Evil Geniuses Wins the 2018 Call of Duty World League Championship, Taking Home $600,000

The 2018 Call of Duty World League Championship marked the end of the Call of Duty: WWII season of competitive play. To the surprise of everyone watching, Evil Geniuses came from a position of relative obscurity at the start of the tournament to take home a $600,000 check and shiny World Championship rings for each player. This is the first time that Evil Geniuses have won a CWL tournament, though two of the players have already won championship rings in the past (Patrick “Aches” Price and Bryan “Apathy” Zhelyazkov).

Their story started out early in the tournament, when they prevented last year’s World Championship winners, OpTic Gaming, from even entering bracketed play. With a clear favorite out of the game so early, it was anybody’s guess who would be wearing the rings, and even educated guesses didn’t typically include Evil Geniuses taking things so far. One by one, other teams fell to their prowess. Consisting of Justin “SiLLY” Fargo, Adam “Assault” Garcia, Patrick “Aches” Price, and Bryan “Apathy” Zhelyazkov, it seems that bumping out last year’s champs gave them the fuel they needed to carry the entire tournament.

Team Kaliber matched against Evil Geniuses for the grand finals, and it even looked for a moment like they could take it. In the first best-of-five, Kaliber went on a reverse sweep after Evil Geniuses won the first two games. Each match was close, a white knuckle ride all the way through to the finish. Because Kaliber had come up from the loser bracket, they had to win two best-of-fives in order to secure victory.

Unfortunately for Kaliber, it seems like the first series had run the team ragged. Evil Geniuses wouldn’t even let it be a close game. The final series had a strong showing from the Geniuses, sweeping Kaliber in the first three matches without ever giving them breathing room. The champs made it very clear that they intended to complete the circle, from dropping OpTic Gaming from the competition (which gave every other team some room to breathe), to taking the title for themselves.

We were at the 2018 Call of Duty World League Championship tournament in Columbus, Ohio. We’ll be bringing you more impressions and interviews from the event this week as we had a chance to witness the energy in the Nationwide Arena, and talk to some of the players who had a lot on the line.

The 2019 Call of Duty World League season will begin in December, kicking off the Black Ops 4 year of competitive play. Many players are looking forward to the faster-paced Treyarch title to change a lot of things up as we move on from the slower WWII.