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Elm wants the psychological advantage of first blood, and sends his first five dragoons and three zealots off to do what damage he can. They run across a wandering overlord on the bottom route they are taking, and eliminate it before it can flee. This gives T_Mac just enough advance warning … Spotting a new expansion at the upper left mineral only spot, Elm splits his forces in two. He sent two zealots to the middle left to occupy T_Mac’s attention for a second, then attacked the mineral only with his dragoons as a sunken began morphing. T_Mac countered with a control group of zerglings he had hidden in the middle left when his overlord popped. They forced the zealots to flee to the dragoons, but the massed dragoon fire and zealot combination proved enough to let four of the dragoons survive. Realizing he was in the fight for the fight of his gay little life, T_Mac panicked and attacked with the drones at the expansion. The drones quickly fled after a second of conflict, straight to the middle left where three newly morphed sunkens kept Elm away. Eight new zerglings then finished the damaged dragoons, but not before the hatchery at the mineral natural was eliminated.
Now most people will realize that Elm’s quick gas build sucks unless he had a plan to use that gas in the early mid game. And a plan he had. While the previous conflict had been taking place, Elm had sent his first two dark templar moving to ward the scene of the battle. They quickly chopped down all three defending sunkens in the middle left and forced the drones to flee. Not be outdone, T_Mac sulkily sent a control group of zerglings to the upper right where Elm had just started warping in a naked nexus and gateway. Arriving a moment too late, a second pair of dark templar force the zerglings to flee back the way they came, losing a third of their number. T_Mac stops cursing about the dark templar long enough to do something useful and his first two mutas and an overlord from the middle left expansion begin harassing the attacking dark templar. 
Once he finishes off the dark templar threat, T_Mac is faced with a choice. He can go hard ground and get overlord speed, an expensive tech choice, or he can stick with air, knowing Elm already has templari and knowledge of his strat. Hoping to make the zerg production system pay off before Elm can counter, T_Mac pumps mutas until he has six and launches a strike on Elm’s main. Three well placed cannons make a hit and run a problem. As the first volley of muta fire hits an outlying dragoon, Elm slaps his first psi storm down on the mutas. T_Mac may be many things, but a flaming homosexual with no unit control isn’t one of them. He does have a little unit control. Using it to his fullest ability, he dodges most of the first storm, and flies right into a second. Switching directions almost before the storm is cast, T_Mac doesn’t lose a single muta, although all six are heavily damaged. Damaged enough that when he flees over a cannon, two mutas fall to two shots from the cannon. So far Elm has had a lot success in this game, but the bottom line is that he is mining from his main and T_Mac has kept an expansion going from the first five minutes, with a single interruption. Elm is a damn good player and realizes he has to end T_Mac’s resource superiority. A full control group of speed upgraded zealots was on the way to the middle left expansion as the muta battle took place. T_Mac had for the third time built his three sunken colony defense, with a fourth creep colony morphed into one as the attack began. Eight zealots were left when the first three sunken colonies were destroyed, and T_Mac pulled his drones from mining to attack and hit the zealots with nine zerglings from behind. Only four drones remained when the six zerglings T_Mac ordered up at the start of the attack hatched, and with the help of the last sunken colony finished the five remaining zealots. Four zerglings remained to protect the drones. A lucky thing they did too, because some of T_Mac’s gayness was rubbing off on Elm. During the very first attack Elm had hidden a probe in the corner of the expansion. Just before the attack it had started warping a pylon, and in the end of the attack a cannon. The zerglings got there in enough time to force the cannon’s cancellation. Note to Elm: offensive cannon is a lot better as an early game strat =]. During all the commotion Elm had expanded to his mineral natural. 
Once he collected himself after the battle, T_Mac started scouting with his mutas. Soon he found the new expansion and started to pay it a visit. Two dragoons stopped his mutas to engage them and that’s when they caught their first storm. The second came as they were dodging the first, and third when they moved by the probe line of the mineral natural. The fourth as they targeted a templar. And the fifth when they were again stopped to engage a dragoon. The muta count dropped from twelve to three surprisingly quickly. Then down to one as the heavily damaged mutas flew out past a cannon. A follow up assault by a control group of zerglings met eight zealots and was terminated without effort. Not the type to be discouraged by Elm’s micro, T_Mac expanded to the upper right, determined to power Elm under. Elm had a similar idea and took the middle right expansion, still leaving the protoss one behind on gas expansions.
Haven’t we seen this before? Yup, you guessed it. Elm brings his now traditional control group of speed zealot to the middle left. T_Mac has only two sunkens defending this time, but three more are morphing, finishing a third of the way into the battle. Eight zerglings also await the protoss attackers this time. A control group of zerglings arriving from the main leave the protoss warriors defeated with two sunkens intact, along with the bulk of the reinforcing control group. 
