Does anyone have a Dark Eldar army over 10k?

If so I want to see pictures of the glorious army. I also have one question. I'm considering making a huge DE army myself to face off against my Tau army. However I ran into a problem. I want a fluffy army composition much like my Tau. I intend to make a full Dawn Blade FSE contingent which would be about 405 models or so and equivalent to a battalion in military terms.

All the big factions I can think of have an in lore method of organizing their armies. So from biggest to largest.

Space Marine Chapter > Company > Demi-Company ect.

Legion > Decurion> Smaller formation???

Tau Hunter Command > Hunter Commune > Hunter Contingent > Hunter Cadre

In the Tau example a Contingent is made up of anywhere from 3-6 cadres. A full up retaliation cadre with it's 10 support formations is a huge army. You can then add in additional retaliation cadres or hunter cadres up to a maximum of 6.

What is the Dark Eldar's organization for larger armies? Does it have any sort of guidelines to building a fluffy army out there? Or am I going to have to do it myself.

Hmm...I think I might be close if counting options(most of my vehicles are magnetized)...let's see...

Nope, I only have about 7500 points worth. I wouldn't want to post pictures anyhow. The painting is in a transitional period, and is rather embarrassing(even moreso than my typically poor painting).

I have over 5k worth of CWE, over 5k in Tau, and over 2k in each of Orks and Necrons too, though.

Nah because at that point your conducting a raid, and every archon does that differently is literally our fluff. We are the faction of absolute individualism and about 4000pts everything is so radically different from one to another that we might as well be a hodgepodge of 3 distinct factions with every raid level force Blending those in radically different ways. As an example an all Coven army could be just a Carnival of Pain formation beginning at 2200pts, and with upgrades and reasonable squad sizes it can easily be ramped up to 5k+. Same with a Kabal raiding force a la multiple raiding parties or the formation scaled way up.

we're basically a kleptocracy with ancap microeconomic principles with pain as our currency. Each force is a direct representation of its leadership and we have no commonality beyond race and trade.

Okay replying to both of you. I knew that Kabals were made up of small gangs, but in the book it says some Kabals can have hundreds of thousands or be as small as a few dozen. Even if they were all part of one Kabal would they have different schemes?

Also I was kinda planning on doing two-three different gang schemes in my army to represent the big three uniting factions.

I want my army to be a Realspace Raider Formation and a Carnival. With both of those I will then make up my own "add-on" formations to the super formation. None of these are going to have rules, purely for thematic usage. So an easy example would be two different types of air-formation additions. One for a bomber wing and one for air superiority. I would give it a suitably dark eldar name too.

So that means my Dark Eldar "Decurion" is equal to a realspace raider + carnival. Then I need to make 10 fluffy formations.

Also when I make this army it will have every unit maxed out. I want this Kabal to be truly an epic sight to behold.

Formation Ideas:
Bomber Wing
Air Superiority
A reaver and hellion one based off of the gangs boardgame.
A beastmaster one

Can anyone think of some suitably cool formations they would have liked to see? Or have made?

Dark Eldar Kabal > Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods of the Kabal (3-6 of these make a typical Kabal) > Raider's and Haemunclous Covens formations + Aux formations

Each brotherhood and sisterhood would be a huge army when maced out. I only intend to make one complete Brotherhood as detailed above. So for a full Kabal deploying it would be a massive endeavor. A full Kabal should be equivalent to a space marine chapter deploying.

I think you need to pause on that level for about a month because everything is going to radically change in terms of army composition.

It's not meant to have rules. I wish GW had just given us a DE decurian, but I have to do it myself I guess. It's meant to be fluffy and a showpiece. An epic army of grand proportions. I know 8th edition will have radically different army composition. I want something that looks lore appropriate to go off against my Dawn Blade (Retaliation Cadre) Contingent.

