Clayster

Clayster
James Eubanks
Status	Active
Date of birth	May 7, 1992
Hometown	Winchester, Virginia
Nationality	American
Current team	FaZe Clan
Games	Call of Duty
Championships	MLG X Games 2014, Call of Duty Championship 2015
Nickname(s)	Clay
Professional career
Jan 2014 - Nov 2014	OpTic Gaming
Nov 2014 - Jan 2015	Team EnVyUs
Jan 2015 - June 2015	Denial eSports
August 2015-present	FaZe Clan

James Eubanks, (born May 7, 1992) better known as Clayster or Clay, is an American professional Call of Duty player who is currently the captain and Slayer for FaZe Clan.^[1] He was the Major League Gaming (MLG) X Games 2014 gold medalist playing with the winning team OpTic Gaming and MVP of the Call of Duty Championship 2015 playing with the winning team Denial eSports.^[2] He is from Winchester, Virginia and attended West Virginia University.^[3] He also played for Team Obey, OpTic Nation, RoughNeX, Thrust Nation, UNiTE Gaming, compLexity Gaming, Team Kaliber, OpTic Gaming, Team EnVyUs, Denial eSports.^[4]

Career

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 2009-2010 season

Clayster started playing competitive Call of Duty in 2007. In 2009, during the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 era, Clayster proved he was a top player by achieving a spot at the MLG National Championship 2009. In 2010, during the Black Ops season, he competed at both MLG Dallas as well as MLG Raleigh. Due to his academic commitments at West Virginia University, Clayster took a while off of competitive gaming to fully focus on his education. In 2012 Clayster started playing competitive gaming again during Black Ops 2 and he experienced almost unbelievable success.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II 2012-2013 season

During Black Ops 2 Clayster played for OpTic Nation, RoughNeX, Thrust, and UNiTE. After placing top 24 at the 2013 Call of Duty Championship with UNiTE, Clayster would get his biggest opportunity yet: the chance to join compLexity. Clay joined a line-up of ACHES, TeePee, and Crimsix going into the MLG Spring Championship, and the team would go all the way to the Grand Finals to then face the juggernaut of a team, Fariko.Impact. Here, compLexity would become the "Impact Killers" and start one of the most dominate dynasties in Call of Duty history. During his time as a member of compLexity, he and his teammates experienced incredible success, winning seven of the final eight events of Black Ops 2.

Call of Duty: Ghosts 2013-2014 season

After winning the first event of Call Of Duty: Ghosts, Clayster was dropped from compLexity due to a few personal issues within the team. Team KaLiBeR, who had lost Goonjar to EnVyUs, took the opportunity to pick up Clayster to join Sharp, Neslo, and Theory for the Call Of Duty: Ghosts season. Clayster's first event with Team KaLiBeR, saw the team make it to the grand final against his old team compLexity. As fired up as Clay was to beat his old team, he and the squad would lose the series and would deal with a 2nd-place finish. After the event, with a flurry of roster changes in the community, it was announced that Clayster had left Team KaLiBeR to join the OpTic Gaming squad alongside NaDeSHoT, Ricky, and Parasite for the remainder of the Ghosts season. Unsurprising to many fans of competitive Call of Duty, this roster did not last; a contrast of opinions, combined with similar play-styles saw both Ricky and Parasite leave to join Curse LV. OpTic Gaming took this opportunity to pick up MBoZe and Saints to complete the roster with NaDeSHoT and Clayster. Saints did not last long either, and former OpTic Gaming player, Scump would rejoin quickly after he left. And with this roster they would find some success placing 3rd at the 2014 Call of Duty Championship. After the World Championship and PAX East there was another flurry of roster changes which resulted in MBoZe becoming the new captain of the revived OpTic Nation pro team and ProoFy taking his place on OpTic Gaming. The team would place 8th at UGC Niagara, and be invited to attend the first MLG X Games Invitational. Here, OpTic Gaming would perform at the next level, advancing all the way through their bracket to face off against Team KaLiBeR in the Grand Final. In a Game 5 of Search and Destroy on Sovereign, Clayster would secure the 6-4 game win a 1v1 with Goonjar, and cement his place in history as one of the first Call of Duty Gold Medallist. Following X Games, Clayster and OpTic Gaming were then off to MLG Anaheim. They went into this event full of confidence of the back of their 1st-place finish at X Games as well as gaining the second seed after finishing second in the MLG League. They fought off all the competition 3-0 until they faced Evil Geniuses (formerly known as compLexity) in the winners final, to whom they lost 3-0. They won the losers final against TCM 3-0 to face Evil Geniuses in the Grand Final, but crashed out in the second best of 5 in the continuation match. This left them placing a very respectable second. Clayster and OpTic Gaming were then off to London to compete at Gfinity 3. Here, along with many other top teams, OpTic Gaming had a poor weekend finishing 5th-8th. Clayster himself performed exceptionally well in the Sovereign Search and Destroy of their knockout match against Epsilon but they were unable to close the win out, losing the series 3-2. After Gfinity 3, the team were then looking to bounce back from this poor result at UMG Dallas, but were still unable to replicate their form from X Games and MLG Anaheim, placing 4th after losing to OpTic Nation. UMG Nashville was next up and the OpTic Gaming roster was looking to place well in the tournament. However, that was not the case. They ended the tournament placing 5th-6th. With the Season 3 Playoffs steadily creeping up on them, OpTic Gaming wanted to make sure that they ended the Ghosts season with a bang. They went into the tournament looking off. It was the last match of the night and OpTic Gaming performed poorly that night against Denial losing 2-3. The next day however, OpTic Gaming was on fire not dropping a single map the entire day against Rise and OpTic Nation. On Championship Sunday, OpTic Gaming was looking to carry the momentum from the previous day onto Most Wanted. That was not the case. Most Wanted proved that they were the better team by beating OpTic Gaming 3-0 knocking them out of the tournament and placing 4th place at the last event of Ghosts.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 2014-2015 season

