There are very few games universally recognized across the whole board gaming community, and Twilight Struggle is definitely one of them. Published twenty years ago by GMT Games and designed by Jason Matthews and Ananda Gupta, it was and still is a true masterpiece – it spent almost six years in first place on BoardGameGeek, and it has a yearly world championship, one of which I was lucky enough to attend when it came to Warsaw.

I have played it around fifty times with my old copy, so I was really looking forward to this one. The Hall of Fame name is no coincidence either: the box carries the BoardGameGeek Hall of Fame, the Charles S. Roberts Award and the Academy of Adventure Gaming hall of fame, and those are only the three printed there.

What this edition brings is a complete revamp of the graphics and art on both the map and the cards, plus a double-sided board with the new map on the front and the familiar Deluxe Edition map on the back. Almost everything ever created for Twilight Struggle is now in the box:

  • the Chinese Civil War variant,
  • the excellent Turn Zero expansion with its cards reshaping how the Second World War ended,
  • the alternative Space Race track,
  • a late war scenario covering the final three turns,
  • and a collection of promo cards gathered from the Kickstarter packs and from the many foreign editions this game has seen.
  • The genuinely unique one is Red Sun Rising, a new alt-history scenario in which the USSR invades Hokkaido and sets up a puppet state there, leaving Japan far weaker and the Far East colonies still short of independence – it comes with its own overlay map and special cards.
  • There is also a background booklet with an example of play, retrospective essays, designer notes and card history.

Even after fifty plays I am inclined to bring it back to the table with the new cards and scenarios. A Cube4Me set for this one is mandatory and will certainly follow – in the meantime you can see my earlier Twilight & Imperial Struggle storage solutions, my Twilight Struggle vs Imperial Struggle comparison, and everything else gathered under my Twilight Struggle tag.

Below I am presenting the game components, focusing on what is new in this edition compared to the previous one:

Enjoy the material!