What our Kabals lack

I have two observations which I think are interesting in relation to one another.

If forums like Dakka and Bolter & Chainsword are a representative sample, it seems like the overwhelming majority of current Space Marines players are using one of the twelve or so "main" Chapters, with homebrew and more obscure Chapters being in the minority.

If this forum is a representative sample, it seems like the majority of current Dark Eldar players use homebrew Kabals. Of our nine "main" Kabals, there are some I've never even seen painted, like The Severed or The Broken Sigil.

I don't think any of this is a bad thing (except that with Space Marines I've gotten really tired of seeing the same armies and color schemes over and over and over again). I'm just wondering why.

There are some obvious differences, but I'm not sure they entirely account for it. Different Marine Chapters have special rules, but those rules apply to those Chapters' successors as well, and players typically aren't choosing to use the successors. There's significantly more background information on even the obscure Chapters than the Kabals, but very few people choose the Badab War Chapters despite how much information there is about them, and the most fleshed-out Kabals, like The Poisoned Tongue, don't seem to be more common than, say, The Dying Sun. Personally, I've only really needed one good page of background, a color scheme, and a symbol to make me go, "Ooh, I want to play that." I chose Howling Griffons for my Marines based on their colors scheme, name, and Chapter insignia alone.

It's probably a bunch of factors, rather than a single encompassing reason.

What do you think? And, anecdotally, did you choose your Kabal/Cult/Coven/other army's name and colors from the lore or make up your own, and why? If the Kabals detailed in our flavor don't appeal to you, what is it that you think they lack?

Maybe Dark Eldar attract rather nonconformist personalities.

Also, like you said, Kabals don't have unique special rules.
So gameplay- wise all Dark Eldar except Covens are the same, no incentive to take a special Kabal in that department.
Even though some have really beautiful colour schemes like the Dying Sun Kabal you mentioned.

Anecdotally I chose the Name for my Kabal from an attack name from Taki in Soul Calibur.

The colour scheme is inspired by the 5th Edition Codex cover, Khaine's bloody hands, Uranium and the woman that got skinned by Pyramid Head in Silent Hill.

I think there is a special appeal in creating one's own Kabal. Commorragh is a very fast paced place that will get rid off you faster than anything else if you cannot keep up.

In such a volatile environment, it is only natural for Kabals to emerge and it just feels so much more right to create a Kabal from scratch beause given the fluff that happens all the time. But new Space Marine chapters emerging? Eh, not really.

Also, when reading the fluff I always get the impression that those are "the other guys", aka the enemy. Perhaps it would probably be different if there were "Dark Eldar Chapter tactics", but I think it is the simple nature of the DE to be darwinistically competitive and antagonistic.

What I also think that the Kabals described in the codex are a little bit too well defined. They all have their unique and individual ways, but where does that leave me with my own army? I think the nature of a Kabal should also reflect in the way it plays and looks. I want to create my own path. Also, realistically I really cannot imagine the big Kabals ever performing bad in (let alone "losing") a raid.

And quite frankly, it is hard to play in a "fluffy" way with things like Wyches, Mandrakes, Hellions etc. if there is only a handful of competitive units.

I think it might also be that none of us really identify with the dark eldar. Save the hopefully very few actual serial killers on this forum we most likely create our own band so that we don't have a catalogue of things our people have done. It can be fun to make up a list of atrocities because none of us pretend our dark eldar are good guys, but it's different when you're inheriting someone else's sins.

I created my Kabal as a sect of Khaine worshippers that prefer to feed on blood and killing blows, not because they are good people who wouldn't torture but because it makes them more relatable. I abhor torture, but a soldier fighting on the battlefield is much more respectable and relatable than someone praying on the weakest. And when you can relate to your army I think you play better. You invest more of yourself into it.


That could all very well be exclusively myself though.

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I think it might also be that none of us really identify with the dark eldar

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when you can relate to your army I think you play better. You invest more of yourself into it.

Pretty much this. The Dark Eldar to me are very unrelatable with their fluff. I wish they could add more to make them relatable. I mean they're a sentient species that feel like us, if they could make them more "human" to us instead of a "Saturday morning cartoon villains" then i'd be happier.

Which I have been trying to do with my Kabal. I'm trying to go for a more Lawful Evil approach to my Deldar, (and thrown in necromancy cause it's cool and I like necromancy. It's easy to add whatever you want to Deldar honestly) as it makes me happier with my Kabal and more invested. Heck my Archon's fear of death was inspired by my own (especially considering the Deldar's situation soul-wise which is some fluff I actually enjoy as it gives them REASON besides it being "fun")

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That could all very well be exclusively myself though.

