Kabals, Cults and Covens

So having seen the Eldar codex news and key words it seems we shouldn't expect any new kabals, cults or covens to be written in and given rules. So I thought it would be interesting to review all our current in codex kabals etc and see which ones will be making it through to get their own rule set. My personal expectations/hopes are:

Kabal of the Blackheart, lets be honest if these guys dont have a rule set then there is no hope for kabals at all.

Kabal of the Poison Tongue, though Lady Malys seems to be just religated to being a character other than Vect to be name dropped in certain characters story arcs. I think we are likely to get her Kabal with some kind of special rules.

Kabal of The Last Hatred (Or Other Minor Kabal) this is more of a hope for myself since they are my Kabal, but some necromancy themed special rules could make for an interesting play style. But it will most likely be a different one, my money is on the Lords of Iron Thorn.

Cult of Strife, with our leading Lady Lelith.

Other Wych Cult, This will be just to provide some options and not an automatic taking the CoS option

Prophets of Flesh, these are already in the index thanks to Urien so they are all but guaranteed a spot in the codex.

Other Coven, Again just a padding option.

If we take a look at our previous codex and its established lore GW have to choose from:

9 Kabals:
The Obsidian Rose
The Poisoned Tongue
The Last Hatred
The Black Heart
The Dying Sun
The Severed
Lords of Iron Thorn
The Broken Sigil
The Flayed Skull

3 Wych cults:
Strife
Cursed Blade
Red Grief

3 Covens:
The Hex
The Dark Creed
The Prophets of Flesh

However if we only look at paint schemes featured on GW models and labeled in the codex (allow me to be cynical and say they wont be wasting models they've already painted) the list of options becomes:

Kabals:
The Black Heart
The Flayed Skull
The Lords of Iron Thorn
The Poisoned Tongue

Cults:
The Seventh Woe
Strife

Covens:
None


From looking at these two lists the I'm going to be placing my bets on GW forgetting the fluff list and simply focusing on what they have showcase models for. Though with the addition of a second Coven other than the prophets of flesh. Maybe I'll be wrong and all our in lore groups will get rules, similar to the Eldar and Marines, but somehow I think we are too minor a faction for that much love and attention.

TL:DR From the way things are looking with other releases I'm thinking there will likely be 3 Kabal options and 2 of both Cult and Coven options.

Or simple only rules, relics and warlords traits for kabal, cult and coven. I don't think they care about us so much as our goody two shoes CWE brothers However in this edition... It's NEWHAMMER

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I don't think they care about us so much as our goody two shoes CWE brothers

IMO GW didn't want to risk people flaming against "CW getting all the cheese again", and the new asuryani codex is pretty weak imo. Some good things, but not at all at the power level of IG or DG.

Black Heart and Poisoned Tongue are pretty much a must-have, I agree. But I would love to have rules from the Obsidian Rose Kabal. After all, they are famous for their extremely well crafted weapons and I really dig good weaponry.


As for the Covens, I could imagine the Dark Descent being playable. Especially since it was featured so prominently in the Path of the Dark Eldar trilogy. It has lots of lore and potential that I wouldn't want to see being unused.

As for Covens, you forgot the following ones: The Ebon Sting, the Altered, the Everspiral and Coven of Twelve.
Source: 5th edition

For our group we're guessing at one of two situations:

A) GW gives us 2 kabals, cults, and covens each for a total of 6 playable regiment rules. This would roughly be in line with how many options there are for IG and CW. I doubt we'd get more than that, seems like too much work for GW to dedicate to anything that's not Space Marines.

B) GW eschews the specifics and just gives us three options. When list building you choose if you're a Kabal, Cult, or Coven list and any units in your army with the chosen keyword gets a bonus and the others wont. This would mean GW only has to make 3 special rules and given that we're not only a xenos faction but also a "bad guy" faction this seems to be in line with the attitude and attention GW would likely give us.

I'm excited for our 8th edition codex, I have no doubt that it'll be good in it's own right and we'll see some needed power and point shifts but I'm not holding my breath that it'll be the pinnacle of GW writing for faction themed armies. I sincerely hope to be proven wrong by GW but in the meantime I'll temper my expectations.

Flayed skull - Models in 7th dex and they were called the 2nd strongest kabal.

I'm sad that they will most likely be splitting us into 3 factions because i liked having a brigade. Was eventauly going to build to the point of having 1 Hammy, succubus and archon as my 3 hqs, each being given 700ish points of stuff.