T_Mac once again gets the bright idea of attacking the protoss main with his mutas, sending in eight straight at the probe line. Unfortunately for him, most of the probes have been moved elsewhere because there is only one mineral patch left. The storms start crackling through the air, and T_Mac is again forced to run his troops from Elm’s micro, getting four heavily damaged mutas out alive. Elm tries a little offense of his own, sending two dark templar and two dragoons to the upper right. The typical Gay_Mac defense of three sunkens proves sufficient to hold the offense with one sunken lost and one heavily damaged as a control group of rescue zerglings arrives from the upper left and hits the dragoons, and the four remaining mutas engage the dark templar. 
T_Mac has been thwarted at every turn by Elm’s storm micro. It was time to change strategies. T_Mac launched an offensive from the top right consisting of four lurkers, a control group and a half of zerglings, and six mutas. The beauty of this strat lies in it’s execution. Every protoss player out there loves nothing better than storming lurkers. If you give a protoss player the choice between storming one lurker and twelve mutas, the protoss guy goes for the lurker every time. Especially if he doesn’t have observers. The thing that makes them so tempting is that it takes low latency and godlike reflexes to move a buried lurker out from under a storm. It’s a guaranteed kill, and protoss players love it. T_Mac moved his lurkers in and buried them singly. Only one cannon protected the side of the base and it was quickly torn down. Elm’s ground forces had been wiped out in the abortive assaults he’d launched on the zerg bases and he was defending with two templar. I don’t care how good you are, against someone like T_Mac, four storms (if you’re lucky enough to have two storms per templar and get them all off) just isn’t enough. The mineral natural fell with two lurkers, six zerglings, and three mutas left. Not to be discouraged, Elm shows the true fighting spirit he has and starts an expansion in the lower left. 
With the mineral natural down, T_Mac enters the protoss main and sees what abuse he can dish out with his cloaked units. He keeps pouring in reinforcements from the upper right and upper left as he gets them. The first lurker burrows in range of a cannon and is dispatched in short order. The next three burrow in range of a forge and start attacking it, but Elm storms two of them placed a little too close together. Next a control group of zerglings tries to draw a storm, but ends up dying to three well placed cannons, two dragoons, and two zealots. T_Mac sends in two control groups of hydras to take out the cannons and pave the way for his lurkers. The cannons, two dragoons, and two zealots take down twenty two of the hydras and a lurker while losing the zealots and two of the cannons, with a little help from four storms. The last lurker in range of the buildings is stormed just as the last two hydras pass over it, bringing the assault to an end. T_Mac gets tired of being owned by storm so bad and mounts a new assault with a different unit… he sends a control group of drones to the lower left, no doubt surprised to see a protoss expansion there. His drones attack a warping cannon as the probes attack the drones. Someone should tell these two that workers shouldn’t be primary attack units in the late game stage =]. T_Mac finally gives in after his drones are owned by the probes and brings a few mutas in to finish the job. Back at the Protoss main Elm takes advantage of T_Mac’s distraction and uses his newly made observer to place a perfect storm, taking down two lurkers at once. The final lurker pops up as it realizes it can be seen, and Elm chases it around half the map with a zealot, T_Mac madly microing all the way to keep it alive while Elm probably just used an attack move command =]. Meanwhile, back at the lower left the only protoss building left is the burning nexus when T_Mac pulls his mutas for more important jobs and sends in another group of drones to finish it and expand there. Too bad for him Elm’s gateway had lasted long enough for him to get a dark templar out. The dark templar proceeded to own the hell out of the drone assault squad. 
Elm is getting more behind every second in resources, and he fully realizes it. Taking a risk he expands almost naked to the upper right mineral expansion. Key word there was almost. T_Mac found out the hard way that almost means with just one templar when his mutas happen on the site. Elm quickly cancels his warping buildings, knowing he can’t defend the site. T_Mac continues to move his force to just outside the middle right expansion, carefully staging each muta a little ways away from each other, then morphing all twelve mutas into guardians. Elm sees the force outside his expansion and attacks with two dragoons and two archons, forcing T_Mac to cancel the guardian morph and run away. Four overlords and a few zerglings T_Mac brought along were destroyed by the protoss units. 
When the zerg forces retreat Elm tries to reestablish his expansion at the upper right mineral natural. T_Mac is quick to spot the attempt and moves his mutas in to interdict… Right into two storms and the archon’s fury. T_Mac wont give up this time though, too much is at stake. If Elm gets that expansion up and running he is back in the game. T_Mac attacks with two control groups of zerglings, not the best choice against archons, but it’s what he has to work with. Six zerglings remain when the protoss forces are vanquished, and the expansion is once again cancelled.
