In the past couple weeks two awesome tournaments have crowned their champions: the Chinese Storm League and the North American Storm Division. The latter is the third season of the NGS premier league, just a step under CCL. On the other hand, Storm League has become the most important tournament in the East, kind of a counterpart to CCL, gathering the best players from both China and South Korea.

Storm League Season 2

After a competitive hiatus, China came back to Heroes of the Storm esports last August with Storm League Season 1. It broke Tsunami’s dominance, as they had won every single tournament held in 2020, but couldn't keep their streak in 2021. Their executioner was C8, a Chinese team led by former BTG player LLK. After that first season, most of the top teams made some roster changes. Qepi joined Tsunami as a replacement for Hide, who joined his brother’s team, FLY. That wasn’t the only roster change in FLY, which cut down its 7-man roster to only five players, releasing Kcb, dami and misaka. The butterfly effect kept going on, as misaka teamed up with another veteran, Dancing, to form BB.

The call of the Storm League was heard beyond China and Korea. A team you may remember from the 2018 MSI and HGC Finals joined the Chinese tournament: the Taiwanese Luna Meow. Led by their old-times captain, booy005, the team has been reborn and is currently participating in the SkyLine Cup. Unfortunately, they couldn’t make it out of groups, falling against FLY and Complex. Same thing happened to Reverse, the fourth best team from Season 1, which was seeded in the same group as Tsunami and C8. Perhaps seeding three of the four best teams from the previous season in the same 4-team group wasn’t the best decision.



At the playoffs, C8 and Tsunami displayed their dominance and made it to the winners finals with 3-0 victories in all their matches. History seemed to repeat itself when C8 defeated Tsunami, but the Koreans still had much to say. They won against their compatriots from FLY at the losers finals and earned a rematch against their executioner, a team that had beaten them in all their previous encounters. At the grand finals Tsunami broke its curse and took down C8 4-1, recovering their crown as monarchs of the Chinese scene.

Storm Division Season 3

After a whole month of playoffs, the NGS Storm Division Season 3 has come to an end. The group stage finished with an undefeated GG till i die in the first spot. Heavy Impact—Storm Division Season 1 champions—followed them, and then came Team Back Door and Anti-Clown Association (with four Diamond Hands players). These four rosters were a couple steps above all the others, as they showed both during the group stage and the first playoffs round.



Team Back Door took down Heavy Impact in a really close series to earn a spot for the winners finals, where they faced and defeated GG till i die. At the losers bracket, Anti-Clown Association beat the former champions Heavy Impact, earning a rematch against GG till i die, the team that kicked them out of the upper bracket. This rematch had the same victor, leaving the Diamond Hands core in the third position overall, a slight improvement from their Season 2 result.

Almost 20 days after their defeat at the winners finals, GG till i die had its chance to take revenge and become the Storm Division champions. And that’s exactly what they did. This time fancypants and LegacY took down their Simplicity teammate Unaverted, who was playing for Team Back Door.