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Top notch game, love it on Steamdeck.

I play the full version on my Steamdeck all the time and it is an absolute delight. Cool to see this early version being made available.

Of course, there's the companion book focusing on Mujahideen tactics against the Soviets: The Other Side of the Mountain.

Also, if you have any sort of streaming service associated with your local library, you likely have access to some fascinating pieces from 1970s Afghanistan. I've been watching a series of films produced by American Universities Field Staff that are 10-20 minute films and interviews with people in different parts of Afghanistan. Titles like Afghan Women, Afghan Nomads, The Wheat Cycle, and an Afghan Village are all tiny slices of life from the pre-Soviet era. 

And of course, arguably the most well known media for this conflict these days: Charlie Wilson's War 

Panjshir '82 is an asymmetric table-top wargame that's designed to be small and easy. 4 pages, a deck of cards, and some dice are all you need to play and a session is generally a half hour to 45 minutes.

Set in the infamous valley in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, you'll take command of two Mujahideen bands and try to lead them to victory. This is insurgency, so rather than defeat the Soviets in the field, you'll infiltrate the valley, conduct a series of critical ambushes, then escape.

I originally built the game for the Tally-Ho Corner's 2021 game jam, took runner up, and have been refining it since. It's great to see the final version live for people to play!

Download it here!

One of the ideas with an engagement, is that heavy fighting will draw additional Soviet attention. So if a unit is engaged, and a face-card is revealed by either side, the instruction calls for "the second closest Soviet unit to move in the direction of this tile."

The idea is that if your group is fighting an amoured company, and there is a helicopter company nearby, the helicopter company might come to their aid. The armoured company is closest (they share a tile with you) and the helicopter is "second closest."

However, in the case of drawing from the Lesser Threat Deck for a militia skirmish or police checkpoint, the idea is that the closest Soviet unit should respond.

There simply wasn't enough room to articulate that in the original rule constraints, and really, I don't think its a problem if people continue to move the second closest units when responding to particularly violent engagements from either deck.

When I built the game initially, it was designed for a European audience playing on A4 paper. A Canadian myself, most of my playthroughs have happened on 8.5X11, occasionally cropping or resizing the image heavy pages of the map and encounter tables.

Would other users care for a resized version of those? Inkarnate is a little more complicated to resize from than a PDF, but it could certainly be done.

Afghanistan is a complicated place, with a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds within the confines of a largely imagined state border. 

Essentially, in the 1950s through to the 1970s, the country shifts from a kingdom to a communist republic, and seeks closer ties with the Soviet Union. However, several factions and continual infighting mean that power struggles regularly occur, and the Soviets are sometimes unsure of who to support.

After a series of coups and assassinations, Soviet forces cross into Afghanistan on December 24th 1979 to support the new government of Babrak Karmal. Widespread opposition eventually coalesces into what is called The Mujahideen: essentially Afghan rebels fighting against the USSR and central government forces.

Note: Mujahideen and Taliban are not the same! This is common knowledge to those familiar with the conflict and recent history of Afghanistan, but some circles are unable to delineate between the different entities that become Taliban, Mujahideen, and Al-Queda. The Mujahideen were a loose band of many factions fighting the Soviets, the Taliban were an Islamist fundamentalist group that eventually form a government in the 1990s, while Al-Queda begins as an Islamist Anti-Soviet faction before changing to target the US in the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 attacks.

The Mujihadeen receive funding and weapons from the west, specifically through the CIA. The war drags on for the Soviets with mounting casualties and limited successes. 

The Karmal government is effectively ended by the Soviets, and Mohammed Najibullah of the secret police is placed in power instead. Gorbachev comes to power in the USSR and renews focus on Europe, beginning plans for a withdrawal.

After a full decade, the USSR is exhausted by the counter-insurgency and mercurial nature of the Afghan conflict, and withdraw in 1989.

In 1992 the Najibullah government collapses and we begin to see the civil war that will result in the emergence of the Taliban.

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For a very digestible history of Afghanistan I recommend this timeline from PBS

For a more detailed rundown of various points in the Soviet-Afghan war, you can always start with the wikipedia article or check out our reading list

This list is a work in progress! Please add your recommendations!

