ACHES joins surprise CDL Challengers team following Guerrillas release

Theo Salaun
aches cdl challengers

Two-time Call of Duty world champion Patrick ‘ACHES’ Price appears to have found a new home in the CDL Challengers circuit less than a week after his release from the Los Angeles Guerrillas.

A 10-year veteran, ACHES boasted an illustrious CoD career before getting benched by the Guerrillas in March 2020 and subsequently released in July.

But he has surprised everyone, including himself, by suddenly joining a new CDL Challengers roster that will automatically be qualifying for Challengers Finals.

As first mentioned by fellow vet Christopher ‘Parasite’ Duarte, who plays for Five Star in Challengers, ACHES will indeed be playing competitively this summer. This, and the new roster he’ll be playing with, has since been confirmed to Dexerto directly by new teammate, Michael ‘Apox’ Williams.

The roster will include ACHES, Apox, SpaceLy, ProFeeZy, and TcM – a team with a lot of experience, as each player has been in either the pro or amateur competitive scene for over five years.

  • Patrick ‘ACHES‘ Price
  • Michael ‘Apox‘ Williams
  • Christopher ‘ProFeeZy‘ Astudillo
  • Michael ‘Spacely‘ Schmale
  • Teegan ‘TcM‘ McCarthy

In a Reddit comment, ACHES dove into the logic behind his surprisingly quick return to competitive play. While many had been hoping for him to drop the sticks and pick up the microphone for CDL Champs this August, he explained that the opportunity was too good to pass up.

Upon being contacted by Spacely, a fellow pro since 2012, he decided that, having not played competitively since the end of February, “it would be fun” to join up and compete “for the sake of something to do and attempt to make some cash.”

ACHES Reddit
Aches’ comment on the Reddit post showing Parasite’s stream clip.

Part of the reason that it’ll be so easy to try and sneak away with some summer cash is that this lineup should auto-qualify for Challengers Finals based on Pro Points alone. ACHES claims to have 40,000 Pro Points, which would put him well within the top 30 of the Challengers’ individual standings.

Even if he is able to tap into the $250,000 NA Challengers prize pool, which awards $50,000 for first place before evening out substantially, it’s unclear whether he’ll look to move into a broadcast role or try and join another CDL team for the 2021 season and beyond.

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About The Author

Théo is a former writer at Dexerto based in New York and built on competition. Formerly an editor for Bleacher Report and philosophy student at McGill, he fell in love with Overwatch and Call of Duty — leading him to focus on esports for Dex.