In real life military terms a fully decked out retaliation cadre with one of every optional formation is about the size of a real life military battalion. I want to organize my Dark Eldar at that level. No they will have suitably themed ranks but it will be an equivalent amount of Dark Eldar. For the curious a fully decked out Contingent of 3-6 maxed out hunter cadres/retaliation cadres would be equivalent to a real life regiment and a space marine chapter. So if anyone was hard core enough to have a DE army that big they could boast it was the fluffy equivalent to a DE chapter/IG Regiment/Tau Contingent/Necron Legion. It would at a guess probably have anywhere from 800-1600 models for DE. Hence why I want to tone that down and just make a single brotherhood (which is in my head cannon a collection of gangs and/or one really big gang).

My progress so far.

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t15342-kabal-of-the-darkstar-the-brotherhood-of-the-serapim#182457

Believe me I get you, you're simply not understanding me. I'm directly commenting on your RRD/Carnival comment as that will not be rules appropriate soon, BUT I'm also saying that it's not necessarily a good reference model for fluff volume either because it's actually a super specific army if you actually care about that. If your doing your own thing and not trying to be the prophets of flesh as an example you'll want to pull in other sources like the new 8th army builder methods. I should have included that the apocalypse warzone books would be helpful for you too since the scale in their formations is appropriate. ESPECIALLY if you want to field a true wych cult rather than wyches working s job for a patron.

I realize it is a specific army and has its own rules ect. I choose to ignore that for my collection and simply build it for fluff. Also I did stumble across the apoc formations. I'll consider adding them, but they seem a little uninspired honestly. Maybe if I had the full details. I'll have to find a copy of apocalypse and read up.

This project is probably going to take years and years to get done and painted. It's going to be a massive army.

If I was going to play in 8th I would just grab whatever I needed from my army and put it in the table lol. Thanks for the input though.

If you are looking for fluff that dictates how an army of the Dark Eldar is structured along the lines of how an Eldar Warhost is then you won't find it. The Dark Eldar are to tribal in nature. You can have an Archon of course that structures his Kabal around the concept but that is just his Kabal and the lesser Archons he might have a substantial amount of control over. This control does not extend to the Cults, Gangs, and Covens who are more allied/sponsored forces to his own and would organize their people in accordance to their own wills.

A Gang is a group of hooligans who join the raid to their benefit and are not a regulated militia. The Wyches hold their own traditions and organize around that and would be more structured then a gang. The Covens are groups of mad scientist who bring their abominations (or sell those abominations to others) to fight but don't really follow a military structure themselves.

Sorry if I failed to understand what your intent was.

I'm looking for a Dark Eldar version of a War Host. The other armies also have their big super formations of formations as I mentioned earlier.

Hence why I'm looking for inspiration to create my own and trying to think of good names for the formations in them. I know that a raiding party disbands and fights itself as usual once back in the city. However I would expect before a Kabal goes to war there is a "standard" of what they need to get the job done.

So for example an entire Kabal would deploy to fight a huge military battle. What would they send out for smaller raiding parties? So for example on the battlefield there are two objectives and the Kabal has to split its forces into two groups. How do they identify each other? It would get confusing having to constantly remember some randoms dudes name every raid. Not to mention if you order this lawless group to attack what happens when multiple people answer back and start trying to give orders to that group? Do your soldiers know not to all follow that one group without having common identifiers? All the fluff says they are efficient in war so they must have some sort of loose style of organization to their raiding parties.

This is what triggered me about the Tau for so long. A hunter Cadre was anywhere from 1000 to entire star spanning armies and it confused the Tau fans a lot and made military historians like myself spaz out. That problem was solved for pretty much all the armies at this point except the Dark Eldar and I think Orks don't have one either.

Their "Kabals" can all range from 10 to 100000000 people big. So on the battlefield how do they distinguish different parts of their Kabal? What term do they use? Hey you guy/girl? It would be utter madness and they would swiftly find their attacks routed.

