Terminator 2: Judgement Day is my wife's favorite movie, and it's a solid gold classic, with solid action sequences, some genuinely funny bits, and oddly good CGI for 1991, especially on the T-1000 (a.k.a. scary melty metal man). Nevertheless, I'm shocked, nay, surprised, to report that a Terminator 2 board game is in development, with dice driven, survival adventure-y gameplay, original minis, and some honestly rad comic book style artwork. The film came out before I was even born, and was most certainly not on my 2026 bingo card of tabletop adaptations, but honestly, I'm here for it.
Announced on Wednesday by Abu Dhabi based publisher Cation Arts and STUDIOCANAL, it's been designed by Cation CEO Mohamed Al Qadi, who also created the firm's best known game, All Time Wrestling, released in 2023. A contender for our list of the best board games ever that ain't, but its highly respectable 8.2 average rating on BoardGameGeek certainly sets an optimistic precedent for this new title.
Cation says Terminator 2: The Board Game is primarily a co-op survival affair for three players, which (unlike other popular Terminator tabletop games in recent years) focuses entirely on T2's classic action movie plot, rather than verging into the later movies' far future robot warfare.
For you whippersnappers who haven't seen the original Terminators, that means you've got to track down an AI defence computer network called Skynet and stop it from causing the apocalypse. All this, while avoiding the T-1000: an almost unstoppable, shapeshifting killer robot that's been sent from the future to kill you and ensure the machines' future supremacy. Actually, I'm starting to realize why they felt 2026 was the perfect time for this game, to be honest.
We play as femme fatale Sarah Connor, quippy kid hero John Connor, and Arnie himself, the T-800 Terminator, while the game's automation controls the unsettling liquid metal horror set against us (though there's also a four player 'versus' mode where one player takes over the villain).
Terminator 2: The Board Game is set to launch on Kickstarter some time in 2026, but head designer Mohamed Al Qadi tells Wargamer we'll have to wait until "closer to the Kickstarter date" to see the actual board, and most of the game's juiciest bits. That said, Cation's press release shares some interesting gameplay details, as well as a stack of incredible original comic book artworks and some pretty rad looking 3D model shots of the miniatures.
Unlike the original, 1991 Milton Bradley tie-in board game for Terminator 2 (race around the board, pick up three McGuffins, then roll some dice once to fight the bad guy) this game promises a pretty involved set of mechanics.
Each game, we'll pick one of three 'final mission' endgame objectives (Destroy Skynet, Hack Skynet, or Expose Skynet to the world) and travel across key locations from the movie, completing objectives and surviving the T1000's attacks across a board that seems like it'll be modular, as Cation says it'll have "changing locations and location layouts" each playthrough.
Along the way, we'll be leveling up the team via "gear, allies, dice, or ability upgrades" on a progression grid that's shared across all three characters. The co-op decision making partly revolves around deciding which upgrades to buy to stay alive, but also trying to stay one step ahead of the T-1000. Key to that is a noise mechanic: Cation says your most powerful moves all create noise, which is "the way the T-1000 tracks, learns, and adapts".
The press release claims the Bad Terminator "responds to what the Heroes do", and that "completing objectives, escaping ambushes, or making breakthroughs all shape how dangerous the T-1000
becomes". To aid replayability, it says those encounters and ambushes are randomized each time, and the T-1000 gets variable upgrades that, I presume, further tweak exactly how and when it's going to try and spear its pointy metal arm through our faces.
We'll have to wait for hard details on how all that'll play on the table. But we can already see, at the very least, that this game's got some outstanding artwork involved. Graphic novelist Soroush Barazesh, a.k.a. Koteri Ink, has created a suite of fantastic comic book style panels that Cation says "grounds the world of Terminator 2 in a bold, modern tabletop aesthetic".
"We have selected some of our favorite artworks," Al Qadi tells Wargamer. "I'm glad the comic feel comes out strongly… it's not a comic, but that is the art feel we went with." Al Qadi also confirms that no generative AI has touched these images. "We work with artists directly," he tells us. "I'd be very surprised if they used AI - our contract also excludes them from doing so". That's always good to hear, especially in this case. If a board game developer used AI to adapt a movie about stopping AI from eradicating humankind, I might just have to jump in a vat of molten metal.
Would you go all in on a Terminator 2 board game? Have you had your face and voice stolen by a bodysnatching robot played by Robert Patrick? Are you Skynet? Come let us know in the free Wargamer Discord community - although if you are Skynet we'll block you, as AI is banned in our clubhouse. Just a friendly warning.