Ahead of the Call of Duty League 2023 World Championship in just under a fortnight, Boston Breach has opted to make a roster change, bringing Eric “Snoopy” Pérez into the main lineup for Reece “Vivid” Drost.
Boston Breach has had a mixed season so far in the CDL as, while the team qualified for the season’s playoffs in Las Vegas, they managed no better than fourth at any of the Majors this year and failed to reach the top eight in three of the five Majors. They’ll enter Champs on June 15 as the seventh seed.
Throughout this time the roster has been in a constant state of flux with Joseph “Owakening” Conley the only player to survive the whole season. Ben “Beans” McMellon joined the lineup in February, Kyle “Kremp” Haworth joined in April, and now Snoopy becomes the third addition this season following an announcement on June 2.
Snoopy is an 18-year-old SMG player from Mexico who has been an explosive talent in the Challengers scene since debuting in Jan. 2023. In April, Boston Academy signed him to replace CDL-bound Kremp, with Snoopy securing his best result to date at Toronto Open where the academy team finished in third place.
Now joining Boston’s CDL lineup, this means the majority of the team are ex-Boston Academy graduates, highlighting how important the academy system is to the franchise.
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Exiting the starting lineup to make room for Snoopy is Vivid, who has had a somewhat disappointing season. While he was the team’s deadliest player during Boston’s home Major in February, across the entire season he ended with a 0.90 kill-death ratio—the tenth worst out of the 75 players who competed in this edition of the CDL.
This is not the first time Vivid has been benched, previously replaced by Kremp, only to rejoin the team three weeks later to swap places with Dylan “Nero” Koch. Now he’ll sit back down on the bench to give another rookie their CDL debut on the biggest stage in Call of Duty.
Snoopy’s maiden CDL appearance coming in the playoffs is an unprecedented situation that will surely make him a key player to watch at the competition. Not to be forgotten, Snoopy is the first Mexican player to take to CoD World Champs in over nine years, and the first Mexican to be signed by a franchised CDL team—meaning he has a nation of CoD fans behind him.
Boston’s CDL championship run will start on June 15 in Las Vegas against event favorites OpTic Texas in what will no doubt be an uphill battle.
