Uncomfortably hot in my black suit, I left the cemetery shortly after the burial. On the way back to my car, I heard someone call out.

"Shandy!" Not knowing why, I felt as if that person was adressing me. Turning around, I found myself facing a sunglass-clad business man. He had his hands in his pockets, and looked cool and refreshed despite the intense heat.

"Me?" I asked dubiously.

"Yes, your name is Shandy isn't it?"

"No, sorry, you got the wrong guy."

"On the contrary, Mr. Oshean," He took his sunglasses off and stepped towards me, "I believe you are who I'm looking for." I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hands and looked up at him again.

"No, I'm not, leave me alone." I opened my car door and moved to step inside.

"It was a four-pool rush." He said confidently. The words sounded familiar, and I looked over my shoulder at him. "Two of them actually," He stepped closer, "at once."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, confused.

"Your coma," He responded, "was caused by an especially abusive double four-pool rush on blood bath." Trying to figure out what he meant, I stared at him as he continued. "Impossible to stop, even for someone of your calibre."

"I'm sorry, you definetly have the wrong guy." I got into my car and fired up the engine. He watched silently as I rolled down my window and wished him luck in his search for this "Shandy". As I drove away, he walked beside my car, and just before I started going a speed that would force him to walk at a pace that would ruin his whole slick, calm image, he handed me a file folder, which I took and threw into the back seat.

That night after dinner I sat down with my gift from the cemetery man and pulled out the first paper, which had a note attached.

"Maybe these will jog your memory in time for the tournament." -X'Ds~Grrrr...

Hmm.. some sort of code name or something? Who is this guy? I glanced at the paper and noticed there were scratchy notes written in red by some guy named 'Zileas'. By now I was very curious, and so I began reading.

We made another game after the lady left, and an ultra-gosu by the name of [HG] entered. The argument started when Spunk called our opponent 'Mercury' when I asked him what his name stood for. Next, I started argueing with him over what his name stood for, and he got all hot-headed about it. So after he threatened to leave and laughed at me for a while, he said "Dare to one on one?" I accepted, Spunk left, and we started the game. Right after I sent my drones to work, Mercury told me this:

Note from zileas:"3 gate rush with "safety" cannons is a lot like pure muta-rushing a terran on lost temple, only worse."

I thanked the Gods for my luck.. if I hadn't found his base early enough to do my thirteen pool rush I would have been destroyed. We had some pleasant conversation after I ran over his main and he expanded with pylons across the map. He threatened to disconnect, but in the end he didn't have enough micro skill to unplug his modem. A few minutes later I did a /whereis on him, and I got this:

The next Shandy file I pulled out was thicker than the others. It had another little hand-written note on it:: "This one was stolen by korean secret agents and only recovered recently. Enjoy." The note was unsigned.

I created the game 2x2 HUNTERS!!! and spunk joined right behind me. Before too long I-Luv-Ty-beanie and T-Lude69 joined up and formed a team. Everyone exchanged good luck wishes and we started, me at the top middle spot and Spunk at the top right. I randomed and got Zerg, Spunk randomed and got Protoss, and our opponents both picked protoss. Spunk's a clever guy, so he didn't do anything stupid, like scout, or ask what the plan was. Scouting and planning are for newbies and whack MCs. Sitting in ignorance, we built up quickly and efficiently. I made a spawning pool at nine control and then made constant drones, added another hatchery, and kept up the drones. Whenever I could, I added a sunken colony, and before too long I had extended my creep all the way to the top left spot's entrance.

Note from Zileas:"I once built sunkens by the dozen. I was one a newbie too"

Luckily enough, one of our opponents, Beanie, started there, and he was effectively cut off from the outside world. There was no way he'd be able to help out his partner when Spunk's archon rush came knocking on his doors.

The first battle took place when Beanie tried to break out of his containment with a few zealots. I was worried because my sunkens outnumbered his zealots by only a few but Spunk only laughed. Spunk apparently has a sharp eye, and knew that I was going to win the fight way before I did, and way before my opponent (who never retreated, probably because he thought he was going to win up until his last zealot was humped).

My opponent, however, wasn't through with me yet. Next he busted out the natural counter to sunkens.. SCOUTS! Because of their crippling air to ground attack, scouts were the natural unit to tech to. Cursing, I searched for something to counter the scouts with, but I hadn't built more than a spawning pool and sunkens. Spunk, though, had sacrificed everything to rush straight to archons. Bless his soul for having nothing for the first five minutes of this game. His archons chased away the enemies, and I was given a few more minutes to make sunkens until the next attack came. Here I expanded to the spot just above the center, and continued making sunkens. By now Spunk had also accidentally scouted and found a whole lot of cannons at the right-spot's choke point. Looks like Lude had been busy.. if I knew my gosu players, soon we'd have to deal with carriers. Still though, we had the immediate threat to deal with. MORE SCOUTS! Beanie attacked again, this time with six scouts pounding away mercilessly with their nuclear missile-remniscent weapons. I called for help, but the one archon that arrived wasn't enough, and Spunk reccommended spore colonies to make up for his inadequecies. A moment later I started mutating 'sproes' alongside my sunkens, completing my defense. Beanie couldn't handle our flawless unit counters and he ran back home.

