I'm slightly embarrassed to be admitting this...
Mark, 10 Saggi fleet, Armageddon stats, Flash missiles all round;
me, 3 Jashakar, 2 Omelos, 3 Targrath. Annihilation.
At no point in the proceedings did the EA win initiative. They deployed in two echelons facing inward- 5 Saggis on the right facing left, 5 on the left facing right, the Dilgar lined up in a fairly compact group slightly off centre, hoping to catch them as they crossed and maybe explode a couple.
Round one was a non- event. The Dilgar advanced- on All Stop, minimum moves- to an average range of 30. 125" from their targets, the Saggis started to bunch up nicely.
Round Two saw virtually the entire Dilgar fleet slamming forwards on APtE. If they had gone on all stop, so would I, and I would have waited him out. I needed him to come just a little bit forward, just enough that I could get bolter targets- it worked.
All three Targrath got separate prime targets- they were set up on slightly diverging courses, not that much of a surprise really- and I know the odds should have left me with my head to play with. Three of the Saggis could fire forward and one side arc, two had been passed and had only fore arcs open, five had one side arc.
I'm really starting to think the firing sequence is the key to the game. Splitting, counterforce, the first Targrath removed one Saggi's interceptors with pulsar fire, launched torpedoes at a ship with three others within 4" of it, and smashed the main target with bolter fire doing engine and reactor crits that left it crippled and crewless.
It got worse from there. The mighty Dilgar scored four kills on the first firing turn, three with bolters and one with converging torpedoes.
By the end of round three, the situation was 3 Saggis had exploded, two were burning and adrift, two more had run out of crew, one was crippled, one was speed 0 and ripe for boarding, and the last one had only lost four hull and thirteen crew and was on No SA. I'd lost a Targrath and a Jashakar, one more of each badly battered but still basically there, and one Omelos crippled and one point off skeleton.
Mark gave up at that point, Standing Down and Preparing to be Boarded. So- what does this prove, if anything? I stole his luck- getting three or four times the number of crits he did. I roll outrageously well with the Dilgar, routinely two or three hits more than I ought to out of the twelve dice salvo. We were using the same set of dice, and I never realised just how large 67% is before.
Yes, the Saggi is bent. It's outrageously overpowered. It's absurd. It required monstrous statistical aberrations to come through with a shade over a third of the force in good fighting order and lots of human scalps to hang on the wall.