The first CWL event of 2019 held major storylines across the three-day Black Ops 4 tournament, but none was more surprising than OpTic Gaming’s early exit finishing outside of the Top 8.
The Greenwall had gone into Fort Worth as heavy favorites to win it all but many questions surrounded the talent-filled roster after a collapse in Pool Play.
In the latest episode of OpTic’s Vision series, CoD star Seth ‘Scump’ Abner gave some insights as to what was going on behind the scenes that might have had a big impact on the team’s ability to perform.
The team was at full strength during Fort Worth, but it seems like OpTic decided to stick to the game plan in having Scump on the Maddox. He believes this was a big factor as to why the team lacked the explosiveness they’ve been known for.
“Honestly, I had a really bad event,” Scump said. “…I switched my role, which ended up encouraging me to switch my role indefinitely on our team to run a Maddox for more than half the maps. Honestly, I’m going to blame the event on me running the Maddox and that’s why we couldn’t heat up.”
(Timestamp at 17:31 for mobile viewers)
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While that might explain why the team failed to execute meaningful firefights, Scump also pointed to his more lenient approach to scrims that could have got in the way of crucial practice.
“Obviously you guys know that our team loves to troll in scrims,” Scump said. “We need to stop doing that. Me, personally… I just have fun with them and sometimes it goes bad because then [Crimsix] is like ‘What the fuck, man? No one’s listening to me, why is no one doing this’… We’re always shooting the shit, and I think we just need to stop doing that as well.”
Though the team had a rough showing in their last tournament, Scump thinks that the team could use it to regroup for future outings, saying: “I think [Fort Worth] wasn’t a positive, obviously, because no one wants to finish 12th after winning a tournament, but I think it really did ground us again.”
Scump and the rest of the OpTic lineup will have a couple of weeks to regroup before they return to CWL Pro League action against Enigma6 on April 1.