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I started a project to explore the ‘middle ages’ of the 40k universe in M35 and M36 covering the Nova Terra Interregnum and Age of Apostasy. It’s a total labour of love.

I wanted to do a few things with this:

- Develop a ‘middle ages’ game system catering for those who like the 3rd-5th ruleset. I know ProHammer is there and people are welcome to use that. My attitude is to change/add as little as is necessary so it’s not too hard to look up rules. This has evolved into what I call 4.5 - 5th ed with 4th ed rules where 5th ed made an unpopular change.
- Explore the period of the Nova Terra Interregnum and Age of Apostasy. I’ve slowly been building a timeline and the first book in the style of an Imperial Armour book. I am writing them deliberately as ‘this is the take of the author’ as I don’t want to pretend this is canon, but I draw on the official lore as much as I can and flesh it out.
- Reverse engineer newer armies/rebalance stronger/weaker units to work with 4.5 ed. Basically I want people who enjoy the older rulesets to be able to draw on more Heresy/new 40k armies in their games.
- Build a setting people can be creative in. Really, I realise having written Book I and a lot of Book II that these are settings and not stories. The Nova Terra Interregnum is a 900 year period of a divided Imperium close to collapse due to civil war, with the Age of Apostasy being similarly perilous.

I wrote a draft before going on holiday which was awaiting a bit of playtesting of the campaign system and some more art, but now the Votann have been updated I have to wait and see how I adapt them to the setting. Reverse engineering armies has turned out to be a pretty massive job and I have quite limited time to playtest it all.

The current draft is here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:4f54c917-61a5-4cf4-ba10-73e9cf6fc95c

I’ve been beginning to share it with people now it’s in a bit more of a fleshed out place. I have started an r/35k subreddit and have a forum that so far has been used by me to just keep track of my thoughts (wh35k.forumotion.com). I’ve been plugging away by myself at this for quite a while and it has gotten a bit lonesome just talking in person with my friends about ideas. All the art (except the computer generated planets, some edited by me) is by me as I don’t like using artists work without permission.

It’s a pretty massive project tbh. I am not sure how much interest there is in this from others, but do let me know if you enjoy what’s there or have ideas. I think what I enjoy most about the setting is it allows more space for Xenos than 30k and more reason for Space Marine v Space Marine battles than 40k does.

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35k core rule changes (this draws on many other similar changes by others who have amended this era of editions):

Recommended Core Rule Adaptation for Fifth Edition
The following are rules that have been adapted for use in games set in the 35th millennium and are heavily encouraged. Their rationale is listed alongside the pages on which the relevant rules can be found. To minimise references to this document for specific wordings and keep things simple, most rules are simply ported from 4th into 5th where they are preferable. This edition is known as 4.5 by those who play it. Some rules are added new. The page numbers given in the brackets signify where the rule being substituted in from the 4th edition rulebook can be found.
Cover:
Cover saves for many critics of fifth edition are considered by many players to be too high. Most cover gives a 4+ save, including to vehicles. Fourth edition cover rules are therefore preferred.
Cover follows the rules for fourth edition (p. 25):
Size 1&2: High grass, bushes, fences, railings give a 6+ cover save.
Size 2&3: Crates, barrels, pipes, logs, partial cover from hills, woods and jungles give a 5+ cover save.
Size 2&3: Wrecks, vehicles wreckages, craters, rubble, rocks, ruins, walls, buildings, trenches, gun pits and emplacements give 4+ cover save.
Size 2&3: Bunkers and forts give 3+ save.
Vehicles in 5th edition were significantly stronger than 4th, partly because of the way cover interacted with them. This is weakened to the fourth edition rules, with only a slight debuff to the vehicle damage table.
Cover for vehicles (p. 69):
When firing on a vehicle, check that the firing models have a clear view of the whole surface (front, side, or rear) of the vehicle being fired at. If at least 50% of the side they are firing at is obscured by intervening terrain, or by other vehicles, artillery models, wrecks, or Monstrous Creatures, then the target is classified as obscured. Similarly, when a firer’s view of a vehicle passes through an Area Terrain feature that is taller than Size 1 (bushes, high grass, crops, fences, railings), its view is also obscured.
If the target is obscured and a penetrating hit is scored, the vehicle’s owner rolls a D6 – on a roll of a 4+, the penetrating hit is downgraded to a glancing hit.
Cover size (p. 17 on the rule, p. 7 on model heights):
Units only get cover behind cover up to one size smaller. This means Monstrous Creatures and vehicles (each size 3) cannot take cover behind size one cover. This is cover that is low lying, like bushes, grass, low lying pipes, low partial hill crests – i.e. chest-high cover.
Vehicle Damage
Fifth edition had quite strong vehicles, while fourth edition had quite weak vehicles. A middle ground, reducing the complexity of vehicle damage charts, is the following:
Follow the fifth edition vehicle table. Glancing hits only give -1 to the damage roll instead of -2.
Would Allocation (pp. 26-27):
Wound allocation was interpreted liberally in fifth edition rules to distribute wounds in a way where wounds could be distributed evenly throughout a multi-wound unit. As such, the wording for 4th edition is closer to what was likely intended.
When a target dies, the player can remove any models from the unit if they are visible to the attacker. When a unit loses as many wounds as there are models, the attacking player can choose one single enemy model that could be a casualty. That model must make a save against one of the wounding hits.
When a unit contains several multiple-wound models, and those models take wounds, you must remove whole multiple-wound models from the unit as casualties where possible – wounds may not be ‘spread around’ to avoid removing models. Track any excess wounds with markers.
Explosions in Buildings:
In 5th Edition, explosions affect all models underneath the template on all levels. This is a bit too powerful and unrealistic. To minimise the effect of this, the rule is altered slightly.
When targeting a building with troops and multiple levels, the attacker must choose which level they wish to fire at. All units under the template on that level are hit. Any models directly under or above the affected level are hit on the roll of a 4+ from the result of the blast.
Running:
A change from 6th and 7th edition, running was no longer done in the shooting phase but done in the movement phase, speeding up play.
A unit can choose to run (p. 16), giving up its chance to shoot. This should be done in the movement phase, rather than in the shooting phase.
Optional Rules for Fifth Edition
The following rules are optional. The author of this book prefers the 4th edition approach to line of sight but appreciates not everyone will. The author does not use pre-measuring or has mitigated instant death but knows others may find these much more enjoyable.
Pre-measuring:
In earlier editions, players were not allowed to measure the distance to the target when declaring something like a move or shooting attack. If they fell short, they either would move up to the maximum move distance or fail to hit the target, respectively. Some groups prefer the ease of measuring whenever they like, as such:
Pre-measuring distances is allowed. The result, though, is that charges are now 2d6 inches rather than the flat movement range of the unit. Failed charges function the same.
Line of Sight:
True line of sight versus the more abstract system in fourth edition is a point of contention with wargamers. Use whatever your gaming group prefers.
Line of sight follows the rules for fourth edition (p. 20-21):
Models which are obscured by area terrain cannot be seen but cannot see out of that area terrain 6” or farther.
Instant Death:
For many players and many adaptations of this era, Instant Death was considered quite frustrating for many players.
Instead of killing a unit outright, if the strength of a weapon is over double the toughness of a target, it does D3 wounds to the model.
Improved Rules for Armies
In some cases, the army lists presented in these books are superior to the equivalent abilities or points costs available in the relevant book. One example are Nova Terra Sanctioned Psykers, another is the points costs of tanks ported in from 5th edition.
Where a rule presented in this book is better, players are welcome to use that in place of their codex’s rule. This is not obligatory, but players should not feel at a disadvantage due to the rule changes made in profiles.

