I just got back into painting miniatures

Hey, guys! As you may very well know I'm a big fan of DOTA 2. A few years ago I used to play semi-professionally: me and my buddies had kind of a team, played and trained together for a while and even participated in some local scrub tier tournaments. Life goes on, I don't really play the game anymore. But I still have the passion for it and watch a lot of tournaments. In my opinion, esports are much more exciting to watch than normal sports, and among all esports DOTA 2 events probably have the best production, and it's great to watch even only for the show itself. So when I finally got a chance to visit the biggest DOTA 2 event and first official Valve DOTA 2 Major in my country, I just couldn't say no to it. And even though the decision to go was spontaneous, I don't regret going even one bit. So here's a kind of report of my trip with words and pics, mostly pics. The journey started with me taking a tram to the train station early in the morning - my train departed at 9am: This is the main hall of the train station: There was a random souvenir shop that had DOTA 2 and Na`Vi mugs: Then I boarded an express train to Moscow, here's how it looked at 250kmph: At the end of the 4-hour trip from my seat I saw one of the tallest towers in the world - Ostankino TV-radio tower: After check-in in the hotel I decided to visit the place EPICENTER took place in, it appeared to be literally 5 minutes on foot away from my hotel: After having a lunch and stocking on some füd for the next few days in the local shopping mall I decided to go to the city center. Much to my regret I couldn't get to Red Square as I wanted - it was fenced off in preparations to the parade on May, 9. So I ended up just checking out a few places around Kremlin. Lubyanka Square with weird pink fluffy trees: Some artists in Zaryadye Park painting Kremlin: Birzhevaya Square with a fancy fountain: Nikolskaya Street, very nicely decorated and probably looking great at night: I wanted to stay in the city center for longer but the next day I needed to get up early to get the presents from EPICENTER among the first visitors. The presents included an A3 format poster, a badge, a set of stickers with team logos and, what's the most important, tickets to autograph sessions with teams, and I really wanted my poster signed by Virtus.Pro players. Next morning I got up at about 7am, went to have a breakfast, returned to my room, made a couple sandwiches for the day, grabbed a bottle of water and went to Ice Palace. At about 8:40am (20 minutes before the presents giveaway started) there were already the first DOTA 2 fans hanging around: After getting my presents I returned to the hotel to drop them off and then headed back - my ticket allowed early entrance at 10am. A lot of people who had early entrance tickets already formed a line: They announced that non-factory packed food isn't allowed, so I spent my time in the line consuming my sandwiches. Good thing I had a light breakfast in the hotel - would be a waste of good sandwiches. After getting through the security check I started exploring the arena. First I saw a few cosplay girls taking pictures with visitors and promoting an electronics store: Then I saw some Virtus.Pro fans snacking before the opening ceremony and discussing the group stage matches and results and speculating on how the playoff will go: I myself bought an energy drink. I don't really like Monster, but they were running a lottery with Na`Vi T-shirts as the main prize. I didn't win anything other than stickers, although I saw quite a few lucky people getting better prizes: Between games I was roaming around the arena, and in one of the corridors I saw a couple of guys in very special Virtus.Pro T-shirts: I tried to take some pictures of the stage, regrettably the camera on my phone is pretty bad, so here's a shot of the main stage screen, and let's leave it at that: The next day standing in the entrance line I saw one of the cosplay girls very close: Inside Ice Palace I decided to check out the upper floor this time, they actually had very nice foodcourt overlooking the area in front of the arena: Since it was Saturday there were more promoters than on the first day. Here's a Vega Squadron promoter taking pictures with the team fans and just random people: Also reporters started showing up all over the place, the next day I myself gave an interview to some random guys explaining them what "hooking with Pudge" meant: Even though it's difficult to underestimate the potatoness of my phone camera, here's a shot of the Russian analyst desk on the main screen, you can see the trophy at the bottom: On the final day of the event I tried to make as many pictures as possible, so here we go - merch and device store: A line to "Hookmeister" (a crane game), I participated myself and won a discount coupon for the merch store: A huuuge line for NaVi autographs, I feel like half the arena was in that line at some point: And when the autograph session started I was lucky to take a few pictures of the legend and in a certain way the face of DOTA, Na`Vi.Dendi: Thanos Glove which fy from PSG.LGD was awarded with as the tournament MVP: Then I saw one of my favourite cosplayers at this event, Phantom Assassin looked very cool: And two random CS:GO cosplayers, apparently noone told them it was DOTA EPICENTER, not CS:GO one: Poster art: I missed the first match of the day almost entirely standing in lines for OG and VP autographs, but I had a chance to take a picture of the main area from the 5 floor during a break. It is so spacious that I couldn't even fit it fully in a single frame, fully packed with viewers during games: The grandfinal bo5 match was absolutely crazy action packed skillplay goodness, a grandfinal match worthy of The International grandfinal match. In the end PSG.LGD defeated two-time champions of EPICENTER Team Liquid: After the champions were crowned, the last interviews taken and the viewers started leaving, it was the janitors' time to have some fun: EPICENTER XL is over, the gates are closing: At the end of day three of the tournament I was completely exhausted physically, but mentally I was absolutely euphoric. After a very long sleep I was almost late for the hotel breakfast. I still had a few hours before my train, so I decided to try to get to Red Square again. No luck that time either - it was still fenced off and guarded, and I took a walk from the city center to the train station. Along the way I was taking pics, so here you are. State Duma building: State Historical Museum with the abovementioned fences: Tverskaya Street, the main city street: A monument to Yuri Dolgorukiy, the founder of Moscow: The head office of Izvestia, one of the main Russian newspapers: A monument to Pushkin, the most famous Russian poet: Pushkinskaya Square and Rossiya Theatre: Strastnoy Boulevard: A monument to Vysotsky, a famous songwriter and actor (also pigeons): Petrovsky Boulevard: A random nice looking building: The Central Market: A random spiderman: A monument to Krupskaya, Lenin's wife: Sretensky Boulevard: A close-up on the flowers: Turgenevskaya Square with more weird pink fluffy trees: Academician Sakharov Avenue, the vastness and soullessness of constructivism: Komsomolskaya Square, or the Three Station Square, one of which my train was leaving from: So that was my first trip to an esports event of such scale. The energy and the atmosphere at the event was amazing - 6000 viewers plus staff, and everyone's all smiles. It was incredible to witness how "on the same page" everyone was no matter what team or player you're a fan of. I've never felt so comfortable among so many people before. Visiting an event like that is definitely a worthy experience for any gamer. I absolutely loved it, and I definitely plan to go to EPICENTER next year! Do you? P.S. For better pics from the event check out http://media.epicenter.gg/en/89/. You can even see me in a few!

I will be posting some more blog posts soon for the main site. This week I'm taking a break. My glasses broke and I am waiting for a new pair. I'm taking two trips this summer which will also affect my writing schedule. Other than that, I plan to write two articles / week. It seems that I'm going to be the only writer on this website for awhile, so I'll do my best to make the best entries I can.

So I'm not the best with art and images and the like so if anyone would like to make some backgrounds or art for the RNGGods website it would be much appreciated! Let me know here if you can help or hit me up on discord.