My guess is that the Dark Eldar aren't going to be split into three factions, but some of the traits are only going to affect specific units - just like in the Craftworld Codex, e.g., Saim-Hann's trait only affects jetbikes, we might have a trait that only affects Coven units (maybe something like +1 to the Power from Pain save?).

oh i'd like that ^ and if its in craftworlds book it might be in ours too

I am not at all hopeful after seeing the lack of effort and thought put into the Craftworlds. Uthwe's "power" is terrible. They should have got Biel Tan's bonus to shuriken weapons and leadership, improving both their guardians and some of their psychic powers.

Iyanden, the craftworld known for Wraith warriors (aka units that have multiple wounds, huge toughness, high armour and leadership, and a tenancy to get small squads or even single model units) get a buff to reduce leadership based casualties, a trait that pushes for horde armies. They would highly benefit from Uthwe's buff, making their already tough units even tougher and providing their valuable units defense against high powered weapons and mortal wounds.

Biel Tan, who focus on aspect warriors, get a boost to leadership (nice, and kinda fluffy) and reroll 1's with Shuriken weapons... what? There is 1 form of aspect warrior (dire avengers) that uses Shurikens as their primary weapon, there are 3 (Banshees, Scorpions, Shining Spears) which use Shuriken weapons as secondary weapons. That leaves... Fire Dragons, Dark Reapers, Crimson Hunters, Swooping Hawks, Warp Spiders, and that forge world aspect I can never remember. In other words MORE Aspects get no benefit from the reroll which is the primary advantage of being Biel Tan than do get an advantage.
Even Iyanden's trait, losing only a single warrior to morale, would be both better and fluffier than what they have. Really though, Advance and Charge for the melee aspects and Fall Back and Shoot at -1 (stolen from Ultramarines) for ranged aspects would have been perfect for the Aspect heavy force.

As is, the whole thing feels like they just didn't care.

I see what you're saying FuelDrop, I agree that the craftworld bonuses aren't as well thought out or fluffy as we'd like to see. Really all we can do is wait and see what GW does on our end though. I suppose one bonus we have is that we've never had kabal rules before did we? There's no precedent to go off of for us is there? We have some fluff that describes the ways many Kabals, Cults, and Covens go to war but nowhere near as much as craftworld have had right? I feel we're less at risk of getting fluff-butchering bonuses like some of the craftworld stuff and just simply more at risk of having GW be lazy and not put any creativity into our rules.

Only time will tell however and on the bright side it's not like our codex could be any more dry than the index already is. Honestly it's not a question of whether our codex will be better than what we have but rather how much better is it going to be?

I find your abundance of faith... disturbing.

Oh, wait, I see the source of it now

Darn thing seems obvious in hindsight!

I hadn't heard about how little attention they had payed to the actual fluff of the Eldar, thats rather depressing. But I think I'm inclined to agree with Faith that anything is going to be better than nothing really. Although I am hopeful that we wont only have one way of playing each sub-group of our army, whilst it would be in line with GW's lazy writing of current years I think it will be a massive missed opportunity to make several ways of playing Dark Eldar kabals etc.

I for one will be pissed if guard have 8 unique and different army wide play styles and we get 3, each being limited to 1/3 of our models. But maybe I'm expecting too much from this company.

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I feel we're less at risk of getting fluff-butchering bonuses like some of the craftworld stuff and just simply more at risk of having GW be lazy and not put any creativity into our rules.

I honestly feel that GW wanted to make CW subpar because they didn't want people raging over the Eldar getting all the cheese again. And they are kinda right, because even with those trash-tier doctrines, they were still people calling the eldar "cheesy" on the W40k facebook page. People are just traumatized from what CW used to be, and GW couldn't risk making them even remotely powerful.

I feel like this edition is about giving power to the armies that were lackluster before, and nerfing to the ground armies that were top-meta. Necrons, T'au, CW are bound to low-tier, and CSM, Tyrannids, IG, Harlies... and maybe DE ? are bound to be top-meta.

@inevitable_faith : I'm pretty sure it'll go as you stated : either 3 options (kabals/cults/covens) either 2 eachs.
Maybe they'll focus more on kab/cult/cov depicted in path of DE, but I won't bet on it.


I just hope they'll allow us to make diversified DE armies, and not have special rules dedicated to one group only (thinking about HQ auras here). Also maybe unify the PfP trait ; it's hard to keep track who benefit from it and who isn't (beasts, vehicules, etc.)