Edit: added the core rule changes to 5th ed.

Certainly one of the more interesting eras of the 40k background in terms of politics and events.

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> "on a roll of a 4+, the penetrating hit is downgraded to a glancing hit"

I had something similar in an old simplehammer prototype but using whatever cover save the vehicle qualified for rather than a fixed roll.

That said vehicles in 5e were an odd bunch. Actual tanks were quite vulnerable to being knocked out of the game for a turn (a single glancing hit would often do).

Transports on the other hand would absorb a seemingly endless number of glancing and lower-rolling penetrating hits while the troops sheltered inside.

(whereas in 4th they were either unstoppable eldar skimmers or flaming coffins of death).

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> "charges are now 2d6 inches rather than the flat movement range of the unit"

Something of a marmite change in the rules.
Random failed 3" charges and passed 12" charges (first turn charges, etc).

Pre-measuring in 4e was disallowed because of guess range weapons as much as anything else.

For those of us not familiar with the time period, can you provide a brief overview of how factions would be different from their 40k versions?

I imagine that custodes, tau, necrons, and tyranids simply aren't allowed to participate as they hadn't made their "debuts" yet. Eldar factions seem like they'd be pretty much the same as they are now unless you want to mechanically represent the oldest exarchs only having 5,000+ years of experience instead of 10,000+.

Marines seem like they'd be pretty much the same as in 40k, just with fewer successors to choose from and maybe a few more of their Heresy era equipment available?

Ditto chaos. Ditto guard.

Thanks for the comments. I had a lot of travelling the last couple of weeks so haven’t kept up posting here. I’ve been updating a lot on the subreddit to build a bit of a community.

A.T. wrote:


Something of a marmite change in the rules.
Random failed 3" charges and passed 12" charges (first turn charges, etc).

Pre-measuring in 4e was disallowed because of guess range weapons as much as anything else.

This is why I put it in optional rules. I don’t play with premeasuring, but my general philosophy is ‘when in doubt let the player choose’. If people want to pre-measure then having flat 6’’ charges gets a bit easy.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
For those of us not familiar with the time period, can you provide a brief overview of how factions would be different from their 40k versions?

I imagine that custodes, tau, necrons, and tyranids simply aren't allowed to participate as they hadn't made their "debuts" yet. Eldar factions seem like they'd be pretty much the same as they are now unless you want to mechanically represent the oldest exarchs only having 5,000+ years of experience instead of 10,000+.

Marines seem like they'd be pretty much the same as in 40k, just with fewer successors to choose from and maybe a few more of their Heresy era equipment available?

