Team Kaliber is defying every metric we have found necessary in the past three years. Yet, they are still making history and it doesn’t seem to be stopping. After CWL Nola, Team Kaliber has joined an illustrious group of teams that have won back to back events, such as OpTic, coL and Impact.
Although Team Kaliber has joined the ranks of the Call of Duty elite, the way they have started this run can’t be compared to any other team. Team Kaliber ended CWL Nola with an overall team K/D of 0.96. Dylan “Theory” McGee finished the event with a 0.78, which is the lowest K/D by a player on a winning team in Call of Duty History. Yet, it gets weirder. Martin “Chino” Chino finished with a 1.05, Kenny “Kenny” Williams finished with a 1.04 and Lamar “Accuracy” Abedi with a 0.99.
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Photo: Dot Esports
No player on Team Kaliber lit up the stat sheet, but for anyone who watched, they passed the eye test with flying colors. Watching Team Kaliber, and looking at a stat sheet after the event makes you question the overall stats they finished the weekend with. The truth lies in what has been over looked in the jet pack era.
Much of Team Kaliber’s success can be attributed to their roles being very clear for each individual player. In the jet pack era, roles were nearly nonexistent, with players being responsible for a little bit of everything. Call of Duty WWII finds itself going back to set roles for players, not exactly the same, but similar to the golden era of Black Ops 2. What needs clarification is that although roles are back, the specifics of roles are very different from days of old, and this may be where Team Kaliber has the upper hand over the competition.
Photo: Dexerto
The terms Slayer and Objective player are still here, but how the roles are played are very different for the boys on Team Kaliber.
One notable change is that the main Objective player for Team Kaliber in Hardpoint is Accuracy, their main AR. What this lets the squad do is push out the hills farther and allow a bigger margin for error. With an AR sitting in hill it allows the SMG players to push farther out for cuts. This forces opposing teams to battle for the hill much farther up the map. Team Kaliber doesn’t allow teams to get from spawn to hill without contest. Slayers’ roles are transformed from roamers to essentially the first players pushed up on lanes.
Due to this you will see K/D’s fall. However, by being so pushed up and in front of the hill, it allows them to spawn back at the hill as the next team is arriving. It’s something very common to what we saw last year in Frost Uplink. Team Kaliber forces two sets of kills before gaining access to the hill.
A notable reason why many other teams don’t seem to use this same tactic is that the gunfights you are taking further up the map are less suitable than one closer to hill. However, the ability for Team Kaliber to have essentially two chances to defend their hill makes the loss of potential gunfights farther up the hill a benefit. If they are forced to defend the hill a second time, they are now in the more advantageous positions. Team Kaliber forces teams to essentially break the hill twice before getting time. Against one of the talented teams in the game so far, just one break would be considered a success.
Every championship roster in Call of Duty has had a roster that fits into this mold, but does Team Kaliber fit the bill? The mold consists of four specific types of players, no matter the game.
Firstly, you need your team based around top tier AR and SMG Slayers. Although they are easy to find, they tend to be harder to get. This is what causes big organizations in Call of Duty to maintain their success year after year, always keeping the cream of the crop AR and SMG Slayers in house.
The next position you need to fill is your flex, objective role. The guy who may take a backseat from headlines to do what needs to be done (the Kevin Love role). The final player needed is your SnD player. Not only a player who can make plays, but someone who is always consistent, strong under pressure and can be relied on in Call of Duty’s most inconsistent game mode.
Top tier AR – Chino, Top tier SMG – Kenny
This is the backbone of the squad. A duo that should be considered the best in the game. There is not one player in either role that you can point to that has performed better than either of these players all year.
Theory has had an absolute 180 in his career this year. He sits in what is a very laid back, nice guy squad as the perfect leader. Not the flashiest player, not the best slayer, maybe not even the best leader. But there is no doubt he is the best leader for Team Kaliber. It is easy to say anyone in his position would flourish, and maybe they would. However, it’s hard to imagine the same consistency Team Kaliber brings without having Theory on the squad. He is surrounded by some of the best players in the world currently, but he is the guy who takes the sacrifice for the greater success of the team, and that’s much easier said than done.
Photo: Dexerto
This term has attracted some heat in recent years, but this is not the same type of SnD Star. We are not talking about the 14 year old with a keyboard and 1000 up/down for internet. We are talking about a player who plays the game one step ahead, and can be relied on for results in the most unexpected situations.
Let me be the first to say, I never would have thought this player could be Accuracy, even after Dallas I was doubtful. After CWL Nola, I bit the bullet, Accuracy is here to stay. He plays with a confidence, a trust in his teammates that you would expect in a previous champ. The thing with Accuracy is he has been a scapegoat for as long as I can remember his name in the scene. Always the player who would be the first dropped or the last to be picked up.
It very well may be that all he needed to make the jump to an elite level player was the support of his teammates. Accuracy walked away from CWL Nola with a 1.43 SnD K/D, the highest on his team. As much as many still doubt him, you can look to Accuracy to be the player grabbing victory out of the jaws of defeat for Team Kaliber all year long.
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Featured Image courtesy of VentureBeat.
Stats courtesy of CodCompStats.
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