Dosia on the early Virtus.pro roster: “We were among the top three in the world with that lineup.”

Well, I guess that was the last CS 1.6 tournament. It was in Kyiv, and we went there as the Nostalgie team. The roster included me, seized, OverDrive, hally—I think—and someone else. I mean, just think about it—all those players were there, and they’re all famous now, right? We went there, and we had the final against Virtus.pro, but they had to go somewhere… Oh, against NAVI. And they had to fly off somewhere—something like that—they were in a huge hurry, while we, on the contrary, were stalling for time. And I think we beat them there. So, after that tournament, the three of us—me, AdreN, and ANGE1—got together. We ran into each other at some after-party following the tournament, and that was it; that’s when it all started, and we ended up playing together for many years after that. The three of us got together, talked about how we should all leave our respective teams, form one team, join up, and try to actually accomplish something together. That’s basically how our first roster came together. It was me, Fox, ANGE1, AdreN, and kUcheR—yeah. And with that lineup, we played for Virtus.pro for a long time. Actually, our results were… We were among the top three teams in the world with that lineup.

Some guys from Kazakhstan came to us and said: “Guys, look, we want to start Astana Dragons. We have investors, sponsors, and so on. We’re ready to pay you a thousand dollars a month, set up a base in Kyiv—you’ll be based there, and that’s it. Cool, awesome.” We said, “Well, we need to talk to Virtus.pro first.” So we went to VP and said, “Guys, here’s the deal: they approached us with an offer, but we don’t want to just quit like that. So, let’s say you raise it to at least 600, and we’ll keep playing for Virtus.pro like this. And then we’ll talk about a raise later if our results stay just as good.” To which they replied, “*** [No], you have a contract; until you’ve fulfilled that contract, *** [nothing] for you. If you try to leave, we’ll make your life miserable.”

We moved to HellRaisers, played just as well as before—sometimes in the top 5, sometimes in the top 7—back and forth like that. Then Sasha “s1mple” joined us, I think, and we were supposed to go to a Major—literally just to the qualifiers, not the Major itself, but the qualifiers for the Major; there were still Minors back then. And we were supposed to go to a minor in a few weeks. But it turned out that was the end of HellRaisers. Well, sort of the final curtain. And we went, basically, to ANGE1’s birthday party. ANGE1 gathered us at a café—the Minors were coming up in two weeks or a month, roughly speaking. So ANGE1 gathered us at the café—the manager, the players, everyone—we were just sitting there with some friends and buddies, chilling. And for some reason, the manager and I didn’t see eye to eye, basically. <...> So I just walked out of the café, went home, packed my things, and flew *** [right away] out of there.