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How to play

Night on the Ridge

One player leads the hill clans. The other holds the British station. Eight rounds of cards, one night, and at dawn, whoever has more men on the field holds Murree.

Night Raid: Remove 3 British soldiers.
Hakim Khan's Warning: Look at the Rebellion's hand. Choose 1 card; they discard it.
Musket Volley: Remove 2 Rebellion soldiers.
Learn in 3 minutesOr learn by playing
I

The goal

Have more soldiers on the field when dawn breaks after the 8th round.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Dawn

A tie at dawn?

The Rebellion wins. The rising has survived the night, and the British have failed to crush it.

Early victory

If a side has no soldiers left on the field and none in its pool, its opponent wins immediately.

II

Two unequal sides

The Rebellion is quick and sharp. The British are many, slow, and have the last word.

The Rebellion

Fewer men, but faster to gather and harder-hitting.

2on the field
10in the pool
Recruiting
Fast: 3 per card
Attacking
Hard-hitting: 3 per card
Turn order
Goes first
Special rule
Wins all ties

The British

More soldiers, but slower to muster and stretched thin by the war on the plains.

5on the field
14in the pool
Recruiting
Slow: 2 per card
Attacking
Steady: 2 per card
Turn order
Goes second, takes the last turn
Special rule
May redraw the opening hand
III

Field and pool

Every soldier is in one of two places. Try the cards below.

The field is your army. Only soldiers on the field count at dawn, and only they can be hit.

The pool is the men you could call up. They are safe there, but worth nothing when the night ends.

Recruit and Remove always mean “up to”: you can’t recruit more than your pool holds or remove more than their field holds.

Field2
10Pool

The Rebellion begins with 2 on the field and 10 in the pool.

IV

Your turn

The Rebellion goes first. One round is one turn for each side.

Night Raid: Remove 3 British soldiers.
Rally the Villages: Recruit 3.
1

Draw 2

Take the top two cards of your deck into your hand.

Hill Ambush: Remove 3 British soldiers. Cannot be stopped.
Karral Allies: Add 3 new soldiers to your field.
2

Play up to 2

One at a time. Do what each card says. You may play fewer.

Melt into the Hills: Cancel a card played against you.
Rally the Villages: Recruit 3.
Night Raid: Remove 3 British soldiers.
DISCARD
3

Discard to 7

If you hold more than 7 cards, choose what to let go.

By the end of Round 8, both players will have drawn their entire deck.
V

Stop cards

The only cards you play when it is not your turn.

Melt into the Hills and Hold the Line are the only cards you play on your opponent’s turn.

  • When a card is played against you, you may answer at once with a Stop to cancel it.
  • The cancelled card still counts as one of their plays.
  • Answering does not use up one of your own plays.
  • A Stop cannot itself be stopped.

Can be stopped

Night Raid: Remove 3 British soldiers.
Win Over the Sepoys: Remove 2 British soldiers. For each one removed, add 1 new soldier to your field.
Musket Volley: Remove 2 Rebellion soldiers.
Hakim Khan's Warning: Look at the Rebellion's hand. Choose 1 card; they discard it.
Divide and Rule: Move up to 3 soldiers from the Rebellion's field back to their pool.

Cannot be stopped

Hill Ambush: Remove 3 British soldiers. Cannot be stopped.
Artillery: Remove 3 Rebellion soldiers. Cannot be stopped.

Nor can cards that only help your own side.

VI

The cards

Twenty-one cards a side: recruits, attacks, stops, and one-of-a-kind specials drawn from the real history. Tap a card to look closer.

Sardar Sherbaz Khan counts as one of your plays. Played first, he lets you play 3 more: 4 in total.

New soldiers from Karral Allies, Win Over the Sepoys and Relief from Rawalpindi come from the supply, not your pool.

Removed soldiers are out of the game. Divide and Rule only sends them back to the pool.

Hakim Khan’s Warning can be stopped with Melt into the Hills, like any card played against the Rebellion.

VII

Setup and the British choice

  1. 1Each side shuffles its own 21-card deck.
  2. 2Rebellion: 2 soldiers on the field, 10 in the pool.
  3. 3British: 5 on the field, 14 in the pool.
  4. 4Each player draws 5 cards and keeps them hidden.
  5. 5The British may redraw (see right).
  6. 6Round 1 begins. The Rebellion goes first.

The British choice

Once, before any card is played, the British may shuffle their 5 cards back and draw 5 new ones. If they do, one soldier moves from pool to field (6 on the field), but on their first turn they may play only 1 card.