Hence why I've come up with "Brotherhoods, Sisterhoods, and adopted/expanded Covens" into their own temporary sub-divsions of a raiding Kabal. This way if half of the the black heart half to go and take out the power they say Brotherhood X go and do it while the Brotherhood of Z goes and does this and finally Coven Y will be providing a distraction and we will need to reinforce them. This would enable them to be able to give orders efficiently and the people on the raid would know who to follow.

So a Dark Eldar "Warhost" or whatever you individually want to call it would typically be made of 1-6 brotherhoods, sisterhoods, or covens. Then from within these ranks we can finally get things like real space raider detachments and whatever else they bring along ect. Thus an individual leader would simply have to remember the names of their brotherhoods and not every single new guy who shows up which would be impractical even if they could do it with flawless memory. A single Brotherhood, Sisterhood, or Coven is a massive army on the tabletop. I'm planning on the Brotherhood of the Seraphim to be about a 10-13k (7th ed) point army. I'm going to make my own fluffy formations to go along with already established formations. There were a few apocalypse ones I was interested in porting over to my "Warhost" but this will take some time.

Before battle someone should be nominated for those sub-leadership roles and leading smaller groups of them into battle. These would still be composed of gangs and loose affiliations, but for the purpose of the battlefield they listen to this chain of command simply because they want to get stuff done.

Another example what would a collection of six massive (1.5-2k DE each) Kabals be called? In the book it mentions that they attacked an entire IG planet. There would be thousands of Kabals and not to mention just on that individual raid. Let alone how many different ones are all over. If Vect or a suitably important Archon gains command of an entire raiding force what do they call the entire raising force? Do they name it differently before each battle (which sounds cool actually).

I imagine for simplicity sake on a raid they adopt a "standard" raiding terminology for their structure or else their raids would have no hope of success. What would the point of making new terms for every raid if they all functionally do the same thing. No one could get any important information to anyone since no one is ever sure who would be in command to give the info to without these organizational systems. As nerdy as this all seems the book implies they are just as crazy at planning raids since they have to do it flawlessly or as close to eldar possible.

TLDR
It's all fun and games for the young commorite gangs who just want to go shoot stuff and take slaves, but someone has to keep the agony powered trained running folks and that takes slaves and organization to get slaves.

I always assumed the Dark Eldar used no "standard" template for a raid because each raid is tailed to be in the favor of the Dark Eldar before they attack. They gather their information, then they begin the planning process, as they see the deficiencies in their Kabal/Coven/Cult they gather mercenaries and gangs to fill those holes. If they still need more assets then they contact "allied" or subordinate Kabals, Covens, and Cults who have those assets.

The leaders of these groups sit down and further work out the plan, who will be in overall command (most likely the one with the most power in the city) and who will be the sub-commanders in charge of the different parts of the plan. The secondary and tertiary position are then take up by those with the appropriate influence and fit the role of their part of the plan (An Archon whose personality favors the use of ravagers would be placed in charge of taking out the enemy armored division at the time and place appropriate for example).

Personally I've always envisioned the Dark Eldar more as a Feudal Kingdom's Military where you get what the nobles show up with because that was what they could muster do to a lack of real standardization for their forces. With that said I have no doubt that they designate different parts of the raid in some fashion but I have never come across anything mentioning what those might be. I could, however, see some Dark Eldar tailoring these designations on a raid by raid basis, even giving them names in mockery of their objectives.

Hopefully this made some sense...

I know that. Same thing with the Tau, but for game rule purposes they represent this by having a "Hunter Cadre" and then for each core you take you can gain 1-10 auxiliary formations. These range from bomber support, to kroot, to tanks ect. So you can individually tailor your army to some extent. You can also take one command formation and this makes up the Tau hunter contingent.

For the Farsight Enclvaes there are two possible core options for the Dawn Blade Contingent. A Retaliation Cadre or the standard hunter. Again they can take 1-10 for each core. Each contingent can take a maximum of 6 core formations. So these armies do represent sizable deployments if someone were mad enough to make an entire Contingent it would be anywhere from 1k-2.5k models.