It's not.

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So gameplay- wise all Dark Eldar except Covens are the same, no incentive to take a special Kabal in that department.

^ This also plays a part. I mean people love Space Wolves because of the lore around them, but the reason people look into the lore is because they can PLAY as them. There are special things that they get from their fluff that you can enjoy on the tabletop. Special units sense Deldar have no such compunctions we don't go in that direction. Look at all the Xenos for that matter we're in the same boat SOME people might go with pre-created schemes, but only the Imperium makes them special and mean something.

Yeah mine are very lawful evil. I find them so interesting because if humans lived forever and had to murder people to survive... wouldn't we? So make them relatable.

In a blatant display of ego-stroking (how very fitting for a Dark Eldar forum...), I don't think it's something that our Kabals lack. I think it's something lacking in your average Marine player...

...imagination

Nah, that's cruel (again, quite fitting).

Jk of course if I ever do an Astartes army, I'd probably do Black Templars rather than a homebrew so I'm just as bad! I think there must be something innate to the SM fluff and/or the Dark Eldar fluff that nudges people in each direction.

I wonder where the Craftworlders fall on the scale of codex-to-homebrew...

I would point out that we as Dark Eldar do have something Space Marines don't have - a divided force.

Whereas Space Marine armies have chapters, what we have in return is Kabal, Cults and Covens. Cults and Covens ARE our variant on Chapters, Craftworlds, etc.
My suggestion from there would be that if we wanted to divide into our more varied aspect, instead of specific Kabal rules, break the force down into more of its unique sects. We have Kabals, Cults and Covens, but we can easily break down further into the Hellion Gangs (characters? different boards? different weapons?), Incubi Temples (characters? weapon options?), Mandrake.......tribes? (characters, options, etc?)

I think most dark eldar player creates a personal kabal for the same reason we all play this army: we do not like the easy way.
The background provided from GW is to me quite bland and simple for every single race in the game.
Some are happy with their Mary Sue elf and Superhuman, and some are not. Nothing wrong with it
Personally, as a long time roleplayer, I'm attracted by DE exactly for their inhumanity, if I am to play the evil guy I want to be the worst kind of guy.
It let's me play with the idea of letting the monster out, play as my Jungian shadow (uhh , I'm so profound).
I do not think our kabals lacks something, if anything we have more.

The Red King wrote:

I think it might also be that none of us really identify with the dark eldar.

This is something I disagree with. You have to keep in mind that 40k is a grimdark setting, so you're logically going to have everything portrayed in a bad light - especially villainous factions. The Imperium, for example, has a goal that the vast majority of people on the planet today consider admirable - keep humanity from going extinct. There's a lot of good and positive attitudes involved with it - sure, you've got grimdark things like corpse-starch on one hand, or a Guardsmans' field manual that teaches first aid and assigns a Classical Greek level of divinity and respect to the form of human body on the other. If you play an army for the fluff, I think what that means is that you admire the goals of the faction - and at least tacitly think that what they have to do to achieve them, atrocities and all, are forgivable.

Just as the Imperium is "preserve humanity" stretched to its logical grimdark extreme, the Tau are utilitarianism stretched to its grimdark logical extreme. Yes, you have good medical care, the idea that every life is worth preserving, and all that - but with the darker side that anything can be justified with, "It's for the Greater Good," from sterilization camps for sentient beings that willingly join your empire, mind control, and a caste system where nobody can choose what to do with their lives - that's for the Ethereals.

Commorragh, conversely, is your corrupt and grimdark version of a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist utopia. We all know the bad parts of Commorragh - lack of any enforcement of public safety combined with a culture that doesn't value life for its own sake that leads to murder sprees, plenty of paranoia, and so on. But, at the same time, the Commorrite Dream is alive and kicking - anyone can end up on top: even Vect started as a slave, after all. Plenty of new Kabals are constantly formed, and the individual who manages to take control of their life and make something of themselves is admired just about universally. I like to figure reincarnation is pretty common (this is where things stray into headcanon territory) - after all, what's to stop an enterprising Wrack from heading over to the Kabal of the First Bank of Commorragh, taking out a loan of soul-chits to buy himself some cloning equipment, promising free reconstitution and loot to any who join his new Coven (maybe taking on a dual role as the Archon of a new Kabal on the side), then heading off into Realspace to take slaves to repay the bank and grow his own fortune and those of his followers? Since in my mind Commorragh is based on that sort of ideology, I see it as something worth fighting for and defending, just as Imperial players or Tau players can defend the atrocities of their own factions.

