Artem Boykov, also known as KobRa, has passed away.

I didn’t dare write anything sober, afraid of blurting out another stupid thing. But after drinking — it’s not scary; at worst, I’ll delete it tomorrow. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to either play or chat with Cobra in person. But a couple of times he liked my reports, which was nice. Especially since, as I recently found out, he is THE ONE from those distant reports about Lord Maniac’s St. Petersburg championships in the early 2000s, which I used to devour back then (I didn’t even have internet at the time — a friend brought text files on floppy disks).

Also: recently my good Romanian friend Gee (to whom I partly owe my appearance on HeroesWorld) showed me Cobra’s VK account. At some point, Artyom insisted he register there to show him photos of Heroes players from the CIS, and Gee was his only friend there (now there’s a second one — me). It seems like a small thing, but it already characterizes Artyom as both a person and a Heroes player.