Continuing the topic. I would like to tell you about the Michurinsk tournaments from 2000-2007.
Our city is small, but it's a science town; several institutes are located within a relatively small area. From the moment Heroes III was released, people there were simply obsessed. Computers were scarce back then and we were young, so we played during working hours without worrying about the bosses, stayed late into the evenings, and often even overnight. And we argued—argued endlessly—about the strength of castles, heroes, and creatures, naturally at a very low, noob level. Gradually, the most advanced people, those completely obsessed with Heroes, realized at some point that they played significantly better than their friends.
Since the city is small but interest in the game was huge, rumors started: "You play well, but there's this guy in town who plays so well it's beyond your wildest dreams...". No one actually knew these guys, but people believed fervently in their existence. Therefore, by August 2000, Veland and I decided to hold the first tournament.
We hardly ever played random maps; we played fixes from the original map set. There were many wonderful maps in HoMM2 that were also in the third game, such as "Xatras' Prize," "Monks' Retreat," "Chaos Reality," etc. We took the "Warlords" map and heavily reworked it; it turned out quite well, or so we thought at the time. We played on that single map.
Imagining a computer club in a provincial town of the Chernozem region back then was far too optimistic; we played at Veland's apartment, connecting his computer to a laptop.
8 people showed up who rightfully considered themselves the best in their circles – Veland, Pavel, Dmitgrid, Cannabis, Dimen, Serg, ХВОСТ and vam rad (that's me). For two days, Saturday and Sunday, we played almost without breaks, talking only about Heroes. Pavel and Cannabis, men of no inhibitions, immediately bought vodka and bitter tinctures and vanished into the kitchen to fry fish, cut sausage, etc.
Those were the times; nobody played same-game tournaments sober. It's embarrassing, of course, but also pleasant to remember—those were golden times. Anyway, first place in the very first tournament went to the host himself, second was Cannabis, and third was me. The result was completely predictable: Veland was the most obsessed person with Heroes in town; he had a computer and internet at home, and he devoured every informative site available, so Veland was indeed the first truly competent Heroes player I met in real life.
I met the second same-game master six months later in Tambov. The regional center was more advanced and had a computer club. Dropping in there, I obviously hoped to meet people playing Heroes and, certainly, to beat them. I had Multiplayer experience and successful tournament participation. Walking through the club, I immediately noticed two people playing hot-seat, and they were playing skillfully. Naturally, I went to introduce myself and after a while was already playing against the best player, Saver. He crushed me over about two weeks. Later we played a lot, but I never managed to win a single game like that against him. As an amateur, I could oppose nothing against a person who had taken a systematic approach to studying Heroes. From him, I learned about ToH, proper tournament fix-maps, and the strongest Moscow player at the time, Impe, who played fixes brilliantly (yes, there was a time when even in Moscow, fixes prevailed).
In the spring of 2001, I organized the second city tournament. This time on proper fix-maps, having agreed with the local university administration to use the computer lab on Saturday and Sunday. 20 people gathered—more than I expected. Unfortunately, the "disease" of the first tournament carried over to the next. Next to the computer classroom was an adjacent room where the table groaned under... well, you know what.
We played happily, with soul and passion. We couldn't fit it all into two days, so we played the following weekend as well. In Veland's absence, I managed to win the tournament.

In the autumn of 2001, a third tournament was held with 22 players, and Cannabis won. By this time, the community had fully formed. Two wonderful girls played with us—Serge's wife Nata and also Irina (Dragon)—thanks to whom the tournaments were conducted without swearing, although there were plenty of arguments. Two strong "sandboxes" emerged. The first was led by Veland, who possessed great leadership qualities; Cannabis, Dimen, Khvost, and brothers Dimen and Alex learned from him. The second had equally strong players—brothers Dmitgrid and Alexgrid, Pavel, Serge, and myself. Thanks to the competition, the level of play gradually grew.

In 2002, two more tournaments were held; Veland won one, and I won the other again, but fewer people started coming. Perhaps it was because Heroes IV came out and main attention shifted toward it. I had no idea how to run tournaments for it since there was only hot-seat. Of course, reading "Hero's Corner" back then was interesting, but in terms of online play—useless.
Sitting together over the fourth game, we concluded that a stack of heroes on one side clashed with another stack of heroes on the other through an insane amount of wasted time. We never managed to organize a single tournament for IV.
On the other hand, the best fix maps were played at our tournaments—Duel, Guardians, Land of Magic, Desert War, Boomerang, Universal Commander; these are the gold fund of mapmaking, and by the way, almost all of them were used in World seasonal tournaments.

When playing fixes, one can use the map editor, but we did things differently. Dmitgrid and Veland, being computer geniuses, made maps nearly 1m x 1m in size, printing them out and pasting them on the walls. It was convenient—while the opponent is thinking, you could walk up to the wall and examine the key points of the map in full detail; you can't do that in the editor.
Regardless, by 2003 it was time for change; interest in Heroes within the community was falling. All I could think of was going out into the world, leaving the sandbox.
Lord Maniac officially posted an invitation in autumn 2002 to an open St. Petersburg tournament. In spring 2003, Alan Prost also invited everyone interested to Krasnodar. I tried to persuade people to go, especially since the tournaments turned out great in the end. But the conservatism of our community knew no bounds. Players' opinions varied—from "no need to embarrass ourselves" to "why do we need those St. Petersburg and Moscow snobs"—but they were united on one thing: not going anywhere.