All that rambling aside, I run about half-and-half homebrew and canon schemes for my armies. The Burning Shores Kabal led by an Archon Vukmir the Mad is half Kabal and half Corsair Fleet, operating outside of Commorragh because of a fondness of psykers. Have they caught the attention and ire of Vect? There's been no sign of that, but who knows. The Archon himself might have survived the Fall personally (but did that really happen? He's not sure if what he remembers are actual memories or just the conglomeration of millenia of idle thought). His cat Razorwhisker has lived countless lives too - Dark Eldar souls receive sustenance from any intense emotion, not just pain, and Vukmir, really, really loves playing with his cat. Possibly even more than he loves pain, but he still ventures into Realspace personally from time to time.

The Coven of Null Profusion led by a Haemonculus Malachor Vozhd is a research organization of sorts - the Haemonculus is fascinated by the grip that She Who Thirsts holds over the Eldar, and researches tirelessly any being that has an unusual connection to the Warp. Psychic Nulls, Tau with their near-emptiness in the Warp, and so on - this calls for live research subjects, of course. Vozhd hopes to create a method to essentially remove his own soul while keeping him alive as a Blank is, thus saving him from Slaanesh forever - but even if he were to succeed, would it still be him in his body or would it simply be an automaton devoid of consciousness?

The Cult is just painted up in the Red Grief scheme, not much thought given to fluff there. Chose them because Reavers are cool and I wanted to go with a red scheme to contrast the blue of my Kabal and the black of my Coven.

Lastly, the allied Orks are a mob Blood Axe mercenaries, led by a radical Nob NietzschOrk who believes that, "Gork an' Mork is dead, see, we'z gotta fight because we'z Orks," and enjoys working with and admires the Dark Eldar because they're the one other species that fights not for the glory of some god or loyalty to some leader, but simply because they want to.

Interesting how others have interpreted this subject. I just assumed that SM are the largest faction (on tabletop), so more effort had been placed into their fluff, with all sorts of media (games, novels, etc) telling us that "hey, these blue guys are really different from these red guys". Then people take that to the extreme.

We dont have that "hey, look at these cool guys doing cool stuff" sort of media for us to latch onto.

I joined the True Kin for the ability to kit-bash and the cool model line. I am tired of "it should look like this, and be built like this", so feth it all. A wise man once told me "If you feel living your life is like walking a tightrope, cut the rope and burn the whole fething circus". So nuts to those other guys, I am starting my own Kabal

For most people I think, including myself, theres little background lore available on our Kabals save Black Heart, where as several marine chapters have a ton, certainly for a lot of people out there fluff is important to the feel of their army.

If I ever painted another marine army I would no doubt be attracted to ones with a lot of lore available than one without.
For us, theres literally nothing much else than a small blurb and a colour scheme for 90% of covens/kabals.

@Cherrycoke, you expressed my point exactly. Thank you for putting it concisely.

So I guess the moral is: More fanfic?

I think mandrakes are competitive

I can identify with the Dark Eldar, at least to an extent, and certainly more than with the post-human space nazis. (Disclaimer: I am not a serial killer or sociopath.)

My Coven, Cult, and Kabal are all homebrew. None of the other 40k armies I've dabbled in have been though, possibly because I didn't think they were worth the extra work or because they just didn't inspire me the same way. I got to thinking about all of this in part because I'm getting ready to start a new Kabal - I think my classic Kabalites and my modern Kabalites should be different Kabals - and I've been agonizing (ha) over whether to pick one or homebrew again, and if I brew, what set of ideas/themes to go with.

On a related note, it actively bothers me that so many of the Kabals discussed in the books have, in my opinion, really stupid names. And a depressing lack of purple.

I just recently started playing DE and I don't think it even occurred to me to name/paint my forces based on an existing Kabal.

I couldn't tell you why that is but if I were to start playing marines it would either be white scars (because I find the Mongolian history really interesting) or raptors (the "reasonable marines"). The idea of a homebrew marine chapter just feels weird.

i like the story of our basic DE fellow, but i just found a color scheme that i liked and the whole thing dont even have a name or backstory.

i would have thought that most kabals have similar stories with the exception of their archons and how they came to power. with different focus on army building and warfare. its all about ruling and power

I couldn't really say. Since DE are really three different factions in one (Kabals, Cults, and Covens) it's hard to pin down.

When it comes to choosing homebrewed or canon for your subfaction, I see three options: one, go with a named, fleshed out option (Ultramarines, Cult of Strife), go with an option that has a barebones mention (the Emperor's Spears, the Kabal of the Bladed Lotus), or go with a wholly made up one.