Also, currently reading "Jain zar", and the kabal "Barbed wire eye" (not sure about the traduction) is mentionned.

Mppqlmd wrote:

I feel like this edition is about giving power to the armies that were lackluster before, and nerfing to the ground armies that were top-meta. Necrons, T'au, CW are bound to low-tier, and CSM, Tyrannids, IG, Harlies... and maybe DE ? are bound to be top-meta.

This was my thoughts about the new way the game seems to be going, looking at it cynically they are buffing armies which both require alot of models (sales) to be good and also had dying communities. I can't remember the last time I saw nids being played and the buffing to their army feels like GW trying to encourage people to play them again.

I am a little concerned about this idea though, I'd rather see them working on balancing the game rather than seeing previously broken armies nerfed into the ground and for the old awful armies to be elevated to god tier. It will just set up a cycle of buffing and nerfing.

I would also rather keep DE out of top tier, call me an elitist but I'd rather people play DE because they love the faction not because we're OP this season.

Lawrence from tabletop and Steve from MWG both said the new dex was good. Maybe the traits aren’t fluffy, but having point decreases probably gave more of a boost than we are giving credit for

RedRegicide wrote:

Lawrence from tabletop and Steve from MWG both said the new dex was good. Maybe the traits aren’t fluffy, but having point decreases probably gave more of a boost than we are giving credit for

Personally I'd prefer a codex that encourages fluffy playing of armies over just making things cost less. The army should feel how it is described in the fluff, with each craftworld playing to their specific strengths.

If DE were to get some insane buffs to wych cult units but only when they use an archon and Hammy HQ instead of succubus I'd be rather annoyed.

The CW codex is not good at all. It's better, than the index, just like Wyches were better in 8th than in 7th. But it's not good.
Being Good means it's good compared to other things. Comparing CW to DG, IG, SM tells you one thing : they are lackluster.

The exception being rangers : for 12pts and with Hard to Hit -2, they are a steal.

I agree that fluffier is better, just trying to point out a positive.

I don't play CWE so I can't really compare them like you guys can.

I'm hoping for a balanced DE codex of course but I agree with Vindicavi here that if we're not I do want to stay out of the top tier area. There is a sense of pride that comes with an army that is difficult to play, relatively underpowered and you can still work wins out of it. Coupled with how few DE players there are it helps me as a player feel unique. If more people want to play DE then I'd love to welcome them but I'd like to see them playing DE because they want to and not because DE is OP flavour of the week.

Sadly the way our fluff is written with the strange relations between covens, cults, and kabals it'd be more work to try and balance rules that would also benefit our cult and coven units if you pick a kabal as your primary. Even if we do get multiple specific kabal rules then they'll likely only help kabal units and taking cult or coven units in your force may be handicapping yourself (at the very least they don't benefit from any special rules). Having it organized like this would encourage multiple detachments to get each one as it's own force with bonus but then if we want bonus command points were looking at having at least 2 HQ's per detachment and that'll handicap us pretty fast. Even if we get specific kabals, covens, and cult rules as opposed to generic how do you guys see them working? Do you think any of them will exclude the other two from bonuses?

As an aside how do you guys feel about the archon losing his aura and instead getting command point manipulating abilities. Perhaps every time you spend a command point roll a D6 and on a 5-6 it's refunded much like how IG have or even fluffier yet as long as you have an Archon on the field and your opponent tries to activate a stratagem you roll a D6 and on a 5-6 you cancel it. It could be called "layers of deceit" or something but wouldn't those be way fluffier and a lot more fun for the Archon? I ask that here as perhaps depending on what Kabal you pick it may modify what your Archon does?

