Kabals, cults, covens and theming an army

So I'm pretty inexperienced with the structure of the dark kin and I'm wondering how you guys balance fluff with army theming.

I'm basing some of this from recently reading Path of the Renegade: My understanding is that kabals, cults and covens all exist within Commoragh as independent organisations. Yet within a kabal, there would be wyches, haemonculi in the service/employ/payment/etc of an archon as a part of their organisation.

But if the archon of Kabal 1 has wyches working for them, are these wyches still members of a wych cult or just kabal members?

Finally, how do you choose to represent this on the battlefield? Do you have the whole army wearing the colours of one kabal...or do you have, say, some warriors from Kabal 1 and some wyches from Wych Cult X, each representing their own colours, perhaps on a joint raid?

Am I just making this far more complicated in my head than it needs to be?

To answer the painting aspect of your question, here's what i do :
To make sure it's plain obvious that the army is a whole, under the command of one man, there is one color that can be found on everymodel. For me it's Lothern Blue, applied by small touches (such as highlighting) on everything.
Then, as you go deeper in the hierarchy and complex organisation, it gets more complicated. My kabal troops have the Kabalite Green (duh) color in common. My cult units have the Trollslayer Orange color in common. So even though it's obvious that they all belong to the same army, the differences between the micro-factions are very obvious.

For the fluff aspect of your question, i think there is a strong mercenary market in Commorragh, and that's the easiest way to justify wyches/hellions/reavers in a Kabal army, or Kabalite warriors led by a Succubus. So i would say the nature of your army is determined by your HQs, and every troop that doesn't fit his faction is a mercenary.

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I think you're making it more complex than it needs to be.

The Kabals, Cults, and Covens are independent organizations, but they're still connected to one another. A cult might be sponsored by a single kabal that keeps them in slaves (and gets the best seats during the slaughterfeasts).

On the battlefield, everyone will usually wear their organization's colors. They might wear an armband, or temporarily repaint a part of their armor, to indicate who has operational command (especially in Drukhari vs Drukhari combat) but then again they might not: after all, a little friendly fire isn't going to concern the True Kin.

Mppqlmd wrote:

To answer the painting aspect of your question, here's what i do :
To make sure it's plain obvious that the army is a whole, under the command of one man, there is one color that can be found on everymodel. For me it's Lothern Blue, applied by small touches (such as highlighting) on everything.
Then, as you go deeper in the hierarchy and complex organisation, it gets more complicated. My kabal troops have the Kabalite Green (duh) color in common. My cult units have the Trollslayer Orange color in common. So even though it's obvious that they all belong to the same army, the differences between the micro-factions are very obvious.

I like this solution a lot! Thanks for that

Quote :

I think you're making it more complex than it needs to be.

The Kabals, Cults, and Covens are independent organizations, but they're still connected to one another. A cult might be sponsored by a single kabal that keeps them in slaves (and gets the best seats during the slaughterfeasts).

On the battlefield, everyone will usually wear their organization's colors. They might wear an armband, or temporarily repaint a part of their armor, to indicate who has operational command (especially in Drukhari vs Drukhari combat) but then again they might not: after all, a little friendly fire isn't going to concern the True Kin.

I'm fairly certain I AM over-complicating it...but does that mean you would have your army with varied colour schemes, or do you think it makes sense for a Drukhari army to be in uniform, even between kabal and cult?

In 7th edition there is a overview of how "Kabal of the Flayed Skull". Just for Kabal part of it, one group of Trueborns, 3 groups of Kab. War, 1 group of raiders and last a group of aircraft.
The 3 groups of warriors are split into newcomers, veterans and elite warriors, and i cant imagine the veterans or elites wants to be mistaken for newcomer, so they will most likely have either another colour scheme or something else to make them stand out from the lowlifes.
Same goes for the Trueborns... they for sure wants to stand out over the peasant lowlifes of normal Kabalites...

Yes, my army is in varied color schemes. Black with green flair for my wyches. Blue on green for my craftworlders. Black with pinkish purple highlights for my kabalites. Oil stained fishbelly pale flesh, brown leather, and blue chemicals for my covens.

Most of my army is supposed to be Ynnari, so they also have red patches hither and yon to reflect their new allegiance.

Go with what you want its your army...paint the colours you like and then if you really have to its not hard to write up some fluff to theme it.

Morgrim wrote:

Go with what you want its your army...paint the colours you like and then if you really have to its not hard to write up some fluff to theme it.

Yeah it's really up to you. You can write it and then paint it, or paint it and then fluff it up later. The codex and lore is only there as background and to give you suggestions, they're your dudes, you make up how it all works and is organized for them.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Morgrim wrote:

Go with what you want its your army...paint the colours you like and then if you really have to its not hard to write up some fluff to theme it.

Yeah it's really up to you. You can write it and then paint it, or paint it and then fluff it up later. The codex and lore is only there as background and to give you suggestions, they're your dudes, you make up how it all works and is organized for them.

I mean at the end of the day I know it's this. Do what you want and I will do that

Thanks for the thoughts guys, I really just wanted to see how all you guys handle the strange structures of the dark eldar. I think I'll go ahead and give the different elements slightly different themes. My army is going to be led by a Succubus (in my initial list) and lean more towards the cults so I think it'll either be a cult themed army with "mercs" or something of an alliance between a cult and a kabal of similar interests.

Go nuts with it if you like. My raiding party contains of no less than three distinctly themed kabals. One of which is so closely connected to a coven that they share the same color scheme. The wyches share the same color as the biggest kabal, except for the hellions, that are a separate gang. And of course every reaver team also has completely separate colors.
That is before adding any craftworlders or corsairs.
That said, I try to tie them together by making sure that as many models as possible has at least one small detail painted in bright red. Unless red is part of the actual color scheme.