Yeah Feudal military units had call signs and banners and strict chain of command. The commanders were determined by nobility, rank, and experience. Among the feudal lords they would have peasant commanders ect.

No military force in history from the basic club and spear wielding armies of tribes to the high tech modern day armies of now have ever not had a line of command.

It's simply a necessity and organically forms as a necessity to conducting war. War started out as basic raids for resources and slaves.

Hence why I think even in Dark Eldar society it would be insane not to have titles given to archons and nobles to command their armies. These titles would only be in effect in the field and would be jockeyed over before the raid. Then once planning time for the raid is on and they have locked down commanders and broken down a rough organization they can begin.

So like you said after they sit down and plan who is in charge what titles do they give them in the field? If they do this for ten thousand years you don't think some common raiding titles would have developed to use for any groups planning a raid for simple convenience?

It does make sense, but it doesn't avoid a chain of command it is simply telling me yes they do it. You can't avoid a chain of command unless your a hive mind of some kind. It's simply how the nature of communication works for meatbags. How that chain of command is established is another thing though. The people in these positions would be constantly shifting as they die off or move on to other groups ect or the rare one gets a promotion.

So like I said if I was to make a Dark Eldar "Warhost" it would be called something suitably fluffy that kind of has to really hit home their flexibility. Also the Tau hunter cadre core and dawn blade offer a lot of variety themselves before you even begin customizing with auxiliary formations. So that should be mentioned.

For my personal Kabal I want to distinguish with the words Brotherhood for sub-groups of the greater kabal for organizational purposes. However I'm also trying to think if there would be anything more fluffy sounding than that. Anyways this is going to be a long process as I brainstorm lol. It's so hard coming up with cool legit sounding names and words for these groupings.

Just have to say, I love that fluff. what a great idea, that he realised that there could be more pain for everyone if the dark kin expand!

Thank you. I can't wait to finish the rest of the lore for my Kabal. Once my Ta'unar is done I'll be painting my first three reavers and take my first step on a very long project. I'll try post logs of the army as it slowly expands over the years.

I'll be painting them up primarily in a dark purple scheme with some neon green in there. Some of the smaller gangs colors are TBD.

Yes I do. Lots of old and new models I have playing DE since their birth. I have't played in a while due to hating the last ed of the game. But i do have I think I had close to 15k at one point. I still have boxes of DE in shrink wrap i haven't gotten around too. If you want a mass of them you can do what I do and buy them cheap off a marine player who tried to play them and couldn't because he was use to using a wolfstars and armor. I would take me forever to take pics of the models lined up but if think about it will try to get some pics of them in their storage boxes.

To be honest, from a purely DE perspective, it probably isn't very fluffy to even HAVE a huge army for a huge battle. DE are historically pretty safe from invaders in their webway realms, and so they get to pick and choose their battles. Why choose to fight a huge army toe to toe when you can just raid their supply lines, and make slaves of their mechanics and builders to starve them out. Then, when they're sufficiently starved from lack of supplies, workers, and functioning equipment, THEN hit them, not needing a massive army.

In my mind, based on the fluff, that seems to be the way of the dark eldar.

Bigger army better loot. Higher chance you can pull a Genghis Khan and in the long term just get them to pay you tributes so you don't even need to fight them saving your men for future raids on other planets.

Also a big army like that would split up into multiple-raiding groups as well. It's not like it's all going to be in one area. Which is why I said it's important for them to develop some sort of raiding organization so they can actually identify and communicate with each other when they might be very far apart on a planet.

If needed for hard targets they can all converge for a massive battle.

It just opens up more options for slave taking.

I have around 8k as of now. With the new coming, it could grow.

So much more than 10K. It is bordering on embarrassing.

Pics or it didn´t happen!