. The other thing is, though, is it could be, you know, obviously when subliners fell to the lower bracket, we had that conversation of like, what? You know what I mean? I literally just thought, what? And you said to me then, you were like, oh, well, it's a new roster. You know what I mean? Yeah, a new roster playing online. It could be the same thing for Heretics as well. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it was like that first event nerves in it. Yeah, first event nerves playing as a new team, not knowing how each other will play online. And then obviously, LAN, you've got the crowd, you're all playing on the same ping and the same server. Yeah. I'll come back to day one in a second once I finish these scores on day two. Just to mention something about servers and LAN. Um, Surge three, Boston two. Boston, first game in their own home major, out. Yeah, that was unfortunate. The crowd was getting behind them. They just couldn't find it, didn't have the legs to get it, which is disappointing, but Boston do have that potential to either do really well or fail at the first hurdle, I find. And then- I feel like half their team is undeniably good and the other half is just very unproven. You know what I mean? Yeah, I get what you mean. It's like Sasha and Priester is like, well, they've got pedigree, haven't they? Like, you know what I mean? It's not like they definitely know what they're doing. Like, Priester just won a world championship. Yeah. But the other two guys, it's kind of like- Caps is all I'm not convinced on. Snoopy, Snoopy, I rate. For this has been his, he came into the league last year as a rookie, but like quite late into it. So this is still, I'd still say this is part of his rookie. Yeah. He looks really good. And then- The show was just a bit questionable all weekend. All weekend for three games. Definitely. And then finally, to round off the shock on fucking Friday, New York Subliners won, Carolina Royal Ravens, three. Yeah, who saw that coming? Not fucking us. Who saw that happening? Where did the fuck, Ravens have gone to land just to say this, you know what? We like playing Cod. We're actually quite good if we put our heads to it. New roster though as well, isn't it, for the Ravens? Yeah, they had Clayster, Felony, Gwyn, TJ, Halle, turned up against the reigning champs. And you absolutely hate to see it. Like not for Clayster, but for TJ, Halle. What is your pee for TJ, Halle? I don't know. I actually don't know. You don't even know the man? I don't like it. I don't think, I think it's his name. I don't like his name. Cause his name is his actual name. And to me, that's like, I don't know. That one settles me. Yeah, but your name's Brian. Yeah, a hundred percent. My name's Brian. That's correct, bro. Never forget. So let's go back to Friday quickly. One of the main talking points on Friday, apart from like the little shock with the subliners, is how long the games took. Due to the fact that there was a crash in every single series. It was pain, mate. That was ridiculously painful to sit and watch. The PCs, whatever they had, the PCs they had was, they just, one of them, or like several of them just kept crashing. And it's mental. At like the first majors, it's like your first day, make a statement, and you've got crashing PCs. It did give us that amazing clip of the boy with the hand warmers, though. Yes, yes it did. That was amazing, that. To be fair with the overall timeline of the series is, because they were just three O's and quite quickly done, it was actually still in line with the times, even with all the several crashes. Like, we're still on time. I think the last game, which was the Optic? Optic Heritage started three minutes earlier than it was supposed to. And we had several crashes. That's the thing, isn't it, man? It worked out in the end. And I feel like they got that sorted for the Friday as well. Yeah. That was very much a Thursday issue, and then it got to Friday, and like, I don't think anyone lagged out. No, there was like a couple sticky moments that they were like, oh, I think they have, and then they came back. So they must have sorted it quite quickly, which is always a good thing to see. Right, Saturday the 27th, quite a lot on this one, so strap yourselves in. LAG versus Legion. You had LAG three, Legion two. Surge three, Ravens two. So Surge stopped the Ravens' loser's run. Cloyster wasn't very happy about it. He was sad that he couldn't do his run. Imagine if Ravens ended up in the grand final, bro. Mate, I would have rooted for them. You know what I mean? I would have been all for them. Ah, well, I mean, it never would have happened, because there's absolutely no danger anything from Carolina is gonna be anywhere near winning. Yeah, well, just like the actual NFL Carolina team, you get one or two wins, and that's you're done. That's it, yeah, one and done every single season. Next game, OpTic two, phase three. OpTic started really strong in that first game, in the hard point. It was the hard point Surge. The comms in that OpTic game were crazy. Yeah, they were crazy. Kenny's been brought in to be the leader of that team, and he's doing the work with the spawns, and knowing where to tell people to be, and where to look, and what's going on at all times. They weren't as crazy as though, bro. What's that? Everything that phase was doing. Yeah. This is the thing, it's like, these top three, four teams, it's such fine margins. All you need is one kill to go your way, and then