Introducing Battle Rules (2009)

Over the past few months, the DDM Guild has been hard at work at creating a new version of the rules for the D&D Miniatures Game®. Rather than simply update the existing rulebook, we opted to instead take a comprehensive look at what was good about the rules and what could use some work. In the end, we’ve written an entirely new rulebook to describe the game you already play.

The Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game Battle Rules (2009) is an updated, reorganized, and rewritten version of the game’s rules that incorporates the errata, clarifications, and updates since the release of the original rulebook in March 2008. This new rulebook is available immediately in beta form for feedback from the community, and will be released in its final form in February 2009.

• Download the D&D Miniatures Battle Rules (2009) Rulebook (beta) (26 pages, 11.83 MB PDF)

The current beta is missing its Glossary and diagrams; a second beta of the rulebook will be released incorporating those items shortly after D&D Experience 2009.

In addition to the errata and updates, a number of small changes to the rules have also been incorporated since the March 2008 rulebook. Some of the most important changes are:

Blasts: While blasts were added with the War of the Dragon Queen restats, cones have been eliminated as a separate close attack area. Small cones are now blast 3 and large cones are now blast 5 attacks.

Conditions: The effects of conditions now mirror the Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition game more closely. They’d always been intended to, but the previous rulebook was written before those conditions were finalized in the RPG.

Confused: The Confused condition has been altered to give control to its owner more often, and to give increased flexibility to the opponent whenever he or she gets control of the affected creature.

Defenses: Because it’s such a fundamental part of the Dungeons & Dragons game, a creature’s defenses have been split into the standard four defenses—armor class, fortitude, reflex, and will.

Equipment: Rules for adding special item cards have been added, with the release of the first Equipment set, Treasure Trove 1, to debut at the D&D Experience game convention in February 2009.

Expanded Maps: After a minor revision to the teleport rules (see below), Teleport Temple has been added back to the rotation. In addition, Dragondown Grotto has been restored. Finally, the DDM Guild maps Temple of the Unseeing Eye and Fallen Fortress have been added.

Huges: Huges are now allowed in standard 200-point games (although the normal 150-point single figure cost limit still applies). Along with this, squeezing has been made less onerous, allowing huges to better take part in both standard and epic games.

Map Selection: During map selection, the player who does not select the map can now elect to have the other player choose a side and set up his or her figures first.

Movement Modes: The previous rules treated Flight, Burrow, and Phasing as something other than powers sometimes, and powers at other times, and made them optional (even though it never made sense to not use the movement mode). The rules now treat them as movement modes exclusively.

Teleporters: When a creature uses a teleporter, it must now choose the nearest teleporter as its destination. While this doesn’t affect the Flooded Ruins map (as it has only two teleporters), it alters how Teleport Temple (which is now legal, see above) and future maps work.

Temporary Hit Points: Removed the whole temporary hit points system. There are no stat cards released or planned for future release that use temporary hit points, and it consumed a lot of rules space.

In addition to the new rulebook, the DDM Guild is providing updated stat cards for every miniature released for the D&D Miniatures Game, incorporating errata and clarifications on top of a colorful new design. These cards do not change the figures themselves (except as altered by current and forthcoming errata), but do provide updated card text.

Existing cards—those found on the Wizards.com website and in the boosters—will continue to be legal, though you will continue to need to be aware of errata and clarifications issued for those cards, as you do currently. (We will publish a separate errata and clarifications document specifically for those card sets).

Beta versions of the first two sets (and the 2008 Starter Set) are available immediately, with additional sets to follow, approximately one per two weeks.

• Dungeons of Dread (beta) (8 pages, 22.86 MB PDF)
• Against the Giants (beta) (8 pages, 8.28 MB PDF)
• Starter Set (2008) (beta) (1 page, 994 KB PDF)

Finally, the DDM Guild is proud to announce the first set of equipment cards for the DDM game: Items: Treasure Trove 1. The final version of this first set of cards is available from:

• Items: Treasure Trove 1 (1 page, 2.60 MB PDF)