Revitalising the Beholders

Beholders (on a blog titled Beholder's Lair - get it? I'm subtle like that) are my custom Space Marine chapter and main 40k army. I started the hobby again about 2,5 years ago after a hiatus of around 8 years and when I did, I opted to make my own chapter instead of continuing with Ultramarines as I had during my first stint in the hobby (I also had another custom chapter back then, the Shield Bearers. With badly written background and everything, and grand total of two painted miniatures).

Beholders in all of their badly lit glory - Lamenters and Assassins unrelated

When starting on the Beholders I pondered several colour scheme options, including a dominantly purple scheme, mainly green scheme with white as a secondary colour, two white schemes (one with blue and other with green as a secondary colour), and likely some others I've forgotten. I ended up picking the white and green colour scheme with green shoulder pads and aquilas (when present), white body, helmet and shoulder trim. That choice, as I later found out, didn't turn out to be all that optimal. I kept getting asked about my "Death Guard" army, which was fairly confusing considering they clearly weren't Death Guard. Except they kinda were. It turns out during my 8 year hiatus Games-Workshop/Forge World had changed the official colour scheme of pre-heresy Death Guard from white body, helmet and shoulder pads with green shoulder trim scheme which I was familiar with to a new scheme of white body and helmet, green shoulder pads and white or gold shoulder trim (seems to vary depending on the source). Oh joy.

Pre-Heresy Death Guard - Old colour scheme

By the time I found out, it was way too late to repaint the army. Thus I ended up with a loyalist space marine army intendend to be Sons of Horus descendants who missed the heresy (more on that in some later post - I have a rough idea on the background of the chapter but it's not finished by any measurement), that looked like one of the traitor legions. They were painted during my first year back, and while I'm no master painter, they're definately behind my current painting skills. This together with the colour issue put them on a shelf as far as painting goes.

Pre-Heresy Death Guard - Current colour scheme

 In the Beholder's current colour scheme (or old colour scheme now, I suppose, since I've decided to change it) the green is Vallejo Sick Green, but I've grown sick of it, so to speak (pun intended) and so went looking for opinions in the Oldhammer and general miniatures groups on Facebook (there are several oldhammer groups with differing focuses in Facebook - there is also the Oldhammer Forums themselves, but I've never hung out there much myself). Got good opinions and insight in several of them, but especially on MIDDLEHAMMER. Tested some of the ideas and ended up changing the green, and also painting the greaves green from now on (I'll be painting the greaves on the existing minis with sick green to mach their shoulder pads, but after that it's time for more healthy colour choices).

Old colours on the left, new colours on the right.

I like the new scheme quite a lot, and luckily it's close enough to the old scheme that the changes won't take forever and the greens don't clash too much. I've also decided to use black pinwash instead of dipping from now on - kinda need practice on that front though.

The two latest additions to the army, and the first ones in the new scheme. Devastator painted yesterday, and the Dreadnough today.

And a backside shot for good measure. Everyone loves a good backside.

Well, now all I need is readers and this blog is off to a good start!