by MarcM, 6 April 2025
This is the last turn. There are only 12 cards left so it’ll be a slightly short one. The Jihadists get six cards and I as the US Gets six.
most images can click to enlarge
My hand isn’t awful. Only one Jihadist event and it’s currently not playable.
Jihadist Card 1
Saddam Captured is first with 2 Ops points toward Plots. The first choice for a target is always the US, but it has no cells. Going through the Where flowchart, the first viable target is a country with troops. Somalia is the only country with troops and the cell necessary for a Plot. At Poor governance, a 3 or less is necessary, and a roll of 2 succeeds. Somalia gets a Plot. Since Plots boost funding that probably doesn’t matter too much this late in the game.
The second Ops point tries to place a plot in a country with the US posture of Hard. Scandinavia is the only one with a cell. It’s already active, so no change there. At good governance, the Jihadists need a 1, but they get a 4, so the Scandinavia Plot attempt fails.
Jihadist Card 2
The Jihadist card is Leak. It’s a Jihadist event, and with Rendition in play, it’s playable. We flip the Rendition marker to the Leak side and then roll for US Posture and Prestige.
Not good for the US. Posture shifts to Soft, lining up a GWOT penalty on War of Ideas attempts. Prestige drops by 1 and settles at the bottom, a 1.
Finally, one of my allies shifts to neutral. There are four options, and a die roll selects Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia shifts from Fair ally to Fair neutral.
US Card 1
Mass Turnout is a pretty good card. It’s a US event, and with Afghanistan under Regime Change, it’s playable. I can change Afghanistan from Poor to Fair. That gives me another Fair ally, which isn’t bad.
US Card 2
I play Loose Nuke, my one Jihadist card, to get it out of my hand while the event isn’t playable. The 2 Ops points let me remove the two active cells in Somalia. Not top priority, but getting rid of cells and getting rid of a negative event can’t hurt. I actually feel ok about this phase. A small victory, but I’ll take what I can get.
Jihadist Card 1
That good feeling didn’t last long. The first Jihadist card is Kazakh Strain, a playable Jihadist event. Central Asia has a cell (two actually) and no CTR marker from a Cooperative Threat Reduction event. That means there’s potential to add a weapon of mass destruction to the available Plot mix. With Central Asia at Poor governance, the roll needs to be 3 or less. A 2 succeeds and there’s a WMD plot available for the Jihadists now. This is significant because a WMD triggered in the US is an instant win for the Jihadists. That’s probably not terribly likely at this point, but for the first time it’s a possibility.
Jihadist Card 2
Kosovo is next. It’s unassociated and doesn’t place or recruit cells, so the event occurs. The US gains a Prestige point, which is good for me. But Serbia gets the opposite posture of the US, which isn’t good. Another Hard-posture country shifts the GWOT balance further to Hard, creating a -2 modifier for War of Ideas operations. Along with the Poor Prestige -1 modifier, War of Ideas is out of reach.
Continuing down the flowchart, we also check for Jihad possibility. Major Jihad is out of reach, and Minor Jihad isn’t possible with no cells in Fair or Good countries, so the Ops point goes to Recruit. There are four possible countries. A die roll selects Central Asia. A roll of 3 or less is necessary and a 1 places a new cell in Central Asia.
US Card 1
I play Darfur for the 3 Ops points to Disrupt cells in the Poor governance country of Somalia. With two or more troops in place, I can affect 2 cells, so I turn two cells active, allowing for removal later.
US Card 2
I play Let’s Roll to Disrupt the cell in Scandinavia. That cell has been trouble for a long time. With only 2 Ops points, it’s one of the few things I can do that has any real effect. Although, this late in the game and with only two cards left, I don’t think it will help me much.
Jihadist Card 1
Madrassas is the first card of the phase and it’s a little odd because it affects the next card as well. As I read it, the Jihadists use the 2 Ops points to Recruit. The first viable option on the Where flow chart is a non-Islamist Rule, non-regime change country with the highest possibility of success.
