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Hello Everyone.

I am starting a Dark Eldar army, and was wondering which Kabals would be the most popular in regards to other players and fans . Feel free to leave an answer explaining your choice! Happy Picking!


//Semp

Dieing sun?


I'm running obsidian rose. I love the extra 6" on all my blasters. I run my warriors mostly stationary so I reall need the extra range. It helps out on tbe spilnter rifles and I even need at 42" dark lance once. But it's essential on the blasters.

Good luck, I'm always looking to sponsor up and coming Archons. I usually have small jobs that need doing, the flesh pits hunger, and there are always orders to fill.

Black heart features in like every dark eldar list because of it's specific stratagem and amazing relic synergy with 3 ravagers which also feature in just about every dark eldar list.

I like Obsidian Rose just for looks alone. I miss using Agents of Vect, but I got over it.

I have an idea of how this will end which is good enough for me. What I'm curious to hear about is anyone playing Flayed Skull and their experience. Personally I like Poisoned Tongue for Insidious Misdirection, bout as close to Malys as your going to get. The re-roll to wound is nice for consistency.

I play Flayed Skull almost exclusively these days, the ignores cover and re-roll 1's on rapid fire weapons is almost invaluable, both for Venom spam and Raiders with splinter racks, and the extra 3" move on all units with FLY has been a real godsend for my Shredderborn, everyone in my group now knows how nasty they are and the extra move range means it's easier to hide them out of line of sight and still get into range turn 1.

I honestly think it's all round a much more powerful Obsession than Black Heart, you only really see the latter so much for Labarynthine Cunning and AoV, both of which are extremely valuable abilities to have. Surprisingly I've found I don't roll enough 1's for Dark Lances and Dissies for the Writ... to be of much use to me, 2's have becoem the bane of my exsitence though. I also don't like the 3 tripple Dissie Ravager set up, fishing for 5's can be very hit or miss so I like having Dark Lances in their as well.

As for the OP, do you mean rules or fluff? For fluff I've painted up my own Kabal of Unfettered Hate colour scheme rather than use anything official.

 Imateria wrote:
I play Flayed Skull almost exclusively these days, the ignores cover and re-roll 1's on rapid fire weapons is almost invaluable, both for Venom spam and Raiders with splinter racks, and the extra 3" move on all units with FLY has been a real godsend for my Shredderborn, everyone in my group now knows how nasty they are and the extra move range means it's easier to hide them out of line of sight and still get into range turn 1.

I honestly think it's all round a much more powerful Obsession than Black Heart, you only really see the latter so much for Labarynthine Cunning and AoV, both of which are extremely valuable abilities to have. Surprisingly I've found I don't roll enough 1's for Dark Lances and Dissies for the Writ... to be of much use to me, 2's have becoem the bane of my exsitence though. I also don't like the 3 tripple Dissie Ravager set up, fishing for 5's can be very hit or miss so I like having Dark Lances in their as well.

As for the OP, do you mean rules or fluff? For fluff I've painted up my own Kabal of Unfettered Hate colour scheme rather than use anything official.

I should have specified this. I meant fluffwise, and paint scheme wise. What is people doing the most of, not with the rules in mind.

//Semp

Flayed Skull is the best one for me. You miss out on AoV and the Writ of the Living Muse but the basic advantages of the Kabal are so much better than you get for Black Heart.

From a background perspective, the problem is that the Kabals have never really played much of a prominent gameplay role before so I think most players don't find themselves identifying heavily with a specific Kabal in the same way they would a SM Chapter or even a Craftworld. The Kabals seem like they've been poorly fleshed out just to fit into the rules requirement to have some sort of army-wide ability.

Slipspace wrote:
Flayed Skull is the best one for me. You miss out on AoV and the Writ of the Living Muse but the basic advantages of the Kabal are so much better than you get for Black Heart.

From a background perspective, the problem is that the Kabals have never really played much of a prominent gameplay role before so I think most players don't find themselves identifying heavily with a specific Kabal in the same way they would a SM Chapter or even a Craftworld. The Kabals seem like they've been poorly fleshed out just to fit into the rules requirement to have some sort of army-wide ability.

The Dark Eldar are definitely lacking in fluff compared to Space Marines on their internal factions, there was plenty for the Covens thanks to the Haemonculus Covens supplement last edition (to the point that I'm still very surprised that The Hex wasn't one of the Covens chosen to get a trait) but before the current codex the only Wych Cults with any fluff were Striff, Cursed Blade and Red Grief, and the latter two only got any in the 7th ed codex. The Kabals hav ebeen better served but only slightly, Obsidian Rose has always been the expert artisan weapon makers (hence the extra 6" range on their guns), Flayed Skull have been the aerial combat specialists who never set foot on the ground until the end of the battle (which is why all their abilities have been tied to FLY) and Poisoned Tongue are cunning and brutal. If anything the Black Heart obsession feels like they couldn't think of anything fluff based for them since all their fluff surrounds Vect himself and there's no real descriptions of how the Kabal fights, just that they're the biggest and most powerful. To be honest I think the 6+++ that all the vehicles get would have been more suitable for Iron Thorne who are the expert vehicle makers.

One look through the Dark Eldar facebook page shows you that very few people stick to official schemes, if anything I've seen more people copy Lawrence Bakers Void Spiders maroon scheme than Black Heart, Poisoned Tongue, Flayed Skull and Obsidian Rose combined, though Iron Thorne seems to be quite popular.

I'm going to split off from the others and say that Poison Tongue is my favourite.

(Technically, my favourite is the Kabal of the Thirteenth Whisper, but they have no mechanics and very little information, so I just play them as Poison Tongue.)

Anyway, here's what I like about Poison Tongue:
- Soul Seeker! This is one of the main reasons I take Poison Tongue. I just adore being able to snipe characters from 18" away, behind a wall.
- I like that I keep the rerolls when disembarked, since I'll usually lose a significant number of transports during the course of the game.
- Usually a minor point, but I like that I also get the rerolls in melee. It doesn't come up that much outside of HQs, but it does make Lhamaeans very nasty indeed.
- Redeployment is a useful option to have.

Full disclosure - I don't think that Poison Tongue is the strongest Kabal by any means. IMO Flayed Skull takes that award. However, I do find it the most fun Kabal to use and the one that ticks the most boxes for me in terms of what I want in an army.