Tom Versus Erik: Battle for Middle Earth

I've linked to 1UP's reprints of the departed CGW's Tom [Chick] versus Bruce [Geryk] columns in the Sunday Papers before, but I think it's time we stuck one on the front page. In short, the idea is they plan a versus game and document their thoughts, tactics and similar. Except this time Erik-OMM/Portal/Etc/Stuff is standing in for Bruce. And these are his thoughts, tactics and similar...

Erik: Because I lied about reading the manual, I start at a slight disadvantage. Still, I've played enough of these games to know the drill: Buy whatever I can as fast as possible, build a ton of one type of unit, group them together, and then send them in a big clump toward Tom's side of the map.

Does Erik's total lack of knowledge defeat Tom's hotkey supremacy? Oh, c'mon. Guess. In other notes, I keep on thinking about blatantly ripping this off and doing it here. We are shameless.