Morale was at an all-time low. There was not a dry eye in my base as each unit shed a tear for poor Billy. We would never again witness one of his lovable antics.

During our shocked sorrow, Isaac_Draco viciously repeated his attack on my 12:00 expansion with Zerglings, once again pushing through the Sunkens only to be finished off by my Hydras.

After this defeat, Isaac_Draco proceeded to send a few Mutas to my main base to test the waters. The Spore colonies there were adequate to chase him away.

A quick check on Isaac_Draco's main showed a huge number of Mutas sitting there, apparently waiting to attack. I decided to assemble a strike force of Hydras and Defilers to fight the Mutas on his own turf, and proceeded to load up four Overlords, three full of Hydras and one filled with two Defilers and some Zerglings to eat. The Overlords crept up to the edge of Isaac_Draco's main and studied the situation. I didn't see many Zerglings, so I knew that Dark Swarm should be effective.

Just to be sure, I dropped 4 Overlords full of Zerglings on his second expansion, clear across the map in the upper left corner. The Zerglings easily beat up the undefended Drones while intentionally ignoring the Nydus Canal.

Sure enough, after my guys did considerable damage, enemy Zerglings began pouring out of his Nydus. After they seemed to stop coming, I destroyed the Nydus, effectively separating his Zerglings from his main base--I would be safe to use Dark Swarm during my assault on the Mutas.

Special thanks goes to Twip, who demonstrated this maneuver very well in his excellent battle report
"1v1 Sherwood Fun"
One of my very favorite reports written, it contains an outstanding narrative!

At the same time, I sent 12 Mutas and 12 Guardians from my main directly south to his base. I had my Mutas focus fire on his, while my Guardians attacked the tech buildings. I was expecting a strong Hydra retaliation, but the only thing I saw was a huge army of Zerglings. I felt absolutely safe; my Mutas were slowly winning the air-to-air battle and those Zerglings were nothing but cannon fodder for my Guardians.

In doing so, he also split my attention between three battles...one at my main base, one at his main base, and one at his lower expansion (remember I had Mutas down there).

This posed an interesting question: do I send my Guardians back to help defend, or continue my assault? Over the course of the battle, Isaac_Draco had hatched a large number of Mutas in his main, tilting the air--to--air battle in his favor. Instead of replacing my fallen Mutas, I used all my hatcheries to make troops to defend at home. (The obvious choice would have been to make more Mutas, since they would be free to attack the enemy Zerglings and would have been able to help my Guardians. Unfortunately, I demonstrated my true incompetence by creating Hydras and Zerglings :( )

At this point, the Guardians were now on their own—Isaac_Draco had killed all my Mutas. Retreating to my base would lead his Mutas there, and my Spore colonies were falling fast. Staying meant the almost certain demise of my Guardians, but his base would be in tatters. I decided to keep my Guardians where they were. Suddenly it was a race to destroy each other's buildings. Meanwhile, my other Mutas were still fighting at his first expansion point, eventually finishing it off. They went north to Isaac_Draco's main to help, but were quickly overpowered. My Guardians, while taking a beating, continued to pound on his tech buildings.

My base was getting damaged all the more while this was happening:

Finally, the fighting was over; we had both run out of troops. My base was in ruins, but so was his. I still had retained most of my tech buildings while all of his had fallen. All my Guardians were dead, but so were all of his Zerglings. Isaac_Draco overestimated my condition and said he was conceding; he was out of gas. I was in pretty shitty shape myself, so I told him not to quit--this was too good of a game to let end. He agreed somewhat half-heartedly.

After a brief period of re-organization and re-building, I decided to check his second expansion (the first one I had destroyed, in the upper left corner). I found some Drones mining there, and a brand new Spawning Pool. Rounding up some Zerglings, I attacked the expansion...

...and destroyed the Spawning Pool. To my surprise, he hatched more Zerglings! And then more! He had another Spawning Pool somewhere…anyway, my Zerglings were finally defeated and his expansion stayed.

By now I was low on resources (my main was nearly dry), so I directed the Drones at my main to the new expansion at the lower left. On their way, they passed a new expansion of Isaac_Draco's at the mineral only resource node located at the center left of the map, complete with a Spawning Pool, two hatcheries, and a million Drones mining like mad. Oh yeah, there was also a small yet threatening army of Zerglings

Dammit! I had to shut that thing down fast. My troops were reluctant to run into battle after fighting so hard. I had to rally them, so I reminded them of our situation:

Knowing that Isaac_Draco's melee STILL out-upgraded me (pathetic, I know), I needed to use trickery. After parasiting one of the guarding Zerglings, I had Defiler creep up and plague them. They chased him back to a control group of my Zerglings...by the time Isaac_Draco's Zerglings got there, the plague had done its full effect and his warriors fell like a house of cards.

______