Holiday Havoc hits different the first time you load in. Lights everywhere, weird melees, people sliding at you like it's a snowball fight with guns. If you're trying to get a feel for the mode without getting flattened every spawn, I actually warmed up in a CoD BO7 Bot Lobby first, then jumped back in with a plan. The key is accepting one thing early: this isn't regular TDM energy, and you can't play it like it is.

Cheer Isn't Just “Bonus Points”
Everybody sees the killfeed and thinks that's the whole story. It's not. Cheer is the real scoreboard, and it rewards the player who's present for the messy stuff. You'll notice it fast: sitting on the objective, touching zones, and staying in the fight racks Cheer way quicker than jogging around for 1v1s. If you're not building Cheer, you're basically donating time to the other team.

Play The Hill Like You Mean It
Hardpoint and Dom are straight-up farming spots if you commit. Not “toe on the point then dip.” Commit. Slide in, clear one corner, post up, and live there for a bit. You might go negative and still be top of the board, and that's not some miracle. That's the mode paying you for doing the job no one else wants to do.

Rotate Early, Not Heroically
Dynamic Zone is where people get stubborn. They'll win a gunfight, feel good, then realize the zone already moved and they're late. Don't be that person. Check where it's trending, start moving before it flips, and grab the good cover first. Getting there early turns the next fight into your fight, not a panic sprint into enemy sights.

Abuse The Assist Economy
This is the part most players ignore because it isn't “flashy.” Run UAV, Counter-UAV, anything that feeds info. When your team gets kills off your pings, those reveal assists stack Cheer like crazy. It's passive income. You're helping, you're scoring, and you're making the other team play blind, which makes every objective hold easier.

Treats Change How You Take Fights
Once Treats start rolling in, stop thinking like you're in a normal loadout loop. If you get something like a Candy Cane melee buff, you can bully close angles and clear tight rooms without “perfect aim.” Speed boosts matter too, especially for Dynamic Zone rotations. And if a Care Package drops, don't shrug it off. Those power swings are often worth more than another random mid-map duel.

Small Comms, Big Wins
You don't need a full squad callout spreadsheet. Just talk a little. “UAV up,” “zone moving,” “two on point.” That's enough to turn solo chaos into coordinated pressure, and Holiday Havoc rewards that kind of momentum. If you want to level up faster and keep the matches feeling winnable, even when the lobby's wild, it helps to practice your timing and routes in BO7 Bot Lobby so the real games feel familiar instead of frantic.