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The_Real_Chris wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:

I never got the sense that that was intended, and such arrogance seems out of character of the Craftworld Eldar. It's what I'd expect from a Harlequin or something.

Really? They are always written with arrogance and contempt for humans surely?

Yeah eldar are many things, but often arrogant, over confident, haughty, superior etc...
They live for hundreds of years; train in multiple skills to a high level and that's before you get to things like their upper tier armours basically being a mental blend of all the warriors that came before them etc...

Eldar very much remember that they ruled the Galaxy; that they won the original war against the Necrons; that they are the last surviving major species of the Old Ones; that they once held sway so strongly that they lived a hedonistic lifestyle. That whole planets could be a palace for a handful of Eldar.


What are humans compared to them; most humans live a lifespan that's over in the blink of an eye. They worship technology like its a god with little real understanding of what they are doing with it; they use crude weapons; crude machinery.

It’s typical 40K over the top-ness. Also typical that people are annoyed at one thing but happy to hand wave away another unbelievable thing.

40K isn’t a reality life simulator it’s fantasy. No one is bothered that the thunderbolts, basically flying bricks can fly at all, let alone hover around to land and take off defying all the same laws of physics that the eldar do jinking around.

Then we are shocked when the aliens don’t bag eve in a way that conforms to human psychology. THEY ARE ALIENS. And arrogance towards the lesser races is very much a craftworld thing. They literally call humans monkeys.

Nothing in 40K obeys the physical rules, chainswords, flying tanks, psykers and daemons. It’s fantasy so an alien plane that is made from bone sculpted by singing to it to make it grow and flown by a psychic alien doing “impossible” things is fine by me. Where ever you draw the line in what you will accept there will be absurdity on the wrong side of it.

My interpretation was just that the killer flippy move is actually risky because it precludes dodging for a short window, and the eldar pilot was being shrewd by baiting out all the Thunderbolt's ammo before doing it. That isn't obvious from the scene but I feel like that was the intent.

That makes sense. I thought the scene was cool, the only bit that annoys me in the series so is the humans are very annoying characters.

The second episode was better. Eldar still vastly superior, but at least seem to be playing the same game now.

When you scramble to defend an objective, get almost entirely shot down, don’t protect your objective, and can’t even land a shot, there is an issue. That’s not an aeronautica fighter planes story, but a horror/survival one. Jason Voorhees hiding in the clouds. And not to say you can’t have fun with that, but it’s not what I wanted to see here.

The first episode was “Hahahah Nope!”
The second was “outclassed, but with coordination and a little luck we might be able achieve something, even while failing in our goals”

We’ll see where they go from here.

I just watched the first two episodes, and I feel like some of the criticism is overblown.

My main (but still kind of minor) criticism is that some of the eldar maneuvers do feel disconnected from the aircraft themselves. The "weightless" thing some people have mentioned. In some shots (especially with the vampire(?)), we see parts of the aircraft move to utilize wind drag to turn quickly, and that's cool. Moments like that convey the idea that the pilots are doing some crazy difficult maneuvers (as you'd expect for a species with superhuman reflexes), but the maneuvers feel more "physical." They feel connected to the movements of the planes and to the environment. Whereas other times, the planes just kind of spin like beyblades as though there's some unseen internal engine at work. Which is definitely something eldar might be capable of, but without an external visualization of that tech, it kind of just feels like the planes can move in any direction without caring about aerodynamics or the locations of their engines.

I feel like those same maneuvers would have been fine if we had like, flexing panels or retrothrusters or something visibly making those movements happen. But that issue might be partially at the feet of the model designers who created cool-looking silhouettes and didn't have to actually think about what those bodies would look like in motion. Whomever designed the hemlock/crimson hunter kit probably wasn't told to think about how his planes would be animated when he designed them.

But aside from that? I don't really have a problem with any of it. It makes sense to me that a small number of eldar would be able to ruin the day of a much larger number of mundane humans. If you told me three-man teams of warp spiders were wiping out 5-man teams of guardsmen or even scions, I'd tell you that that sounded about right. This is kind of the flyer equivalent of that.

It's also clear that, at least on the human side of the story, the first episode is one of those scenes from a BL novel where everything goes right for one of the factions. Where all the winner's defenses do their jobs to keep casualties near non-existent and where all their weapons find their ideal targets and make some flashy critical hits. The story so far (for the humans) is about the frustration being felt at fighting some evasive boogeymen elves, and you can't really establish that vibe for your story if you're killing half the boogeymen every fight.

It wasn't clear to me whether the eldar were actually "showing off" in their fights or not, but it would kind of make sense in-universe for them to do so. Even setting aside the adrenaline junkie nature of the eldar, one of the space elves in question expresses how frustrated he is that the humans just keep coming. Flexing on the humans with stunts designed to break their spirit and make them feel hopeless makes sense if he's trying to convince the humans to stop sending more dudes. He's not showing off just for fun; he's showing off to say,

"Look. This is pointless. You don't have a chance of beating us, and trying is just going to lead to a bad time for everyone involved. Leave and stay away."

So yeah. Eldar tech and skill levels being superior to mundane humans? Checks out. Eldar trying to break the spirit of the humans by demonstrating their skill gap? Checks out. Humans responding by focusing on playing the mission (defending the base) instead of chasing kills? Checks out as much as most things imperial do.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I just watched the first two episodes, and I feel like some of the criticism is overblown.

My main (but still kind of minor) criticism is that some of the eldar maneuvers do feel disconnected from the aircraft themselves. The "weightless" thing some people have mentioned. In some shots (especially with the vampire(?)), we see parts of the aircraft move to utilize wind drag to turn quickly, and that's cool. Moments like that convey the idea that the pilots are doing some crazy difficult maneuvers (as you'd expect for a species with superhuman reflexes), but the maneuvers feel more "physical." They feel connected to the movements of the planes and to the environment. Whereas other times, the planes just kind of spin like beyblades as though there's some unseen internal engine at work. Which is definitely something eldar might be capable of, but without an external visualization of that tech, it kind of just feels like the planes can move in any direction without caring about aerodynamics or the locations of their engines.

The point is that Eldar aircraft do use gravity manipulation so a "weightless" feel is entirely in keeping with that. In the Imperial Armour books, it states that Nightwings for example have no landing gear and still use anti-grav to remain floating when at rest. The cockpit is also described as using gravity manipulation to cancel out any experienced g-forces. This technology explains why they can pull off moves that would either kill human pilots or be impossible to do using just normal manipulation of lift and wind drag. The whole point is that the Eldar are capable of pulling off moves that feel unnatural or impossible due to their eldritch technology.

Even though it may go against the whole human protagonist character having some kind of ineffable specialness that beats the odds, I think the Imperium should be shown to be making gains through numbers rather than anything innately special or redeeming about its pilots. The Eldar are too few and trying to stave off too many incursions. If they mass and commit to one they would win that engagement with overwhelming decisiveness but they would essentially leave the Imperium to advance unhindered on all other fronts, so instead the Eldar have to split their forces even though they know this reduces their chance of victory in each of those individual engagements. They have to in order to be able to have a chance to holding off the Imperial advance on multiple fronts at once. In the Imperial Armour books, there was once an after-action report where it said Nightwings destroyed multiple Imperial fighters for no losses of their own. However the feel I got from that report was this was still acceptable for the Imperium as they were still making gains. The Eldar simply can't destroy enough of the Imperials fast enough. I think trying to convey that sense of frustration and futility despite winning tactical engagements would be good if portraying from the Eldar POV.