There are four options, but the flow chart prioritizes Besieged Regimes. There’s only one of those, Somalia.
A die roll of 5 fails and Somalia doesn’t add to its three existing cells.
Jihadist Card 2
Again, if I read Madrassas correctly, this second card of the phase, Sistani, must go to Recruit as well. There are 3 Ops points. The first goes toward another Recruit attempt and again, of the available options, we prioritize Somalia. A 6 fails, keeping the number of cells in Somalia at three. This ends the Jihadist game.
US Card 1
There’s really nothing I can do with my cards to affect the outcome of the game. I play Euro-Islam for the event and select the posture of Benelux to Soft to match the US.
That reduces the GWOT penalty. It’s not nothing but I don’t think it really helps me.
The event also reduces Funding for the Jihadists to 7. Again, this really has no effect.
US Card 2
I play the final card of the game, Musharraf, to remove the active cell in Scandinavia. A roll of 3 succeeds, and Scandinavia is finally free of Jihadist Cells.
As the final part of the turn, we resolve the Plot in Somalia as a 1. Jihadist funding bumps back up to 8.
Expenditures & Diplomacy
Jihadist Funding drops to 7. There are no countries under Islamist Rule, so the US doesn’t lose Prestige. The US doesn’t get a Prestige gain from the net GWOT posture, and US with a low Prestige of 2.
End of Game
And so ends my first playthrough of Labyrinth. I managed to get many of the cells off the board, but with no countries at Good governance I didn’t do particularly well. On the other hand, there are no Islamist Rule countries, so I didn’t fail utterly.
Neiter the US nor the Jihadists achieved the defined victory conditions. There are only 4 countries with Fair governance, far short of the 15 the US needs for a victory. While I made a good dent in the cells on the board, for a US victory, there can be none.
On the Jihadist side, they weren’t able to activate a WMD plot in the US so there was no instant victory. There are no Islamist Rule countries. US Prestige is low, but it’s at 2 and only 10 countries have Poor governance. A Jihadist win requires a Prestige of 1 and at least 15 countries at Poor governance.
However, since the US doesn’t win and there are no Good resource, the Jihadist side claims the victory. Oh well.
Final Thoughts
Okay, so I lost to the Jihadist flowchart. That’s fine, this was my first actual playthrough on my own and I was definitely learning the whole time. As I played, I’d catch myself misinterpreting the rules or just missing the rules entirely. Where I could, I backed up, collected misplaced cells or plots, and replayed a card, but sometimes that just wasn’t possible. Sometimes I didn’t catch the error until I was writing up the turn and it was just too late. If you’re familiar with the game, you probably caught some of these missteps. The good news is I got better.
This is the final episode in a running playthrough of Labyrinth from GMT Games; you can find the links to all published episodes at the end of article, with new installments each Sunday
The two things that caught me out the most? First, I struggled with distributing Jihadist Ops points correctly for the first few turns. I often applied all the Ops points to an operation in one country, but I think by solo rules, you apply them across the operation in multiple countries. The second rule I kept forgetting the first few turns was Jihadist ideology, which affects how easy operations are, how many cells they place, etc. Don’t forget ideology. It can make a pretty big difference.
I didn’t do myself any favors by starting with solo play. That gave me two more charts I needed to refer to and several variations on rules that I hadn’t fully learned yet. Honestly, that made the first couple of hands a bit clunky and made it difficult to appreciate the flow of the game. But, the as gameplay got smoother and playing became much more enjoyable. The constant need to do a lot with pair of cards, when I could only do a couple…or one..or none, built the tension nicely and kept me constantly thinking. It also built anticipation for what I would do with the next cards. And now that I know the rules better and how the different operations work, I’ll do better next time and I’m really looking forward to trying the two-player game.
Labyrinth AAR – Let’s Roll
PART 1 ~ PART 2 ~ PART 3 ~ PART 4 ~ PART 5 ~ PART 6
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