• The Bear Went Over The Mountain: a detailed rundown of Soviet tactics used against Mujihadeen fighters. Deployment of blocking forces, scouting, patrols, complete with maps and additional analysis from US and USSR commentators.
• The Great Gamble: A solid overall primer on the conflict with lots of narrative zing. Covers events like the storming of the Tajbeg Palace and much more.

Some of the images in Panjshir '82 are produced by me, or artistic reimaginings of my own, but most of the photographs themselves are used courtesy of the Afghan Media Resource Centre from Boston University.

The rest of this board will likely be focused on military hardware and fighting, but here's an image of several Afghan kids having fun taken by Muhammad Karim in 1989.

You can browse the full collection at the link below, however I will warn users that there are very NSFW images of dead bodies within the archive. I have been unable to find a safety filter myself, and so I must encourage you to browse with personal caution. (Don't sort by views!) Due to my background in communications theory I am a strong believer that the media we see impacts us in ways we do not always understand.

https://archive.org/details/afghanmediaresourcecenter?tab=collection

Jeff Kaplan is the lead archivist for the project, and the Afghan Media Resource Centre is described on the site:

The Afghan Media Resource Center (AMRC) was founded in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1987, by a team of media trainers working under contract to Boston University. The goal of the project was to assist Afghans to produce and distribute accurate and reliable accounts of the Afghan war to news agencies and television networks throughout the world.   Beginning in the early 1980’s amidst a news blackout imposed by the Soviet backed Kabul government, foreign journalists had become targets to be captured or killed. The AMRC was an effort to overcome the substantial obstacles encountered by media representatives in bringing events surrounding the Afghan-Soviet war to world attention.

Beginning in 1987, a series of six week training sessions were conducted at the AMRC original home in University Town, Peshawar, Pakistan. . Qualified Afghans were recruited from all major political parties, all major ethnic groups and all regions of Afghanistan, to receive professional training in print journalism, photo journalism and video news production    Haji Sayed Daud, a former television producer and journalist at Kabul TV before the Soviet invasion, was named AMRC Director.

After the completion of their training,  3-person teams were dispatched on specific stories throughout Afghanistan’s 27  provinces, with 35mm cameras, video cameras, notebooks, and audio tape recorders. Photo materials were distributed internationally through SYGMA and Agence France Press (AFP), Video material was syndicated and broadcast by VisNews (now Reuters), with 150 broadcasters in 87 countries Euronews and London-based WTN (now Associated Press),Thames Television, ITN, Swedish, French, Pakistani and other regional networks. 

In 2000 AMRC began publishing a popular and influential newspaper in Kabul; ERADA (Intention). With one interruption, ERADA publication continued until 2012.

The AMRC collection spans a critical period in Afghanistan's history – (1987 – 1994)  including 76,000 photographs, 1,175 hours of video material, 356 hours of audio material, and many stories from print media.

In 2012 AMRC received a grant to digitize the entire AMRC archive, to preserve the collection at the U.S. Library of Congress. AMRC senior media advisors Stephen Olsson and Nick Mills were trained in the digitization processes by the Library of Congress, then spent two weeks in Kabul training the AMRC staff. The digitization and metadata sheets (in English, Dari and Pashto) were completed in 2016, and were welcomed into the Library of Congress with a formal ceremony.  We are now making the entire AMRC collection available through our on-line partner, The Internet Archive.

Now the entire collection is readily available to scholars, researchers and publishers.  All royalties for commercial use of the photo images and video material will continue to support the non-profit work of the AMRC.

Beyond the AMRC archive, the AMRC conducted dozens of training programs and workshops for writers and radio journalists, including training programs for Refugee Women in Development (REFWID) The AMRC also established radio and TV studios in the provincial capitaol, Jalalabad, and produced radio and TV programs, including educational radio dramas, for a variety of international organizations. AMRC also conducted public opinion polls in Afghanistan, including an extensive Media Use Survey in Afghanistan, financed by InterMedia, a Washington, D.C. group.

The timeline of the project does not perfectly overlay with Panjshir '82, but the setting and feel are spot on. As this is an Afghan focused project, representation of Russian and other Soviet soldiers active in the area is minimal, but still present. The helicopter company and amoured company images from the rules come directly from the archive (with some minor colour and exposure correction done by myself). 

