Labyrinth: The Rise of Al-Qaeda, 1993-2001

 

A dramatic attack in New York City. The world looks on in shock as the World Trade Center is rocked by a terror act intended to collapse the Twin Towers. A recently elected President is tested. The United States mobilizes its response: the FBI picks up the trail.

They make their first arrest within a month. In two years’ time, the main perpetrator will be arrested by members of the Diplomatic Security Service, working jointly with the Pakistani ISI. Ramzi Yousef: he will remain behind bars indefinitely.

This is February 26, 1993. A very different war on terror. Yet much of the geopolitical context remains the same: the United States promotes its vision of democracy and good governance across the Middle East region, seeking to expand its trading interests in the wake of the Cold War. The West remains dependent on the region’s oil, which must be secured. The US supports regimes which can provide stability and secure access to resources. On the other side, Islamist Jihadis plot to overthrow local regimes and establish a Caliphate or mount another major strike on US soil.

Despite the bombing, Americans remain largely ignorant of the growing threat of Islamist terror. For the Jihadists, the calls to war have already begun, and an obscure Saudi is constructing a terrorist organization like none other before. By the end of the era, everyone will know the name Osama Bin Laden, and that of his organisation: the stage is set for the rise of Al-Qaeda.

Labyrinth: The Rise of Al-Qaeda, 1993 - 2001 is the third expansion for Volko Ruhnke’s acclaimed Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001 - ?, a 1-2 player card-driven boardgame depicting the geopolitical struggle in the Middle East between revolutionary Islamists (mostly Salafist) on the one hand (represented by the “Jihadist” player) and the US-led West plus their supported regimes on the other (represented by the “Coalition” player).

This is the prequel to the original game, but it builds on the more sophisticated mechanics provided by its first sequel, Labyrinth: The Awakening. The Rise of Al-Qaeda requires ownership of Labyrinth to play, but it is a full expansion in its own right—you don’t need a copy of Awakening. It can be played with the base game alone to provide a satisfying experience, but it's also possible to use it as part of a “campaign” spanning all of the expansions.

The Rise of Al-Qaeda takes the series back in time to cover the period following the World Trade Center bombing, mere weeks into Bill Clinton’s first term, and invites players to compare the dynamics of this earlier period. Despite some obvious differences in how the US fought against Islamist terrorism in the 1990s, the Labyrinth series mechanics are a perfect fit for the era given their strategic, geopolitical scope.

As a series, Labyrinth has always been about the bigger picture—as much a game about the insurgencies that have raged across an unstable region as combating terrorism per se. With hindsight, this is not surprising: we can now see that an ambiguity between counterterrorism and counterinsurgency lay at the heart of Bush Jr’s “Global War on Terror,” and also that Russia and China have faced a similar blurring of boundaries in their conflicts with Islamist groups.

As such, The Rise of Al-Qaeda uses the same rules, victory conditions, map, components, and charts as the other games in the series not because the system has forced this as a constraint on the design, but because the existing ruleset fits the period so well: the Coalition player seeks to wipe the Jihadists’ cells off the map, establish Good Governance in enough countries, and secure more Resources than the Jihadist. The Jihadist player still wins by securing a sufficient Resource base, reducing enough of the region to Poor Governance, or by mounting a major terror attack on the US homeland.

The operations of both sides followed similar patterns—the Coalition will still Disrupt cells, and the Jihadist player will still place Plots and carry out Jihads. “Regime Change” may be a phrase for the future, but the US military is actively nation-building in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo and very recently deployed to defeat Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It’s harder to achieve the Posture needed to overthrow an Islamist Rule, and the world won’t be as ready to accept such a Hard power approach, but it remains possible in extremis.

But some things have changed to reflect the different dynamics of the era. As with the other expansions, The Rise of Al-Qaeda provides players with new event cards and rules relevant to the period covered, as well as several new components that expand its strategic model.

Specifically, The Rise of Al-Qaeda adds:

• A new 120-card deck
  

• Wooden guerrilla pieces representing local insurgents (“Militia” for the Jihadist player)
• Wooden Russian troop pieces (with rules for Russian intervention in Muslim Countries)
• Chinese and Russian Influence tokens (allowing those countries to support their allies)

• New rules for Civil Wars (including Russian involvement and changing how they end)
• New rules for WMD plot markers (to better model their actual historical role)
• A card-driven subsystem representing UNSCOM WMD inspections in Iraq

In The Rise of Al-Qaeda, the Coalition player still represents the US-led West but one operating much more through the United Nations than American unilateralism. The “Global War on Terror” track remains a key mechanic and still represents the Coalition’s ability to work multilaterally in pursuit of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts. The Coalition player still has to navigate between “Hard” and “Soft” power strategies but will face the challenge of operating in a predominantly “Soft” power world whilst the US military is committed in Bosnia and Somalia.

The Jihadist player still represents a disparate, international movement of revolutionary Islamists but one not yet symbolically united behind the leadership of Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. Alongside their internationally mobile cells, the Jihadist player will have to work with local guerrilla pieces—which can’t move but will contribute to Civil Wars and “Jihad” operations.

The result is a set of modifications giving players a new experience with the Labyrinth system, appropriate to the different era of the 1990s. More than this, though, several of the new systems can readily be brought “forward” in time, into the later games, should players wish.

We’re really excited to present this next step in the evolving Labyrinth game series to you. Labyrinth: The Rise of Al-Qaeda opens up a new chapter of the historical sandbox the game has always presented, which has led players to return to the system again and again—now there’s even more reason to come back!

Components:

• One Double-sided Countersheet (includes 4 Country Mats - Bosnia/Kosovo, Caucasus, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq)
• One 28-page Combined Rules & Playbook
• Three Double-sided Player Aid Cards
• 120 Event Cards
• 5 Bonus Cards for the Base Game
• 24 Octagonal Cylinders (12 blue, 12 green)
• 6 Red Cubes
• One Ziplock

Players: 1-2

Game Designer: Peter Evans
Original Labyrinth Designer: Volko Ruhnke
Game Developer: Marco Poutré