Call of Duty League to Replace Al Bagra Fortress Control with Himmelmatt Expo
The Call of Duty League community is getting exactly what it's been asking for - to replace Fortress Control.
This has been, overall, brutal. A ton of spawn traps and teams waiting to go on the defense. Attacking on Fortress has been not only tough to play on, but it's also been tough to watch. Teams will sit back and wait to take their defending round rather than attacking and risking deaths.
The new Call of Duty map will take its place. Himmelmatt Expo will be the new Control map. We will still see Fortess Hardpoint and SnD, but no longer do we have to sit through the stalemate of Control on that map.
A couple of teams have thrived on Fortress Control. The New York Subliners are 8-1 on the map, and Boston Breach is 6-3. But even elite teams have struggled. OpTic Texas is 1-5, and Atlanta FaZe is 1-2, with others like Toronto Ultra and Seattle Surge sitting at .500.
While some teams wanted to keep the map in the rotation, it's best to see how this new map plays compared to the struggles we've seen on Fortress.
According to Drew Pescaro on Twitter, CDL Pros voted 9-3 in favor of keeping Fortress Control in the map rotation. Then, another vote took place where CDL Pros voted 6-6, resulting in a reverse decision for Expo Control to replace Fortress Control.
Challengers will start March 29 with Expo Control, followed by the CDL the following weekend.
Some Call of Duty League players are less than thrilled with this decision, mainly because no teams are scrimming the new map.
Los Angeles Thieves player, Sam "Octane" Larew, had this to say on his stream, which was clipped on Twitter:
"These votes were made without playing the map. I will state on the record that every single team that voted in this s**t played the map less than three times. There's zero percent chance that the votes that happened were made based on actually playing the map as opposed to the biased team by team. Because, again, we asked every team to scrim the map that we had scrimmed the past couple of days, and they all said no. There's so much b******g about the map pool, and then we have a map that gets dropped onto our lap, good or bad, which, by the way, we don't know because we have not scrimmed it at the professional level to determine if it is good or bad enough to replace Fortress with. Like how f*****g insane is that?"
Zack is the Publishing Manager for Esports Illustrated. He grew up playing videos as a kid, mainly sports games and the Call of Duty series. Before his work at Esports Illustrated, Zack published content for the NFL Draft for various sites since 2017, including partner sites on FanNation and has appeared on various shows across the country and videos across the FanNation group. Outside of work, Zack enjoys spending time with his wife and three children. He loves playing football and video games with his son, taking his two daughters to get their favorite treats, and binge-watching shows with his wife. Zack began covering Esports at the end of 2022, mainly covering the Call of Duty League.