For DE, with my own subfactions, I did one of each. My Covens are canon and expanded (Prophets of Flesh), my Kabal is a barebones mention (Bladed Lotus) and my Wych Cult is my own creation (the Jade Labyrinth).

My opinion is that the predefined kabals lack flavor and character, and they do not alter the way you compose or play your army enough to make it worth while committing to one or the other. You choose them if you like the colors. If not, you make your own.
Marine chapters are not only distinctly different but dictates your unit selection and play style. I.E. Sneak up and fly in the face of the opponent on glorious jet packs with Raven Guard or hide in a trench like a little b!7§h with Imperial Fists. Imagine the marine codex ONLY giving you the rules for ultramarines, and the choice between painting them blue, purple or black with gold and red details. I think we would see more home brewed chapters then.
Sure we can choose between such flavorful elements as what body parts our villains like to adorn their armor with etc. but it's like asking if you want your habanero enema with a drop of lemon juice or with lime. In the end, it does not matter. <- pun intended.
Besides, choosing a premade kabal indicates that it already has a pre defined archon. If you make your own kabal, you get to "be" the archon yourself. I don't know about you, but I don't want an imaginary boss.

Having gone though the codex again last night, other than the Black Hearts, none of the kabals have more than a page or two of fluff.

Regarding the marine chapters, I think it is their background and their established lore that can draw you in. If you fight for a certain chapter you get a defining legacy and special abilities that really represent what the chapter stands for. I find it really being the small rule tweaks that make it so rewarding in playing a certain faction. Moreover, there are some decisive moements in that very legacy that can make people go "wow, those guys sound cool. I want them and nothing else".

Compre that to homebrew chapters where you start with a blank sheet and a colour scheme. It's just not the same. Who are you exactly, what are you fighting against?

I would not say that the background of our Kabals is bad, but it certainly doesn't cover the extend of your usual marine chapter. I mean, we got what? Not even a page of the Kabals description along with numerious mentions throughout the history of Commorragh?

And most of the lore about the Dark Eldar are about the achievements of individuals. But you can't take pride in somebody else's achievements.
After all YOU are the Archon, a hardcore individualist possibly facing the most dangerous minds in 40k.

And looking at our lore, actually it is much more about the City of Commorragh than it is about their individual Kabals. And it really are the Archons that define the Kabal. Without the Archons, a Kabal is worth nothing. Directly or indirectly, all the achievements of a Kabal are the actions of an Archon, everybody else is just a tool that needs to work. Everything has to work like a perfectly oiled machine. that is hardly memorable.

This further contributes to the lack of a "true legacy" since you can't make stories about (heroic?) deeds during a raid that were performed from our warriors. It's either do or die. You have to be at your very best, or natural selection will take care of you. There is no further extreme in the actions of a "normal" Commorite that could be memorized.

You perform a raid and got a nasty surprise attack that wasn't calculated in, in the beginning? Well, crap. Let's better just get back to the webway and strike somwhere else. It's quite depressing in how uninteresting things are from a story perspective. And if something comes up, it are (again) the Archons that know how to turn something nearly unwinnable into a success.

And regarding playing a Kabal like the Black Heart you are ether just a second-hand Archon or be Vect himself. But you cannot be Vect since Vect is supremely perfect in (almost?) everything he does. And while I love him as a character, it would be boring to be the "perfect guy".

It's a bit sad how little the lore about the actual Kabals covers. However, now that I thought about all this it actually helped me improving the lore of my own Kabal. Not quite going away from the Archon archetype, but also expanding on the people around him. More free room for the Dracons that carry out his orders, a story for his favoured Grotzilla (Abberation) or something crazy his most favoured Trueborn did during a raid.

So, we are just too egoistic to be part of something greater than us.
And why should we be? We are the greatest, according to our megalomaniacal self.

@ Jimsolo - The Bladed Lotus? So far as I'm aware, they have a symbol but nothing else, including a color scheme. If that's really the case, that's not just bare bones, that's a seriously incomplete skeleton.

Scrz wrote:

In the end, it does not matter. <- pun intended.

Haha! Nicely done

Calyptra wrote:

@ Jimsolo - The Bladed Lotus? So far as I'm aware, they have a symbol but nothing else, including a color scheme. If that's really the case, that's not just bare bones, that's a seriously incomplete skeleton.

They also have an Archon, quoted in the Conquest card game. (And it could be argued that he's supposed to be the one depicted on the card, allowing you to extrapolate a color scheme as well.)

In either case, the kabal is still 'canon,' but lacking in most of the creative details (which gives the creative types all the artistic license they could want), so it goes in the 'bare bones' category.