Mmm I could see a couple of things happening actually, primarily the archon gaining a CP manipulation ability but I don't think the auras are going to change much (more than likely wrong but ...) However what I see happening is we will get a kabal whose rules are very much focussed on the kabalites it employs with bonuses to shooting for warriors/Trueborn/archons/scourge (black heart), then a kabal more focussed on vehicles, so extra rules and stratagems for vehicle based assaults like CP for double shooting and better shooting on that front ... Possibly better toughness for better construction on their vehicles, a wych cult focussed heavily on the mistresses of the arena giving bonuses much like the kabalite kabal (cult of strife). And then a second cult that focuses a bit more on the speedy deamons of reavers, hellions, and beast masters giving bonuses to move and charge distances and gear options. Then for Coven we have a focus very heavily of the freakshow (Prophets of Flesh) where the creations get bonuses to pfp and leadership reduction to the enemy while gaining either extra leadership or toughness. And a second coven that focuses more on arcane weaponry and technology bordering on magic getting bonuses to the amount of arcane weapons a unit can take, as well as an ability that might work against enemy psychers. Incubi and Mandrake's will not be forgotten but won't get their own "faction" but they will get specific stratagems and Mandrake's will probably morph into a "psycher" as they are "daemons" and get a "smite" ability and possibly another one that would buff their cover save from the shadows giving them additional hit modifiers. Both might actually gain an hq (other than Drazhar), all our hq's will see points decreases. Points for weapons will decrease and we will see a small expansion of our arsenal we wont see the what we had back in 5th nor maybe even in 7th but it will be expanded.

Id hope that we have different benefits for each faction based on taking them as a detachment, this might limit us with our command points but would give us baseline buffs. This would mean GW provides us with several options for each area to keep things from getting stagnant, it would also be the most fluffy way as it gives the feel of several kabals, cults and covens all working together to carry out a raid.

The other option would simply be picking one of the three main play styles and getting buffs accordingly, this would give us far less options and feel more like we have three tiny codexs in one rather than a unified force.

Gotta say im liking the idea of an Archon messing with the opponents strategems, Id love for DE to be very much a count meta army with all sorts of ways to ruin your opponents plans and ideas for ways to play and then picking them apart with some well used weaponry. An idea i saw in another thread was a strategem/webway portal to bringing in addtional units (that we pay points for) and can taylor to the situation for some more count moves against what our foes might be bringing, so that we are never caught off guard.

I like the idea of messing with command points/ stratagems. Although i feel like we will not get a 5+ if we are lucky we get a 6+, same as the CW. I also play a tiny bit of guard (750-1000 point battles) Bt between warlord traits and artifacts I think I used around 12 command points in those games. I cannot say I don't enjoy it. Being able to steal command points from your enemy is ok, but gaining command points back on a 5+ is really really good. It on average means you get nearly 50% more command points (since each time you get a command point back you can then roll again to see if you get it back if you use it again) and this ends up a little bit broken.
Which means I would rather see it as a way to negate the effects of stratagems of the enemy, although i doubt it will be better then a 6+.

I think they are going to split it into differences for kabals/ wyches/ covens. Although I also think it might turn out they put stack one coven+kabal+cult together.
Say black heart, cult of strife, the coven of the twelve, all units get to reroll 1 to hit or wound dice in each phase.
Units from the kabal of the blackened tear, Cult of Grief and the prophets of flesh give -1 to enemy leadership within 12 inch.
I think this would be the least fluffy way to do it, but on the other hand having to take 3 detachments just for the bonusses for different units (often with just 3 or 4 different units in each catagory) is also a bit stupid.

That's the tough part about this: Not having to take 3 separate detachments to gain the benefits of a cult, coven, and kabal. Especially when one wants to get extra command points you're now looking at 2 HQ's and 3 troops in one detachment and at least an HQ and Troop in the other two, that's a lot of points thrown out on HQs.

One way they could do it is to change how our keywords work in relation to a detachment. For example I can take one detachment that includes a mix of coven, cult, and kabal units and I choose a corresponding factions keyword bonus for each of them that they'd all respectively benefit from. One caveat here would be that you can't use 2 different kabal, cult, or coven bonuses in the same detachment. If I wanted to take a second Kabal then I'd have to take a second detachment.

So when list building I could, for example, pick Kabal of the Black Heart for my Kabal units, Cult of Red Grief for my cult units and Prophets of Flesh for my Covens units. They'd all fit into one detachment together and receive their respective bonuses. This would adhere to the fluff nicely as well as give us incredible list building variety and tactical input in how we can mix and match the three subfactions together to make our force.

You guys think something like this would work? With a system like this I'd like to see 3 Kabals, 3 Cults and 3 Covens available in the codex to pick from. It's expecting a lot from GW to do this though.

I feel like they might take the route of the Militarium Tempestus from the Guard Codex. You can include stormtroopers in your army without penalty, but you don't gain any of their bonuses unless tye detachment is entirely composed of them.

I think we'll be able to choose a Kabal, Cult, or Coven, and reap the benefits of that regardless of what else you choose, but only your selected Kabal, Cult, or Coven will benefit