Here we have the rules for the 2011 GenCon championships next month, which will bring players from all over North America to compete for prizes, bragging rights and the title of 2011 D&D Miniatures North American champion (and quite possibly World champion).

It was probably bound to happen sooner or later. It is a living game. If the players all keep asking for a new rule book, with new rules to cover newly arising situations, well, we couldn’t say no forever.

Certainly, the designs in the last few sets of creatures have pushed the envelope of the game, and the current rules, while excellent, started to have a few gray areas for the judges to ponder.

The new floor rules for 2011 are ready, and as always apply to both the revised edition and for those of you playing the original edition. The big changes for most people will include the much anticipated ban of the Solamith, and the formalization of the return to active play of the Eternal Blade, Witchknife and Delver Sergeant. You may notice that the Heroscape wave 13 figures are listed as legal.

For 2011, items will continue to develop into an important part of the DDM skirmish game, just as they are staples of the RPG. The current rules constrain how we can design and distribute items, and I’ve long felt that, at least for organized play, we need to look at alternative implementations of the item rules. To this end, I’d like to preview, and beta test, this new item rule that could be used for the upcoming constructed season. Here is a snippet from one version under consideration.

After much analysis, we are happy to anounce the return to play of our three previously banned figures albeit in modified form. These figures used to be “must includes” in the old metagame, but, if we’ve done our homework right, have now dropped to the status of “need to consider” when building your own warband