Redraw if your hand has no Musket Volley or Artillery. A hand of Enlists feels safe, but gives you no way to hurt the Rebellion.

VIII

An example turn

Round 3. Rebellion: 5 on the field, 4 in the pool. British: 6 and 8.

Night Raid: Remove 3 British soldiers.
Rally the Villages: Recruit 3.
Hill Ambush: Remove 3 British soldiers. Cannot be stopped.
Melt into the Hills: Cancel a card played against you.

Step 1 of 4

Draw 2

Round 3, the Rebellion’s turn. They draw two cards; their hand now holds 7, including Night Raid, Rally the Villages, Hill Ambush and Melt into the Hills.

Rebellion5field4pool
British6field8pool
IX

Strategy

Reinforce or sabotage?

Pool soldiers are safe but worth nothing at dawn. Field soldiers count, but can be removed. Recruit too early and you give your opponent targets; too late and you run out of turns.

Rebellion: lead before the last round

The British always move last. Go into Round 8 ahead, or keep a Melt into the Hills for their final turn. Ties go to you.

British: you can outlast them

You have more soldiers than the Rebellion can ever field. Every Musket Volley that lands hurts them more than it would hurt you.

Keep your Stops, but don’t hoard them

A Stop protects you, but takes a space you could use for an attack. And Hill Ambush and Artillery ignore them.

Time your special cards

Sherbaz Khan is strongest when every play counts, often the last turn. Divide and Rule is strongest late, once the Rebellion has committed its men.

Quick reference

Setup
Rebellion 2 field / 10 pool. British 5 / 14. Draw 5. British may redraw once (6 / 13, one play on first turn). Rebellion goes first.
Your turn
Draw 2. Play up to 2. Discard down to 7.
Stop cards
Played on your opponent’s turn to cancel a card played against you. Hill Ambush and Artillery cannot be stopped.
The end
After Round 8, more soldiers on the field wins. Rebellion wins ties. A side with nothing left anywhere loses at once.
X

The story

Most people know Murree as a holiday hill station. Fewer know that in September 1857, the hill clans rose and tried to take it in a single night.

Murree sits high in the Galyat hills, north-east of present-day Islamabad, at about 2,291 metres. In 1857 the people of these hills belonged to clans that had lived here for generations: the Dhund Abbasi, the Karral, the Satti and others.

The British annexed the Punjab in 1849 and chose the ridge for a sanatorium. Many clans first welcomed them after years of Sikh rule; the welcome did not last. The British also recruited local men, and the same families could be found on both sides.

When rebellion broke out on the plains in May 1857, troops were sent to retake Delhi. By late August, Murree was thinly defended, with British families still living there, among them Lady Lawrence.

Sardar Sherbaz Khan, chief of the Dhund Abbasi, planned for around 300 men to climb the hillsides in the dark. But Hakim Khan, an attendant in Lady Lawrence’s household, warned the British. When the attackers came up through the dark on 2 September, the station was waiting.

  1. 1849
    The British annex the Punjab
  2. 1851
    Building of the Murree hill station begins
  3. 1853
    Murree becomes a permanent town
  4. May 1857
    Murree’s church is consecrated. On the plains, rebellion breaks out and Delhi falls
  5. July 1857
    Sardar Sherbaz Khan plans the attack on Murree
  6. Late Aug 1857
    Much of the garrison leaves for Delhi
  7. 2 Sept 1857
    About 300 men attack the station: the night of this game
  8. 3 Sept 1857
    Troops arrive from Rawalpindi

What really happened

Warned by Hakim Khan, the British were ready. After a few hours of skirmishing, the attackers withdrew. Only two or three of them had come within range of the British muskets and been killed.

The next day, troops arrived from Rawalpindi and moved into the Dhund country north-west of Murree. Eleven villages were burnt. Fifteen of the leaders were later captured and put to death. Sardar Sherbaz Khan was captured and executed; accounts differ on the details of his death and the fate of his family.

The rising at Murree was one small part of the rebellion of 1857, remembered in Pakistan and India as a war of independence.

A note on this game. It simplifies a real event in which real people fought and died. It gives both sides a chance to win so that players can explore the choices each side faced. It is not meant to celebrate the violence of either side.

Sources: Murree rebellion of 1857, Dhund (tribe) (quoting Lepel Griffin’s The Punjab Chiefs), Sherbaz Khan and Murree on Wikipedia; the Punjab Mutiny Report, 1857, as quoted there. English sources spell the clan’s name several ways, including Dhund, Dhond and Dhoond.

The night is not decided yet.

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