After a couple months of frenetic activity, the second season of Division S has come to an end. On March 14th and 15th, playoffs took place for both North America and Europe. Join us as we follow through the events of this season and relive the playoffs!

North America

2020 seems to be another transition year for North America. Traditional tournaments—unlike new formats such as CCL—have a rough time taking off after the retirement of most pro players. The scenario of only two teams returning to Division S in Season 2 was devastating. The replacement of LFW just before the beginning of the tournament was the last nail in the coffin.

Or that’s how it looked.



Even if most of the teams didn’t have much competitive experience, the separation of Nexus Gaming Series and Division S has been great for them. Four of the eight Division S teams played NGS Heroic Division, where Anti-Clown Association took down Perfect Gems in the finals. The calendar has been crazy for these teams, but finally two of them managed to get to the top 4 of Division S, which shows their huge improvement.



The best NGS team was Perfect Gems. They put up a good fight against Celeb Gaming at the winners semifinals but lost 3-2 and dropped to the lower bracket. There they secured two victories to advance into the losers finals only to be swept 3-0, ironically, by Last Minute Sweep.

Last Minute Sweep got into Division S playing only one qualifier, so we didn’t know what to expect from them. Since then, they’ve shown us their sweeps weren’t just for that qualifier. They ended the regular season in second and continued their run through playoffs before finally falling to Celeb Gaming in the grand final.

Celeb Gaming finished Season 1 in a mediocre fifth place. They managed to secure many victories through the regular season, but failed at the all-or-nothing series in playoffs. This time things have been completely different. They obliterated all the other teams in the regular season and turned every game into a 3-0 or 3-1 victory. In this season, they managed to keep their calm and claim the North American crown.

Europe

The European scene seems to be following the script for 2019 with Washed Up and Lauber’s Fanclub fighting for first. However, that’s the only thing that’s the same.



Even if the top spots were already taken, there were many candidates for third and fourth. Go Next, now veterans, had achieved some good results in the Nexus Cup and some Premier Series weeks. However, after a disastrous beginning, they withdrew from the tournament. Moreover, one the most promising new teams, KiiKoo Combo (later Crystal Gaming), lost founding member Kirwa and never really got over it.

Feel the Heat has been the biggest surprise of this season. In our Power Ranking we pointed out their ascending trajectory, but we couldn’t predict how high they would go. After a brilliant regular season where they lost only against Washed Up and Lauber’s Fanclub, they managed to take down What does the photographer say (which played as Vikingafabriken for some weeks) convincingly in the playoffs. They even took Lauber and his boys to a fifth map...but the Fanclub still came out victorious.



The Grand Finals brought us some really intense games. Despite being quite close, the games all ended in Washed Up’s favor. They secured the 3-0 victory and kept the Division S title they had conquered in Season 1. Lauber’s Fanclub fought well, but after two demanding Bo5 series in the same day, they couldn’t beat the champs.