After the scouts left, I sent drones around and expanded two more times. Once to Spunk's mineral natural and once to his gas-only natural. As they were morphing, I was brutally attacked. A huge force of about twelve dragoons, six or seven scouts, and about five zealots trickled in to my sunken field from Beanie's base. Things looked grim, and I was very thankful to see both kinds of archons coming to save my sunkens from slight injury. Thanks to a little mind-control and my endless fields of sunken colonies, the attack was turned back. Both of our armies took huge losses in that battle. Spunk lost about 75% of his (something like 3/4 archons died), and I, well, I guess I never really had an army. But yeah, I still had nothing.. just a whole hella lotta sunkens. The main weakness of my tactic is that I didn't have a mobile force to help out my partner on defense or offense (We all know how slowly sunkens move), and this shortcoming was soon exploited by Lude's zealots. This first wave ran into my few sunkens defending the choke leading into Spunk's base, and dealt with them along with a small handfull of zerglings. When the zealots made it to their destination, things looked pretty grim, but I managed to get three or four zlings there to help out and Spunk had started making his own zealots, so together we shut the attack down.
Our next move was to try and finish off our buddy Beanie. Before we attacked I mutated one of my hatcheries into a lair so that I could get together a lot of scourge to shoot down the expected carriers. My contribution to the attack was a few zerglings, and Spunk's was the standard archon-based protoss force. It was a fast fight, we just patrolled our forces in, Spunk dropped a few storms, and I was accused of cheating.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what he meant by saying that I had a nice hack, but he cleared it up a moment later with a long string of accusations.

Although one of our opponents was out, we still had the orange guy, Lude, to take care of. Again, we accidentally scouted, because only newbies mean to find their enemy's bases, and we noticed another cannon field had sprung up at the middle bottom. To counter this MASS expanding, Spunk did a very, very cheap move. In fact, I'd say it's almost as cheap and un-manner as using siege tank range to kill cannons without having to engage them with marines (like a real man would). Anyway, Spunk took a shuttle, and he went around the cannons. This made me so mad I nearly disconnected.. of all the low, below the belt moves! Those cannons weren't made to go around, damnit! Anyway, I try not to loose my cool in games, so I didn't say anything and concentrated on my economy. This is where I took the middle. I set up three hatcheries: one for the minerals, and the other two for the vespene geysers. Spunk, in the meantime, started warping in cannons to the left of Lude's bottom-center expansion. But it wasn't going to be easy, because Lude was extremely gosu, and built cannons on the other side of his nexus, to stop the advance.

Note from zileas:"Attacking reavers with probes in that fashion is a lot like scrubbing your scrotum with a wire brush"

To finish off the cannons at the expansion, I got together a nasty hit squad of scourges and mutalisks. The scourge I used to fly over the cannnons and distract them while my mutas dealt out their green, rebounding death.

Anyway, by now Spunk had finally expanded and was pumping archons to compliment my new defilers. We rallied our armies to the center, and got ready to attack. Just before we moved in, though, a deadly surprise attack came out of nowhere, and we had to both focus our full attention on it. Read the following screenshots as you would a comic strip.

Note from Zileas:"I've always liked scouts too, but they are about as effective against archons as zerglings are against mutas. A lack of such basic unit counter knowledge makes you wonder what the scout-user was smoking, and more importantly, where one could get the substance in question"

Woohoo, well that was it. We defended the deadly scout attack, and it was time to move in.

I darkswarmed, and Spunk ran in the archons. With such a complete unit counter, Lude could really do nothing. As we entered the bulk of his base, I thanked God for there being no carriers to deal with, as only fifty or so of my scourges remained.

Note from zileas:"I was suprised to see someone actually use defilers. The fact that plague does nothing to archons, and the fact that swarm helps archons is actually a combo I've not seen before. It was quite a strong play, not that it was needed at that point in the game."

Well, after the game I felt at peace with myself and all the creatures of nature, so I went outside wrapped in a bedsheet and fed swallows orange peels from my hands. Then I lay down on the ground and ate grass until I had a stomach ache. The world is a beautiful place. Anyway, share with your neighbours, and everything will be ok.

Zileas's big conclusion:"Never before have I seen so many dark archons used for so little effect"

NEXT SHANDY FILE ANSWERS ALL YOUR QUESTIONS!

"Does Shandy get his memory back?"

and

"For how long can Spunk and Shandy milk this already worn-out theme???"

Keep your eyes out for the essential and official Shandy strategy guide soon... It'll cover everything from how to use optic flare effectively to how to make your own didjeridoo.