Review: Ruse and Bruise

Ruse and Bruise is a fast-paced card game for 2-6 players from Rio Grande games. The English translation on the cards is awful. It can make it sound complicated, but once you properly translate the gibberish and learn the rules, gameplay is really easy.

Everyone is given different colored, but otherwise identical, decks. Treasure cards are laid out at the top of the gameplay area. Every turn you play one card and then draw one card. You’ll play your card face down underneath the treasure card you want to win. Once all the columns are filled up, the points on all the cards underneath that treasure card are added up and the player with the most wins that treasure card. At the end of the game, you choose your 6 best treasure cards and add up their total points. If you happened to get one of each different type of treasure card, your points double and the person with the most total points wins. It’s very simple.

Photo Credit: Board Game Geek

This is one of those nice filler games when you have about 20-30 minutes to spare. It’s a fun game, but my score is affected by the shabby translations and the fact that they could have made the different colored cards easier to tell apart.