Can the Fennec Break into the Competitive Meta?

The fourth season of post-launch content for Modern Warfare has gone live after a slight delay. The new season has introduced two brand-new weapons – the CR-56 AMAX Assault Rifle and the Fennec sub-machine gun. Both of the new weapons are extremely effective, with many professional players looking at the potential that the Fennec possesses.

Armed with an extremely fast rate of fire and minimal amounts of recoil, the introduction of the Fennec to the competitive metagame could be the breath of fresh air that the competitive meta so desperately needs as the season heads towards its final stages.

Here we take a look at how viable the new weapon is in comparison to the MP5 and some potential loadouts that could be used in competitive play.

Is It Viable?

The short answer is yes, it certainly is. The rapid rate of fire combined with the low levels of recoil and immense mobility make the Fennec a perfect weapon for close-quarters gameplay. Considering how ineffective the Fennec is at medium to long-ranges, it’s likely that the new weapon will have its own place in the meta, being used for extremely close quarters scenarios such as clearing out a building or holding down a tight angle.

The time to kill on the Fennec is ridiculously fast, as is the MP5 and the M4A1, but given how effective the weapon is and if players begin to use it in competitive games and practice, the Fennec could well feature in the rest of the Modern Warfare season.

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A New Meta

Since the release of Modern Warfare back in October, the meta has been incredibly stale, with the MP5 and M4A1 being the go-to weapons despite the odd appearance of the MP7 attempting to break through. Previous seasons have seen at least two viable ARs and SMGs for competitive play and with only four Home Series events until the season-ending playoffs, the meta could be turned on its head if the Fennec is as good as players say it is.

In theory, the Fennec is going to be used by the hyper-aggressive players within a team while the MP5 players will fall back to a slightly more passive role, providing any support that the Fennec players are likely to need as the first line of attack.

Although a new weapon that is now viable for competitive play has come at a pivotal point of the season, the potential of a brand-new metagame developing could be fantastic from the perspective of the spectators who have grown tired of such a stale metagame.

Potential loadouts

The addition of the Gunsmith to Modern Warfare has enabled limitless combinations of attachments which is great from the perspective of casual Call of Duty fans but as always, the competitive players always find the best possible attachments for any possible scenario to take place within a competitive match.

After a bit of time experimenting with various loadouts and attachment combinations, we found a couple of loadouts that could be used in competitive play.

The first loadout we created provides a much-needed expansion to the small magazine, reducing the need to reload but when the time comes to change the magazine, sleight of hand speeds up the process to avoid the chance of being caught off-guard by an incoming enemy. The stock and rubberised grip tape further increase the stability, enabling players to keep a continuous rate of fire without having to stop to reset the recoil pattern while the addition of a longer barrel increases the range to such an extent where the Fennec becomes effective in mid-range gunfights.

With the omission of the Merc Foregrip from the competitive game, the second loadout we came up with was a homage to the dominant Vector SMG that featured so heavily during the Call of Duty: Ghosts season. Armed with a compensator, operator foregrip and granulated grip tape, this combination keeps recoil levels to a minimum alongside increasing the aim down sight speed to enable quicker reaction times.

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Will Pros Use It?

With some professional players looking for alternatives since the ban of the merc foregrip, the possibility of it featuring in an official competitive match could be deemed as a risk given how long the Fennec has been in the game.

Some have been sighted using the Uzi in practice as an alternative to the MP5 without the foregrip but the Uzi has yet to appear in a CDL match.

The Fennec may feature in practice like the Uzi did but it is unclear as to whether a team will execute a particular strategy where the new SMG is an integral part of it. It’s early days but if a team does gamble on selecting the Fennec, it could certainly mark the start of a change in the Modern Warfare metagame.

It is unlikely that we will see too much of it at the Minnesota Home Series though, which you can keep up to date with here at GGRecon.