After the Season 3 playoffs, OpTic Gaming announced that they had dropped Clayster and ProoFy. Along with the CoD community, Clayster was upset about the decision. However, he handled it very maturely by thanking the OpTic organization and the fans for the continuous support throughout his 10-month tenure on the team. Clayster was then looking to join another team. With almost every team offering him a spot on their roster, Clayster made the decision to join EnVyUs. That choice made his fans and EnVyUs fans very happy knowing that EnVyUs could potentially be an amazing team. But surprisingly, they EnVyUs squad did not do amazing well as they would have expected at MLG Columbus when they ended up placing 5th-6th With the start of the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare season, EnVyUs didn't have the greatest start, but in the 2nd week of playing in the league, EnVyUs would unveil an amazing comeback by being the first team in the league to beat the Columbus Champions, FaZe who hadn't lost a league game yet. Unfortunately they were unable to carry this momentum forward and concluded with a T12 placing. Over the weeks the EnVyUs squad had its ups and downs in the CoD League, moving up the leaderboard until 17 January 2015 where he got traded over to Denial alongside JKap for ZooMaa and Saints. Denial proved to become Clayster's strongest team since the Black Ops 2 days with compLexity. As Clayster recalls in his "RosterMania" recap video on YouTube, it all started when they decided to play some league matches together and convincingly took some maps off of OpTic, the dominant team at the time. He went on to explain that as the roster continued to play in league matches together, they all recognized the immense potential of their roster: Clayster, Attach, Replays, and JKap. The team concluded the first season of the MLG CoD League at second place, trailing their future rivals OpTic Gaming. At the MLG Pro League Season 1 Playoffs, Denial fell first round in the Winners' Bracket against nV. However, Clay and the team showed immense resilience in the Losers' Bracket, defeat team after team to finally face OG in the Finals. They fell to OpTic Gaming 3-0, finishing with a 2nd placing. Denial's run at the NA Regional Finals was a similar situation. They fell to Revenge 3-0 in the second round of Winners, considered one of the biggest upsets in the tournament. However yet again, Clay lead his team through a dominant run in Loser's, where they returned the favor to Revenge, defeating them 3-0. They climbed to the Grand Final to face OpTic for the second time, 3-0 . This time, however, they kept the series much closer, with a Hardpoint within 7 points, a Round 11 S&D, and a 2-point Uplink. Finally, the time came for the Call of Duty Championship 2015. The team began with a bit of a shaky start, as they fell 3-2 to Prophecy who took 3 straight maps, concluding their pool with a 2nd seed. Things began to look even more grim when the Championship Bracket was released, and Denial was planned to face off against none other than OpTic in the first round of the Winner's Bracket. However, the team came out, all guns blazing, and taking the series vs. OpTic with a convincing 3-1 map count. After handing OpTic their first loss at a LAN tournament in the past 2 events, Denial gained the confidence to begin a strong performance in the Winner's Bracket. As opposed to the usual trend of falling early in the tournament, they continued their run with a 3-0 over Team Kaliber and a 3-1 over Automatic Reload, earning a spot in the Winner's Bracket Finals, facing Revenge for the first time of the tournament.

References

1. Rubens, Alex (2 October 2014). "OpTic Clayster: The Importance of Going Big". Red Bull. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
2. Heaney, James (31 March 2015). ""Clayster" of Denial eSports Named MVP of COD Championships". Escapist Magazine.
3. Tsukayama, Hayley (May 1, 2015). "Five ways professional gaming is like any other sport". Washington Post.
4. http://esports-nation.com/clayster-one-of-a-kind/