Back to the Drawing Board for the Chicago Huntsmen

The Chicago Huntsmen are coming off a poor performance at CDL Atlanta by their standards and the standard of their fans. Plagued by sloppy play all weekend, the Huntsmen did not look like their typical selves when on the main stage. This past weekend shed light on many flaws still apparent in Chicago’s gameplay and sends them back to the drawing board in preparation ahead of CDL Dallas at the end of March.

Drop Off in Hardpoint and Domination

Thus far in the CDL season, Chicago’s bread and butter has been their respawn gameplay. Leading up to Atlanta the Huntsmen were typically able to secure a 3-0 or 3-1 victory given their dominance in Hardpoint and Domination. With two of the three series for the Huntsmen going all five maps, Chicago looked far less dominant than the fans are used to. There were two main factors that contributed to this drop off: inefficient challenges and lack of success rotating

Inefficient Challenges

Throughout the weekend, there were times the kill feed lit up green and the Huntsmen looked right at home. However, more often than not Chicago found themselves in the unfamiliar territory of being down and having to fight from behind. The Chicago Huntsmen’s gameplan broke down piece by piece and players began to make individual challenges from disadvantageous positions. Although the sheer gunskill of players on the Huntsmen was sometimes enough, a majority of the time they found themselves with three, four or even five players dead. As this occurred more often towards the end of the tournament, the Huntsmen found themselves in deficits too large to come back from

Lack of Success Rotating

Courtesy of the Chicago Huntsmen

The Huntsmen had been down before on various maps this season and always made the hero plays and found a way to win. While not advisable, sometimes running up the middle of the map and getting a kill or two can turn a hill around for a team. Time and time again, much of the Huntsmen’s woes came down to rotations. On certain money hills, Chicago found themselves attempting to break well-established set-ups on hills. Another issue the Huntsmen ran into was even when they were set up on a potential hill, they lost most of the key gunfights and let the opposing team break right away. Potentially stemming from a lack of communication, Chicago simply did not handle these situations well.

No ‘I’ in Team

Given the vast amount of talent on the Huntsmen’s roster, hero plays a nearly guaranteed on a match-to-match basis for this squad. Yet, it has been said across countless Call of Duty titles that chemistry and teamwork can play as large if not a larger role than pure talent when it comes to a team’s ultimate success. Members of the Huntsmen have founded themselves isolated recently making desperation plays in order to decrease the score deficit. At times their play appeared disorganized and frantic which has led to the Huntsmen losing a bit of their edge.

Something the Huntsmen did better than other teams early on was leading unified pushes overwhelming the opposing team with pressure. Due to precise cover fire from the team’s AR players, Scump and Envoy were able to overwhelm their opponents with pressure. Over the coming weeks it will be imperative for the Huntsmen to return to what got them to first in the standings and play unified Call of Duty.

Featured image courtesy of the Chicago Huntsmen 

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