The momentum was definitely still in T_Mac’s favor at this point, and he pressed his advantage with a twelve hydra attack on the middle right. This was Elm’s only source of income. Three templar and an archon provided the hammer to a four cannon and one dragoon anvil, eliminating the zerg forces without a loss. Six more hydras continued the assault, hoping that the templar were drained of energy. That hope proved in vain and once more the protoss forces didn’t suffer a single loss. 
Getting tired of this, T_Mac reasons that Elm can’t defend everywhere and sends two control groups of zerglings speeding towards the protoss main. They run smack into a cannon and four defending archons at the lower right mineral natural where Elm has once more started mining operations. T_Mac is a little taken aback, but presses on with his next phase of the plan.
T_Mac has brought out the almost unheard of zerg defiler in response to Elm’s gosu protoss skills. A few quick dark swarms pave the way for a zergling assault on the middle right expansion, having great success as Elm can’t reinforce in time. A few dark templar do move out and kill the small assault force, including the defilers after all but the extractor was razed. T_Mac had finally secured the bottom left a few minutes ago and had set up full scale mining operations. Elm decided to make him pay the price for believing he had map control; he took a dark templar out of a corner of that base where he had been hiding it and started killing drones. It took T_Mac a long half a minute to find the source of the attack message. Trying desperately to cut his opponent’s income again, T_Mac sent another two control groups of zerglings to the bottom right mineral natural. Four archons and a psi storm later and the zerg forces had succeeded in killing exactly one cannon. 
Elm started feeling that now or never twinge. He had established a window of opportunity for himself with his highly cost effective defense and dark templar assault on the lower left, taking down two hatcheries and all the drones mining there. T_Mac was only mining from the lower left mineral natural and the upper right. It was go time. Elm sent four archons, a dark templar, a reaver, and three zealots to the lower left mineral natural. T_Mac didn’t have the troops on hand to defend and was forced to pull back while he gathered them. Two sunkens and the defiler mound fell to the reaver and the zealots, while eight hydras retreated from the scene. A psi storm burned the retreating hydras, but didn't get any kills. Just as Elm finished off the drones mining the site, T_Mac countered with twenty four hydras. Unfortunately for Elm, he had sent two of the archons to the lower left to finish off the hatchery there. With only eight hydras going down, T_Mac finished off the attackers. 
With the successful defense, T_Mac once more goes on the offensive, taking his remaining sixteen hydras and attacking the lower right mineral natural. Elm tries once more to defend with his templar, but when the storm clears, two hydras remain. At this point, I had to ask T_Mac “Is it possible for you get owned harder by storm?”. His last two hydras would fall to the probes if used conventionally, so T_Mac orders them to morph into lurkers right in the middle of the probes. Elm starts warping in a cannon right next to them, but it came too late, still warping when the lurkers burrowed. T_Mac ensnares the probes to prevent escape and sent in a few extra zerglings. This lets him take down all the probes and finally the nexus. Remember those two archons that left the party in the lower left a little early and caused Elm to lose that battle? Well Elm remembers them and sent them into the lower left mineral natural, where T_Mac didn’t bother remaking sunkens. The archons finish off the expansion, reducing T_Mac to one working expansion in the upper right.
With Elm not mining, T_Mac plans on finishing him off quickly before his godly micro can get him back on his feet again. Twenty four zerglings go streaking into Elm’s main with mayhem on their minds. All Elm has to defend is one zealot, one dragoon, two cannons…and two reavers. T_Mac kills one cannon and one dragoon, Elm gets the pleasure of reaver popping the zerglings into one big pool of blood. The upper right is finally mined out, and T_Mac starts transferring the drones from there to the mineral natural in the upper right. On hand to greet them is a dark templar from Elm. With another control group of zergling and a hastily recalled overlord T_Mac ends the threat, but not before losing ten or so drones. This is the last place is T_Mac is mining from, and Elm knows it. 
So of course Elm drops it with his reavers. As the reavers start being attacked by zerglings and retreat into the shuttle, Elm brings in two archons that take down another control group of zerglings. T_Mac sends six scourge chasing after the shuttle as it races for home and the safety of the cannons. The game is balanced on a knife edge. T_Mac has mined a lot more resources, but neither player has any resource intake right now. Elm has his preffered micro intensive weapons, but T_Mac might just have enough saved to drop down enough expansion that Elm won’t be able to stop them all in time. So what does a player of T_Mac’s grit and determination do in a situation like this? You guessed it folks!