Moreover, in 2003, the proactive Veland organized a wonderful project—the "Wings" computer club. By this time, several clubs had appeared in our city where kids played Counter-Strike and GTA, but the new club was their complete opposite.
Two games prevailed—Heroes and Diablo, where a professional approach was applied. In Diablo, the Wings team took 2nd place in Europe in one of the tournaments and appeared in several others; I don't remember the details.
As for Heroes, a wonderful "Guardians" tournament was held immediately, which perhaps remains our best tournament. 16 people played, all the strongest players; I didn't play and acted as the judge. It was on one map, imho, the best of all. In the final, Cannabis beat Veland, while Pavel and ХВОСТ shared third place. New people joined the old players—Lixent, Ace, Flash, Zlo, Solo. The atmosphere was amazing; no scandals, you could talk for hours only about Heroes. By this time, it had been established that feasts do not go well with a champ, so people switched to lighter fare—beer and chips, although in my opinion, still in excessive doses.

Through the efforts of Chaos and Dilvish, the Moscow Chaos League rapidly gained strength; first Minsk befriended them, then, quite reluctantly, grunting... St. Petersburg, and finally, Alan Prost announced that the next Krasnodar tournament of 2003 would be played on random.
Having missed that tournament, by 2004 I had firmly established myself on the League of Heroes, and only an atomic bomb could have stopped me from going to the Krasnodar Festival 2004. There, I met almost all the strongest players of the former post-Soviet space in real life. I sharply changed my previously negative opinion about the "Chaosites"; they turned out to be wonderful guys in person.
Our 7th tournament was conducted according to Chaos rules, inviting Chaos and Dilvish specifically. The arrival of such players allowed us to revive our tournaments. Clearly, we couldn't compete with Chaos—he easily took 1st place—but people still started coming back to us.

It was very timely that we met the Tambov players here. Cannabis, being a strong Warcraft player and having a restless nature, got into some trouble while playing in Tambov. Therefore, a Tambov resident with the nickname Mut entered the Wings forum (and it was a wonderful forum) and explained in plain language the material and moral costs incurred by the city of Tambov due to Cannabis's visit; only the prepositions were censored. To the credit of the forum members, they didn't fall into a crude "they're beating our guys!!!" reaction, but instead politely explained to the man that this is not how one enters a decent forum.
The guest turned out to be a decent person and soon a friendly conversation ensued, as a result of which it turned out that the Heroes movement was also developed in Tambov. Naturally, a match took place shortly after, which we won 4-1. But we felt the strength of the Tambov community—Mizrael, Scorp, Stas, Big Dan and Little Dan, Pukh, Mut played decently. Their only mistake was taking Dragon Utopia too late, which we exploited in the match.
After settling into our forum, the Tambov players quickly improved and won the next match 3-2. After that, we clashed with them long and hard until we practically became a single community.

Muscovites led by Chaos visited us again for the 8th tournament, which Chaos won again; second was unexpectedly ХВОСТ, third Mizrael. There was a trip to St. Petersburg for tournaments held by Lord Maniac and Horn; there I met those Petersburgers whom I hadn't yet known from Krasnodar.
Then many Muscovites and Petersburgers visited us—DVStranger, Stinger, Yama-Dharma, Vitalik, Joker, Killer, Lord Maniac, Horn, Napalm, Vietnam, Expert; strong players from Stary Oskol also came—Dmitry, Mystic, Titan, others came too, you can't remember everyone. Our city played matches with Moscow and St. Petersburg, and not random rosters came, but those from the top ten. In general, soon 30 to 35 people were playing in tournaments. Great players like Lavren, Tema, Lekha, Sapsan arrived. By this time, even beer at tournaments had ended; we let loose at barbecues and post-tournament banquets.

What's pleasant is that quite a few girls played with us—not just wives or girlfriends of players, but some came on their own. One moment especially stands out. An attractive brunette arrives: mini-skirt, makeup—everything in place. I thought she was a fan; there were always plenty of fans at tournaments both at the university and at "Wings." No, she comes to sign up for the tournament. In my sinful heart, I decided that one of our lads had caught her eye and she was introducing herself in such an unconventional way. But no, she was simply obsessed with the game, playing incessantly; given her appearance, this seemed wonderful to me. True, her presence affected the quality of play of other players; it was necessary to remind them to look more at the screen. She played in a couple of tournaments before finishing institute and leaving for home. In short, Strela, if you're reading this—huge respect to you and all the other girls.
By the way, the girls strongly disliked playing at night, but our tours happened exactly at night. Married players also couldn't play at night. We had to find compromises.
The tournaments continued until 2008. There were 17 numbered tournaments, a Chernozem championship, several regional championships, all of which Scorp won. Various matches were held, and much more happened.
If poker ruined the Chaos League in Moscow, then for our tournaments it was Moscow. The proximity of a huge metropolis with easy money is too strong a temptation for a young, energetic person with a higher education.
Over the course of a year and a half, Alf, Alex, Veland, Pavel, Dimen, ХВОСТ moved to Moscow; Dmitgrid went to Ukraine; Serj and Nata to Tambov; upon finishing their studies, Irina Dragon, Lavren and several others left.
About 20 people left the city, including the leading figures of the community; it was difficult to restore the tournaments after that due to the large age gap with young players. Although they didn't abandon Heroes—HoMM3 is still installed in any club in the city where people play.
There was the Wings forum, so much info was there, but now it is gone forever; a pity.