you're there. It went all the way to game five, round 11 Surge, I think. No, that's wrong. It didn't go to round 11. It went to round nine or nine or something, I think. Yeah, nine or 10. So it nearly went the full distance, and that's what you want to see out of these top team games, is you want to see them go the full distance, because they're so entertaining. And I find that you can learn so much off of it, as well, by watching them. Oh yeah, 100%, yeah, 100%. Like, I especially like watching the Surge games, because I said this to you, didn't I, on either Thursday or Friday, that when, because you can see the little map, where you can see all the arrows and where they're positioned and what they're watching and what's going on, you really see the vision of what they're trying to achieve. And it's like, it's genuinely like watching a chess match. Yeah. It's insane. Like, it's so enjoyable just watching that bit, and then see, you know what I mean? It's like, oh, who's this in the gunfight? And they switch it to, and you're like, oh, mad. And then you see everyone rotate away, and you're like, that guy didn't get any kills, didn't do anything, really, but has then just pushed the entire team on the other side of the map. Yeah. One of the most interesting ones was on the Sunday, which we'll get onto for like search and stuff. That was like one of the most interesting ones. You'll know exactly which one it is when I come to it. But continuing with Saturday, you had Rocker nil, Ultra three. Then you had Optic three, Surge one. Then LAG two, Rocker three. So that left us with our top four for the Sunday, going into Championship Sunday, of Ultra, Phase, Optic, and Rocker. One of them is not like the others. How do you mean? What's Rocker doing in that, man? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? I was shocked about Rocker getting there. I think, because they started in winner's bracket, got, they won the first winners against New York, and then got knocked down. Okay, from Ultra, but they've managed to pull it back, and then bring it all the way to Championship Sunday. Which I find crazy for Rocker, to be fair. It is wild. It's a massive improvement over last season, I feel. Over last season, and on the online stuff as well, to be fair. Online, they weren't. They started off, what days was that? The weekend before the 20th of January, they were one and four. Online? Yeah. Wow. Which then they actually- That's wild, to be fair. They've managed to turn that around, and basically, like, put, what? How many series did they win? Like, four or five? Four? This tournament. Yeah, yeah. One, two, two. They won two? Okay, yeah. Subliners, and then Gorillas. Hey, taking the subliners out, though. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a big one to chuck down to the losers. That's huge, yeah. And then we go on to Sunday, 28th of January. Optic three, Rocker one. So that's Rocker out. Yeah. Then the winner's bracket, Ultra three, phase one. Yeah. So I think it was that. Oh, I'll finish them off first. And then in the losers, losers finals, Optic one, phase three. They dominated on that one. And then grand final, Ultra four, phase one. I can't remember- Yeah, that grand final was wild. Yeah, there was Ultras to lose after game two. Like, such control. In that entire time. But so, I can't remember if it was the Ultra, like the winner's bracket, or the championship bracket. There was the Search and Destroy Skid Row, where no matter what they did, they always had somebody's cross. It was against phase. Yeah, against phase. Ultra against phase. It was, no matter what happened, they always had the cross and had the trade. It was so, set up so beautifully on that Search Skid Row. I can't stress how much, if you've got any- Game two, grand final. If you've got any interest in COD competitive, or wanting to look back and trying to learn how to become better in situations, and how to play as a team on this ranked stuff, watch that Skid Row Search. Because no matter what they did, they were always together, doing two gunfights together, watching each other's crosses, setting up in a situation that always caught phase out. Like phase were just constantly confused on what was going on. Yeah, that was nuts. I was actually wowed. Which, speaking of Ultra as well, Ultra deserved this major win, because they were so dominant through it, the entire four days. Where in total, they won 13 maps, and lost two. The only two they lost, was one against phase in the winner's bracket, and then one against phase in the championship bracket. Such dominance came out of that Ultra team, that it is scary for the rest of the season. You know what else is wild? Looking at these final scores for this grand final. What's that? Speaking about how dominant they are. In the hard points, Ultra won 250 to 239, and 250 to 237, and they won both search games six to two. Yeah. Like, that's insane. Ultra, this major, didn't lose a hard point or a search. No, it's wild. Search wins you tournaments. If your search game is not on point, you will not win. That's it. That is just a staple of playing competitive COD, especially majors and qualifiers, is search wins you games. But I think overall, a really good major, bar the Friday issues. Thursday. I think, fucking Thursday, Friday, fuck. I keep getting curious, because Friday is the normal qualifier game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, bar the Thursday issues of the PCs, really good major, in my opinion. Yeah, it was enjoyable. It was sick. What's your talking points? You had a couple of things you wanted to talk about. Kleenex is disgusting. Yes. Like, he is seemingly on another level right now, I would say. Yeah. I would go as far as to say that. The whole Ultra team is just really good. Like, their listening, you know, you were saying about the Optic earlier, the Optic listenings were very enjoyable to listen to. The phase ones are always a little bit, like, more intense, I feel. You can't, I can't understand Selium. No. You have to like, it takes like a good 30 seconds of listening to him. But it's- Before you can figure out what he's saying, I feel. It's like really quick and condensed call-outs. