We got hold of Dominik "Black" Reitmeier for a little chat where he talks about joining Infamous Gaming, South American teams refusing to scrim with them or leaking scrim details to other teams, DPC and much more. Hey Black. Nice to get a hold of you again. How is it going? Hey. Doing alright, trying my best to get mentally and physically in shape for the upcoming major! Congratulations on qualifying for the Epicenter Major. How would you describe your journey into the qualifiers with a completely new team? It went better than expected to be honest. We flew in Heste just one day before the qualifier, so we actually had zero practice games and had to use the qualifier to evolve after every game.All games were quite the challenge and we managed to learn a lot luckily. But there has been some backlash regarding Infamous qualifying to a major from South America with a non native roster. Any thoughts on that? We're not doing anything illegal or wrong. We have been living here since we played the qualifiers (and even before that). It was simply the best opportunity all of us had together. I've had quite a lot of success in the past and Biver+Heste+Skiter were very close to qualifying to the major/minor from the CIS region. I think we got a lot of potential if we get the opportunity to grow and show it. I agree that what you did wasn't illegal or wrong but for sure has gotten mixed reviews from the scene in general. Do you think going over there by any chance results in the development of the SA scene? Honestly, I think we could learn quite a bit from the teams in SA and vice versa. However it is not happening. Why? Because SA teams refuse to play versus us and the teams that did play versus us leaked our scrim information to other teams. We could help them improve a lot and they could help improve us a lot, it's a shame that it is not happening. I'm getting similar vibes to when I played in China/the whole team DK drama that happened back then. Hopefully teams will realise they harm themselves with this move as well and can be more respectful/thoughtful in the future regarding this. Wow that is literally taking me back to the DK line up with Mushi and iceiceice and the boycott they faced in China. Not to mention leaking of scrim details is morally wrong as well. How are you guys coping with it? There must be some other alternatives that you might have come up with! To be honest, it's incredibly hard to get any practice in at all. As previous stated, we can't play teams from this region. Then we have NA teams, who are either boot camping in Europe or scrimming EU teams. So that isn't a valid option either. We're planning to have a 1 week boot camp in EU prior to the event and we will have to make full use of that. You stood in for Infamous at one of the events after which you joined the team for the remainder of the season. Were you brought in as a replacement for Mason? No, I was brought in as a replacement for Timado. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I was asked to stand in and the atmosphere felt quite good. I've been trying to build a strong and stable SEA team for a couple of months now, but with no success. Coming here was the only logical decision for me in terms of opportunity and potential On the other hand, you're back into competitive gaming once again after struggling for the better part of two years. How does it feel on coming back to the good old grinding days? This is gonna be a bit of a long one. I took one year off to settle my life. Took care of many things, moved countries and overall had a lot of catching up to do. During that time I did a lot of talent work as an analyst caster. Then right after TI when I wanted to start my "comeback", I broke my hand and was out of action for another 4 months...then the season is underway again and amidst this qualifier chaos is super hard to find /build a new team. Especially for someone that has been out of the scene for a while. Why would they want to play with you if they haven't seen you play for over a year? Now that I am finally back it just feels good to be able to compete again, I truly missed it and it makes me happier than anything else in the world. Competing is my life after all! I hope that this put me on the radar again for people that play against us/watch us and hopefully lead to many possibilities in my future again. I am working very hard on improving myself, mentally and physically for DotA. I am also doing a lot of replay work and testing out a lot of things to widen my horizon and further improve my skills and mechanics. Let's speak about the new patch then. Summarise in brief about the way you perceive the current patch. From what I've experienced in pub games as well as the Birmingham tournament: The game has been changed to make games go a bit longer again. Games rarely end quickly now and almost always reach lategame, every hero has gotten an Aghanims upgrade cause of that and Roshan received another droppable item, the consumable Aghs. I personally quite like it, because it frees up draft much more and makes for exciting games/comebacks. And what you think about the new DPC season announced for the next year? Quite similar to the current one from what I've seen. Has it's positives and negatives. I just hope that the qualifiers can be spread out a bit better, so they don't happen right as tournaments end. It is definitely something that needs to be worked on. Anyway, I sincerely hope your situation in SA gets better and without taking up any more time, I'd like to wrap this up. Anything you got to say? First of all, thanks for the interview! Also big thanks to all the people that kept believing in me even in the roughest of times. I hope this upcoming tournament can be somewhat of a success so we can make this comeback become reality. Always remember to stay hungry! Comfort is the enemy of progress. Also, spread positivity and make each other's days better!

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