Ditto chaos. Ditto guard.

This is quite a big question I’ve tried to grapple with over several projects. This is all off the top of my head.

The obvious factions are Nova Terra/the Imperium who are basically mirrors of each other. I’ve got the Mechanicus to reverse engineer for the next book, which I expect to take forever.

I did a lot of research into the factions and, actually, there is justification for pretty much all Xeno races bar the T’au proper. That means you can - at a push - justify Kroot but T’au are visited by the Imperium in their stone age form towards the end of the Nova Terra Interregnum. The Sisters of Battle don’t form until the Age of Apostasy, which I aimed to do after the Nova Terra Interregnum. There is, however, the Frateris Templars army which has space to be explored in a later volume - the army abolished by Sebastian Thor. I have no aim to introduce Custodes, as you’d expect.

There seems to be enough evidence to confirm that Necrons had been awakening over time that they would be a rare but not impossible force to come across. The research on Angelis before it is overrun by Orks is actually researching the Necrons during this period.

The Tyranids were not Tyranids because they hadn’t reached Tyran. However, in the 5E book it pretty much confirms that Tyranid vanugard forces were around long before their invasion. This means I would recommend players to use the lore-accurate Tyranid armies for that period. I’ve created a mutant faction which is elaborated in Book II, which allows me to roll Genestealer Cults effectively into that with the assumption the Imperium just sees them as another minor mutant faction.

I also have a draft of the Votann rules in that PDF but need to rewrite them because of the new release.

Imperial armaments is something I have been thinking about more with regards to Space Marines. The period has three concurrent civil wars at one point (Nova Terra Secession, Moirae Schism, Alexian Uprisings) so the Imperium should be pretty limited in its resources. That means I would expect there to be more mish-mashed armour like Mk V as the Interregnum progresses. You would expect there to be relatively more relic armour from the Heresy than there is in the M41. I would say Mk VI and Mk VII would be the mainstays. A lot of people who like Mk VII seem to be drawn to the setting, which is nice.

Space Marines should have fewer successors, which to give an idea the cursed 21st founding is at the tail end of the Interregnum. What’s interesting is that there are like 10 foundings in the latter half of the Interregnum. My explanation (not published in a book, but it is discussed in my publicly accessible notes on the forum) is that the Pale Wasting (which happens before the interregnum) and intensity of the war is coupled with the complete chaos of the Moirae Schism within the Mechanicus. It becomes more manageable to have smaller foundings a century apart than massive foundings every millennium or so. You would expect that many of the chapters of the era were lost to time - something I imply with the Knights of Vengeance and Void Watchers as two chapters that side with Nova Terra. I made the Pale Wasting a pretty apocalyptic conflict, partly because of how big an event in the lore it is implied to be and also because it helps explain why the Imperium didn’t just quash the Nova Terra secession.

With Guard there are a mountain of regiments to choose from. Krieg didn’t have their civil war by then but you can always use them as ‘your dudes’. I’ve kitbashed two rebel regiments which are just my own invention to represent Nova Terran Guardsmen. I’ve also tried to capture supply chain issues by noting that many tanks in the Guard had hull-mounted main guns due to supply chain issues and that vanquisher cannons were replaced by laser destroyer cannons, like in the Tank Hunter. It’s much the same gun mechanically.

For Chaos, I think most of the legions would be similar as far as I’m aware. They don’t actually have that big a role in the Interregnum beyond the 8E core rules retconning a sentence in that says “it was Chaos”. I’ve made it the Fallen who instigated a lot of it, which is canonical as many events of this era are mentioned in the 6E Dark Angels Codex. The Saviour of Praxus is very heavily implied to be Cypher, but the author of the research wouldn’t know who Cypher is or what the Fallen are otherwise they’d be dead.

One tidbit about it is that I introduced another secession around the Galactic Core to essentially say to players ‘you can make your own minor rebellions’. I had that faction destroyed by a chapter founded deliberately to fight the Interregnum called the Astral Claws. So obviously the events of the Badab War happen long after.

I’ve focused a lot of my energy to community building as I worry a bit I will burn out if I have to keep up the pace I have, so hopefully others get involved. I’ve founded a campaign on the subreddit to get people interested involved. I plan to tidy up the draft I posted hopefully within the next couple of months (ideally before the end of September) and then start redrafting and building up Book II’s lore, which there is an early draft of. The plan is roughly:

Book I - Details who the Nova Terrans and other political rebels are.
Book II - Details the Moirae Schism and the Mechanicus of the period as well as the mutant uprisings (something I’ve added in (a) because I love mutants and (b) it helps explain why Genestealer Cults would go undetected).
Book III - Details the uprisings against Alexis (mentioned in the 2E Sisters Codex) and the Frateris Templars.

I haven’t worked out how to do the events after that. There is a bit of an empty period then there is the climax of the interregnum - the Cataclysm of Souls - in which (IIRC) there is an attempt to organise the Imperium into a theocracy under the Ministorum and a ‘civil war on the scale not seen since the Horus Heresy’ (I can’t remember where that paraphrased thing is from, but I remember it quite clearly).

Apologies for the essay, but it’s quite a complex answer.