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like half words. Yeah, yeah. That's what it sounds like, but it's like exactly what he wants to say, but really quickly. And it's just, it's like, to be fair to the phase boys too, you're able to listen to that and respond to it, and understand it. If you can work out what he's saying, then yeah, like, you know what I mean? Chilling. Yeah. But for everybody else, I'm no. But the Ultra listenings were just something else. They were so chilled out. They were so relaxed. They were so like, oh, there's a guy going over here. Yeah, I've got him. You know what I mean? Like, so just like, it was sick just listening into that level of composure. Oh yeah. Like, the composure was insane. What I still find crazy is these boys don't, they don't like sit down and do VOD reviews together. Like, they just play. They do the scrims, they play. And they don't do VOD review or anything. I don't think, they don't do the play calls, and I don't, they must do some amount of VOD review, but they don't do like massive amounts like other teams will. Yeah. Because they just, they know that they're four crack teams, that four crack players, and they just go in and do exactly, and they know exactly how to play together. Yeah. They are absolutely insane. Kleenex and Insight have been teammates for time. Insight's insane, bro, as well. Like, I know they mentioned it on the broadcast about how Insight, when he's last alive in an SND, is like the most dangerous player in the game, basically. And like, bro, like that guy is an absolute assassin. Yeah. Insane, man. So it's like, they've got two, Insight and Kleenex have played together for years. Sounds like trippy and lucid. They've played together for years. They probably won't go anywhere without each other. Then you bring in Scrap last year, who was a rookie, who is, hit the ground running. As much as you can dislike his fucking shit-talking, he talks it. And fair enough, they had the little stumble at last year's Champs, where he talked the big game and stumbled quite heavily, and broke both his front teeth doing it. Taking it in, he'll talk the talk and he can walk it. And then you get Envoy from an LAT side that were really competitive, who is a Champs winner and sticks him into that team. Yeah. You're just taking quality and sticking it on top of quality on top of quality. I remember we had the conversation about LAT when they broke up, like at the end of last season. They've improved three top teams. You stick Kenny into OpTic, which is improving because you get the leader out of it. You stick Draven to FaZe, which is an incredible AR to have on your team. And then you stick Envoy into Ultra, which is, look at what they've done. To drop two maps against everybody, against two, like against FaZe, that was the only team that they dropped maps to, is incredible. Yeah, this is true. And you think FaZe came into this major without a loss. Yeah, they were looking like the clear favorites to go on and win it. Because who did Ultra lose to during the online bit? During the online? It was something weird winning, like Legion or something, or like Ravens or something. Let me look back at my notes here. I'll try to do this very quickly if I can. The moment they won, they lost against Boston 3-0. Boston 3-0, okay. Which was a fucking major upset. Madness. Well, that's, yeah, really good major, in my opinion. And that's it for the COD for now. The next COD's gonna be 18 days, as you said earlier on, which is an interesting thing. The first game back after 18 days is Miami Heretics, Toronto Ultra. Ooh. Big. Absolutely massive. Team that had gone absolutely two 3-0 sweeps to then go against the major one champions who dropped two maps. Let's go. I have every faith in Heretics, man. Oh, Heretics, if Heretics turn up online, they're gonna be put down as like the onliners. So yeah, the next game starts from February the 16th, so that's the next qualifiers, which is two weeks on Friday, this Friday coming. Oh, bore me the fuck out. All right, Halo will be back soon, 100%, man. Fuckin' better be. Because, well, I mean, if you think that, like, how many match days are there? Six before the major? Yeah. Right. The COD major is the, like, if my memory is correct, and the Halo thing's happening on the 15th to the 17th, oh, it won't be the 15th to the 17th, maybe 16th to the 18th then, that's a full week before the Call of Duty major. Yeah. So the Halo qualifiers will have to start soon, surely. Ooh, we're getting into the busy schedule. We are, we're getting into the thick of it, man. Yeah, because it's gonna end up just gonna be like one or the other, and we're gonna have a lot of information to throw at people. Yeah, it's very exciting, exciting times. About to get into the main body of the