After the end of CCL, the first competitive events of the 2021 Heroes of the Storm season have finally arrived. The HeroesHearth league brought together players from all over the globe, but most of them are now back in their regions while waiting for the next CCL to begin.

The Europeans have joined a familiar tournament, the last LAN standing: the Masters Clash Championship. This event emerged in 2019 to fill the void left by HGC. It was a small offline event in France, but it lured many former pros. It wasn’t just a tournament, it was also a reunion of old friends. After the success of that first edition, Masters Clash Finals 2020 was announced, but it was canceled due to the pandemic.

For its 2021 edition, Masters Clash has adopted a hybrid model: an online league (double round robin with Bo5s) with—if possible—an offline finals. Only four out of the eight teams will make it to these playoffs, so they’ll need to keep a good level throughout the whole season. There has been an exhaustive qualification process to ensure that these teams are the very best in the current European scene. Four qualifiers were celebrated, with the winner of each one earning a spot for the league. Those champions were 30k, Chilly Mountain, The Donuts, and The Hardos. The rest of the teams got points according to their rank in the qualifier.



After the fourth qualifying event, the top eight teams in the ladder disputed the four remaining spots during playoffs. All of them were seeded into do-or-die Bo5 series to prove themselves worthy, and the victorious teams were Soundless, Go Next, Inting for Ruby, and ArthasStroitHram.

All these teams are mixtures of the old European teams and the 2020 CCL rosters. For example, Chilly Mountain has kept its CCL Swedish core, but 30k—after acquiring Feel the Heat roster—features players from Simplicity and CrowdControl. These combinations might be a prelude for the CCL Season 2 draft.

Rive: Love HotS

The Masters Clash Championship will be a great scenario for the free agents to shine, but it isn’t the first European tournament of 2021. Last February Rive: Love HotS gathered the best teams in Europe to get them warmed up for the events yet to come. This initiative came from the Russian scene led by well-known players such as stalk, MrBanaBeer, and zwHydra.

The call of the Russians was heard by 27 teams. All of them tried to climb their way through the double elimination bracket, but several fell round after round until only eight remained. Seven out of these eight top teams are Masters Clash contenders.



We don’t have Washed Up and Lauber’s Fanclub anymore, but the story keeps repeating itself. The descendants of these two teams still are the European elite. Once more the team led by HasuObs, The Hardos, defeated Lauber’s squad, The Donuts, at the winners finals. Lauber unfortunately couldn’t get a rematch after losing against 30k, who had just beaten Chilly Mountain in the first CCL-ish duel of the season.

The grand finals brought together the two halves of Washed Up: the Germans HasuObs and Nic playing for The Hardos against the Frenchmen Mascarade and Daykwaza on 30k. The CCL organization, despite their massive improvement, couldn’t adapt fast enough, and after dropping two maps on top of the map disadvantage coming from the losers bracket, lost the series 3-0 to The Hardos.