#labyrinththewaronterror

Another day, another Jihadi win in Labyrinth: The War on Terror. Like the digital version of Twilight Struggle really laid bare that game’s crushing balance problems by a) making it easy to play and b) keeping detailed statistics, I’m starting to worry Labyrinth is just as lopsided. I can win as the US by invading Afghanistan on turn 1 and just playing a very close and sharp game, but it’s hard, and there are number of event combos that can cripple you by shifting your posture to Soft and making it extremely difficult or impossible to counteract Jihads (I think if you *don’t invade Afghanistan on turn 1, or can’t due to a really unfortunate Opium card, you basically can’t win against competent opposition). As the US I’m about 50-50 in my recent online plays but I’ve never lost as the Jihadi and it’s rarely even been that close. What do you all think on this? I always play the 3-deck game so one side or the other can get a clean victory and avoid some weird end-of-deck gameyness, but I think the shorter games would probably be even worse for the US. #gaminginthetimeofcovid19 #labyrinththewaronterror #gmtgames https://www.instagram.com/p/CBrbv8khm3y/?igshid=170mzmimdn726

Labyrinth: The War on Terror. One of the nice things about this game is how quickly it plays; we played twice back-to-back in under 3 hours. This is a game I’ve historically always enjoyed but only played a handful of times in the last 10 years or so. The current meta for us seems to be a revolving door race, with Jihadists setting fires (creating Islamic States) and then running away while the US tries to clean up, never actually engaging the US forces, under the theory that breaking things is easier than fixing them and the US is heavily constrained on where they can deploy troops so they have a hard time getting ahead of the fires. It’s not a super-satisfying pattern for me, since it usually just comes down to whether the US gets the ops and some good events. But maybe that’s always been what Labyrinth was, and it’s just the process is less fun if the sides are just racing instead of fighting it out directly. Curious to try the expansion again now; I seem to recall it has a better dynamic, but I only played it the once. Not sure. Still enjoyable just because it’s so short, but it hasn’t aged super-well. This recently flipped to feeling like a blast from the past; all the events from 2001-2005 are now long enough ago to feel like they’re from a different era. Standard disclaimer: file this game under “fantasy”. #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #labyrinththewaronterror https://www.instagram.com/p/BrTpSJ1DgeL/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=hl0lhu6fqkdk