season. Oh, I said the main body of the season, the season hasn't started. Yeah, it's not gonna start yet, but we're getting excited, building up. That first LAN event's gonna be insane, bro, I hope you're excited for that. Oh, I am, I'm always excited. Any competitive play, I'm always excited for it. But, that concludes the cards section of the podcast. I just wanted to touch on something, actually, before we jump off and go and do our next little project. Obviously, I was watching the Counter-Strike the other day. Yes. And a big part of that is using smoke grenades to like block lines of sight and stuff. Yeah. When I was playing ranks earlier, I was in a couple of S&D games, and I was like, I mean, I feel like you do see it, but also not as much. But like, the same principle, I feel, can be applied to like Call of Duty. Yeah. And it just makes me wonder why like teams don't, like, you know, like fake smoke and stuff as much as they do in other esports. You know, like in Counter-Strike and stuff like that. I think maybe one of the issues for Cods specifically is because if they see the player, like, and you tag them. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. You can tag them. So then you get the ping on it for a little, the live ping, which then if you shut down the smoke to try and like cover your exit, to try and get away, you can go in which direction they're going. Yeah, exactly. And then plus, you don't know that you're pinged, so you could run thinking, oh, I've crossed, and nobody's gonna know I've crossed, but then you're instantly ADS'd and gunned. Yes. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. But I get what you mean, though. Like, it could be used far more. But then the other side of that is, is like if you use it for your own benefit, it can be used for your own disadvantage as well. Because they've got the smoke on their side as well. It's like you block their line of sight, but you also block your own line of sight of where they are. Yeah, for sure. So it's like the players are smart about it. You move, they move. So then you're constantly still lost. Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's an under, I don't want to say underutilized, because I feel it's utilized quite well. Yeah. You know what I mean? In its current state in the CDO. Like, for example, I noticed that OpTic, in search rounds, like shots, he normally had the smoke, and he was also normally on the bomb. And for the way they allowed him to play that position, so like he was using the smoke a lot for his own personal movement. You know what I mean? So it's exactly what you want to do with Shotzi, I feel. Definitely. You know what I mean? Like you want to give him all the tools available for him to finesse someone. But like, it would be also nice to see it be used as sort of like a more utility thing with other teams. But I mean, I guess it's one of them, isn't it? Like, you know, swings and roundabouts, isn't it? Because you could think you're playing in an elite level smoke, and it's just not. Yeah, and as we've seen smokes with Call of Duty, they don't always look the same on both sides. True. Yes, we have experienced that. Like the gas in Warzone. Yeah, but that's an entirely different subject for an entirely different group of people to discuss. We need to get our third party investor on. Yes, yes, yes. Our stakeholder. Yeah, we're getting there. Shareholder? Yeah, our shareholder, isn't it? Our shareholder, yeah. Our, what's the, our new employee? The silent partner. Our Warzone representative. Correspondent in. Yeah. Whatever the man's called. Erzik Stan. Erzik Stan. I'm not going live. I'm not going to be around here, is it? Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. All right. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. No, no, no, no, wait. You've got to put in the break in between. I didn't wait long enough, did I? Yeah, because it'd be a bit weird for everybody else now. All right. But are they, I think that is, I think that's a pod. I think so. Yeah. I think your next engagement is ready to go, brother. I'm not going to lie to you. Yes, yes, yes it is. My phone is blowing off the hook right now. Yes, this is going to be fun. If you'd like, as well. This, there will be a, the clip of what is about to happen on the Forbes in 98 Twitch channel. It'll be clearly labeled. Please take a look, take a gander. But for the meantime, that'll do it for today. Might be a little bit slow on news next week because the call's not on, but there might be Halo news, hopefully. Yeah, I'm sure there will be. There's always, I feel there's always something to talk about with the Halo. Yeah, well, we'll have the update tomorrow and the ranks reset and stuff. So there won't be stuff in between. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Bro, you've told me about that, not 30 minutes ago and I already forgot. Yeah, that happens, though. Shocker. I forgot about Woodson and you talked about him. Yeah, that is true. You also forgot what day of the week it was twice. Multiple times. And then said it was a Friday, not a Thursday. So that's just, I'm not sure about that. But for the now, thank you very much, everybody, for listening. Thank you for joining in. Again, any comments, any feedback, please let us know, message it to us, stick it in the comments. We're wanting feedback to try and improve and make it better and make it what people wanna hear. But for now, that'll do. Catch you all next week in the next one.