It's January 2026 and I'm still carrying that sick feeling from Astra Malorum. I was one place away from the "Shower" camo, the animated one with shooting stars that works on every weapon, and now I just get to watch it glide past in killcams. If you've been in a lobby lately, you've seen it too, and yeah, it's the kind of flex that makes you rethink why you even queued. I've even caught myself browsing stuff like CoD BO7 Bot Lobby out of sheer frustration, which is not how I usually play at all.

How The Bracket Broke Me

The rules weren't "do well," they were "be top five, or don't bother." That's what made it so brutal. I lived on Citadelle des Morts for three days straight. XM325 for most of the work, Ray Gun variant when things got ugly. I'd speedrun the main quest steps first, Act 1 through Act 3, then settle into the courtyard loop and just grind rounds until my hands felt stiff. The scoring tricks mattered too—Doppelghast conversions, timing the multipliers, not wasting a second on sloppy resets. I posted 58,000 points and went to sleep in third, feeling like it was finally done.

The Morning I Dropped To Seventh

I wake up and it's like someone swapped the scoreboard while I was out. I'm seventh. A late push came in at 62k and I'm shoved out of the prize zone like I never belonged there. No Shower camo, just "Cratered" for top 10%, which is fine in the way a participation medal is fine. The part that really sticks is seeing mates in softer brackets—thanks to whatever messy SBMM sorting was going on—snag Shower with 30k-ish scores. It didn't feel like skill. It felt like luck, or timing, or being placed in the right group at the right moment.

After The Event, The Temptations

Once the event ended around the Season 1 Reloaded window, Treyarch went quiet, and that silence says a lot. Maybe it comes back later, maybe it's a "had to be there" trophy to stoke FOMO for the next season. So I'm back on the regular mastery path: Gold, then Diamond, then Nebula. And honestly. It's slow. Headshots in public matches, awkward multi-kill setups, teammates stealing spawns—stuff that's normal, but it drags when you're already tilted. That's why bot lobby talk keeps popping up. People want a clean grind, less stress, more reps, and I can't pretend I don't get it.

What I'm Doing Next Time

If there's a mid-January finale event like the rumours say, I'm not running it like last time. No more solo queue and prayers. I'm building a squad, planning the hours, and treating the bracket like a fight that starts before the match even loads. I still want to earn my camos, but I also want my time to mean something, not get erased overnight by a last-second snipe. And if I do end up chasing resources the "easy" way—currency, items, or whatever helps keep up—I at least know there are places people use for that, like RSVSR, without pretending it's the same as winning the bracket fair and square.