Kabals, Cults, Scourges oh my

Since I'm new to Dark Eldar I'm not sure what is correct. Now I know in the end you can do what you want with your army, but I like things to remain true to fluff. So, I was thinking about my paint scheme of my army. I plan on painting my Kabal of the Splintered Souls Dark Blue/Orange/Boltgun now I want to run wyches with them....can I paint them up differently, say Dark Red/Yellow/Black? (I do plan on running a cult list later) then maybe my scourges Dark Gray?

I have a feeling I know the answer, I guess I just want everybody's blessing

Thanks,

you can paint your factions different colors, as they are what they are, different factions just tagging along or the ride into realspace. Some people like a uniformed coloration across the entire army, but personally I find it fluffier to have the cult units one color, and the kabal units another, as that is how it would work.

So yes, go ahead and do that

Depending on fluff (or no fluff at all, just "artistic conception"), You can have anything between uniformly painted force or mix of schemes, even within single unit (I'm painting my Orks bikers that way).

But different groups painted in different schemes are OK with "generic DE fluff". Just call everything that don't belong to Your HQ archetype as mercenaries and it'll fly.

Thinking about it there are three core groups in DE raids;

Covens,
Cults,
Kabals.

Any one of the three (or some alliance thereof) are likely to initiate the raid. At that point usually there are some mercenaries hired on from other factions/alliances formed for the purposes of the raid.

Within fluff I would say there are a handful of groups that are always mercenaries;

Scourges,
Hellions,
Mandrakes.

As those groups have their own gangs/gatherings.

For paint scheme you could really go sky as the limit with DE. With my army, the House of Maerrett is a noble house that reformed itself as the Cerulean Storm Kabal. Within the Kabal they sponsor/support a Coven and a Wych Cult - (theoretically known as the Coven of Cerulean Storm and the Cerulean Storm Cult. As such, all of my forces have matching color schemes because within fluff if you're going on a raid with us, you're an employee of House Maerrett and would dress accordingly.

On a flip side it would be very easy to do an army list like this that is also very fluffy;

Kabal of The Poisoned Tongue (black with greenish highlights color scheme)
With 2 squads of Wyches from the Cult of the Blade Denied (black and purple color scheme)
A Haemonculous and some Wracks from Coven of the Thirteen Scars (yellow and dark green color scheme)
Along with Baron Satypants leading the Bowry Boys Hellion Gang (black and yellow color scheme)

Totally fluff driven, lots of different paint schemes. You have a lot of leeway with DE paint schemes if you wish it. I've seen people with matching armies, disparate armies, and even slight thematic tie-in armies (like, maybe the Wych Cult has a different armor scheme, but it's in the same colors as their usual Kabal allies, etc. etc.)

I'd fall into the last of Thor's groups, my cult is dark grey with green highlights (final highlight is actually yellow, so the green is really bright) and my kabal is dark grey with yellow highlights. I've not finalised it yet, but thinking of highlighting the yellow up from a green first stage highlight.

So yeah, paint each group whatever colour you fancy! My scourges and incubi will be variations on that theme too.

The other thing that some people, including myself, do, is that they have their seperate factions, but they choose which is the dominant faction that leads the alliance, and integrate a colour from that scheme as a spot-colour for the other factions, to help have some unification. For example, my Kabal, the dominant faction, has mainly white armour, with some black and green as a spot colour. So, I try to integrate green or white into the other factions colours, so my Cult has green as a spot colour, and the Coven has a bit of both green and white.

Thanks for the replies.
Thor: I'm liking your last idea, where they are all painted different, mercenary-like.

Now to just figure out what kind of base to use.....city rubble, snow, wasteland....