Many consider Labyrinth a transition game from Twilight Struggle to the COIN series that followed.  In several ways, the Labyrinth II: The Awakening 2010-? expansion takes us back to its Twilight Struggle roots.  This article will highlight the similarities between the Labyrinth II expansion and TS.

When I first introduced the idea of designing an Arab Spring simulation based on his Labyrinth game, Volko and I both agreed that there needed to be markers that would represent the peoples of the various Muslim countries as they “took to the streets” so to speak to demand better governance, and we needed to represent the various reactionary elements to these movements.  The concept that came from this conversation was to have event cards place Awakening and Reaction makers into the country holding boxes.  The Awakening markers would grant a positive die roll modifier to War of Idea rolls and a contradictory modifier to Jihad rolls.  Reaction modifiers would do just the opposite, with the net effect that one marker of each type in a country would cancel out each other’s modifiers, but would not cause either marker to be removed, as their presence there could influence other events.

This dynamic is similar to the way influence markers are played in Twilight Struggle, though in that game the influence makers are numerical markers showing the current value, while in Labyrinth II they are stacked on top of each showing relative strengths in sort of a “bar chart” fashion.  The picture below shows the US play of the Tahrir Square event in Egypt to capitalize on a single Awakening marker it already had there, followed up with the expansion of that initial play with a Popular Support card.  Both card plays show spillover into Libya, which previously did not have any markers.

At this moment, the US players has a net +3 modifier for WOI and Jihad rolls in Egypt, and a +2 in Libya…a very strong position!

The next comparison between the Labyrinth II expansion and TS comes in scoring.  Twilight Struggle has the near every-turn tension of trying to finish-up progress in one or more regions of the world before scoring cards are tabulated at the end of the turn.  I have recreated that tension in Labyrinth II through a census process conducted at the end of each turn called Polarization.  The concept is that if one faction of a country is significantly stronger than its opposition, as represented by the difference in Awakening and Reaction markers there, then that side will be rewarded at the end of the turn through an additional support marker of its side if the difference is 2, or an adjustment in Alignment or Governance towards its side if the difference is 3 or greater.  In the preceding example, Egypt at +3 would have its alignment improved from Neutral to Ally, while Libya would gain another Awakening marker (now 3).

Additional comparisons could be made with Military Operations (Coup attempts and War Event cards) within Twilight Struggle and the Civil War rules introduced in Labyrinth II.  Countries fall into Civil War by event play, and their Awakening and Reaction markers are replaced with Local Security Forces Cubes and Cells.  Continuing our example from above, at the beginning of the next turn the Jihadist plays the Muslim Brotherhood card, and places 3 Reaction markers in Egypt; both sides now have 4 support markers each.  With Egypt becoming a US Ally during the previous Polarization Phase, the Jihadist player fears that the US player might deploy troops to Egypt, and decides to use his second card to play the unassociated event Revolution and trigger a Civil War in Egypt.  This replaces the 4 Awakening markers with 4 Cubes and 4 Reaction markers with 4 Cells, and makes Egypt Neutral again, thus preventing a US possible deployment for the time being.  The Civil War marker also allows the Jihadist player to Auto-Recruit in Egypt, and in future card plays he places 3 more cells there, now with a total of 4 Cubes and 7 Cells, as shown in the photo below.

The turn ends and during the Polarization phase, both payers calculate Civil War Attrition. The general rule is that each player rolls one die for each group of 6 pieces that he has and causes one “hit” for each die roll less than or equal to the number of pieces rolling.  If you have more than 6 pieces, then each group of 6 causes and automatic hit, only the fraction remaining must roll the die to see if there is a result.  1 “hit” removes 1 Cube or 2 Cells.  If your opponent does not have enough forces to absorb the hits generated, then the country trends towards your desired Alignment then Governance for each hit not taken by forces.  Similar to the Polarization rule described previously, this end-of-turn Civil War Attrition dynamic tends to cause players to want to reinforce Civil Wars ASAP, or bring the CW to an end through event play if possible, especially if it is going badly for them.

So there you have it, three examples of dynamics in Labyrinth II that resemble the style of play many of us enjoy so much in Twilight Struggle.  Additionally, several of the event cards in Labyrinth II have a “Cold War” flare to them as we see both the US and Russia backing factions in the Civil Wars that followed the Arab Spring, and as we see the French exert a neocolonial presence back into their former colonies in Africa, including the newly added countries in this expansion of Mali and Nigeria.

As an update on the development of Labyrinth II, we just finished the first round of blind playtests, and have rewritten the rules and updated 35 cards to make them clearer.  We have also added rules that allow the Jihadist player to declare a Caliphate, with its commensurate benefits and risks.  My next article for this series will focus on why and when a Jihadist player would consider declaring a Caliphate and how this changes the game.

I am also pleased to report that play-balance looks good, as we have had an exactly equal number of Jihadist and US victories.  Equally important, the play-test feedback shows that the feel of the game is right on in terms of recreating the major events and pressures of the Arab Spring.  With the rapid rise of support of the Labyrinth II expansion on the P500 list (at 650+ preorders after 4 weeks), I suspect we will do two more one month play test sessions and updates, and then if all goes well, present the case to Gene that we are ready to go into final Artwork and Rules layout.  If you have been considering a pre-order of this little nugget, I hope the above examples and the comparisons to the constant tension of Twilight Struggle will convince you to place an order and help us get to that next milestone of 750 preorders!

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Next article:

Labyrinth II Book Ends

Author: Trevor Bender