There are some questionable bits of data amongst the tens of thousands of files, where descriptions clearly do not match the image, or dates seem off. I suspect this is a gargantuan project to manage. As the photos were all originally 35mm film, they are available in extremely high resolution.

In part because these photographs were taken by Afghans themselves, there is much more personal photography, posed photos, and aftermath images than of actual combat imagery.

But amongst the many grim images associated with this place and this war, there is a real sense of warmth too. Afghanistan's history has not been a happy one, but there are some fascinating moments from this time period that I've been lucky to stumble across browsing the archive.

From the Hills & Valleys event tiles, on a roll of 2 the player is told:

• You may remove this unit from the board. Next turn return it to the map on any Mountain ◆ Location less 1D3 worth of Combat Power

The idea here is to simulate the unit dissolving and slipping away back to some pre-agreed meeting place. However, such maneuvers are risky. If the 1D3 roll exceeds the unit's existing Combat Power, the intention is for it to be lost and removed from play. 

I think the player should commit to this action before knowing the results of the 1D3 roll. Your troops might reassemble just fine, but if they're already disorganized and in rough shape, there should be a risk to losing the band completely!

Of course, if you roll high and then decide you don't want to regroup after-all, I wont blame you. That's the beauty of a solo game.

This photo is from the Afghan Media Resource Center taken by Hafiz Ashna. It is dated January 1988, and depicts Mujihadeen under the command of Hussain Anwari climbing a mountain in the Patika Province of Afghanistan.

21:41 - Insertion

• The loose gathering of fighters that makes up Warband Alpha assembles and enters the operational area from the south-west along the river.
• Having travelled together for some time now, Warband Bravo emerges into the mountain passes in the south-east.
• Turn 3: As they maneuver through the foothills, an Soviet Helicopter company spots bravo and engages them. Layered anti-aircraft fire and some lucky rocket fire is enough to drive them off, and Bravo swiftly relocates to avoid pursuit.
• After a carefully negotiated deal with a local arms dealer, Warband Alpha has a full contingent of men, weapons, and vehicles.
• Turn 6: Warband Alpha initiates the military ambush critical strike on a nearby armoured company heading for the river's bridge. High stakes are in effect, and while the exchange is bloody on both sides, the warband remains intact while the Russian soldiers are dispersed. The survivors make for the hills while Soviet reinforcements stream in from the north.
• Taking advantage of the Soviet reaction to the ambush, Warband Bravo slips out of the mountains, headed for an urban center.
• Warband Bravo reaches peak operational effectiveness after requisitioning a fleet of gun-trucks from a sympathetic local leader.
• Turn 8: Warband Bravo initiates a critical strike attacking infrastructure, raiding and burning a central fuel depot. After completing the attack, the warband speeds away, leaving stragglers and injured behind to face the Soviet response.
• Warband Alpha manages to reach the south-eastern mountain passes and dissolves back into small bands of fighters escaping to their homes and safehouses.
• Turn 11: Along the edge of an empty gravel wash, through which they hope to reach the mountains and escape, the survivors of Warband Bravo come under attack from a Spetsnaz reaction force. They are badly mauled in the initial ambush, but subsequently able to slip away from their pursuers.
• Turn 13: With Soviet tanks still visible on the plains below, Warband Bravo abandons what remains of their heavy weapons and escapes back through their initial entry point.

Victory Points:

• 10pts - A Reaches 6 Combat Power
• 60pts - Critical Military Ambush
• 10pts - B Reaches 6 Combat Power
• 50pts - Critical Infrastructure Attack
• 50pts - All Forces Escape by Turn 15

Total: 180 point victory

I suspect this is a personal best score for me! The session before I lost Warband Bravo to wayward camels on Turn 3 and watched Warband Alpha get harried by helicopter companies until they expired out in the desert. So this was a welcome change of pace. I was somewhat hesitant to have Bravo extract through the same route they inserted from, and am considering whether that should be an additional rule for the escape portion. As a general rule it's a bad idea to leave an operation by the same route you came in...

The image at the top of the post is from the Afghan Media Resource Center, originally taken by Muhammad Hasan in November 1989 in the Paghman district of Afghanistan.