Board Game Arena

How does Steward work and why? It says "gain gold on 2 purse cards until they are full". Why can't I decide which cards I want to choose? It seems to always choose himself as one card and another one randomly, even if this is a suboptimal choice. Is this intended by a rule I didn't notice or a bug?

It will automatically fill the most interesting cards for you. There is no real point on asking you to choose which card.

In the meantime, the publisher clarified the rulebook, see https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/349784 ... he-steward

In the rulebook, for the general application of card effects (page 9), it says every card "takes itself into account", which to me translates as "consider" or "optional". As a result, in eariler BGA games when it would have been better if Steward had filled two other purse cards and it didn't happen, I got confused. I think the rulebook should say it must consider itself or at least add a separate remark on the Steward card.

Alright, since then I played a game where the Steward works as expected, i.e. it only considers itself and chooses the best 2 options. The rule is correctly phrased.

It seems like a bug to me that the card automatically fills your purses.

Sure, it fills the ones that are the most advantageous for you, but nothing in the rules says that you have to pick those two purses (I just checked again to be sure).

Now, I can't see any reason why someone would want to have less points, but players are allowed to play as they want. There is no real reason to impose a restriction that is not stated in the rules.

Another way to look at it is, if the players have to manually pick the purses, there is a possibility they will make a mistake and pick the wrong purses. That possibility is part of the game the creators intended. It effectively exists when you play the game in real life. However simple the math may be in this case, it is still a player choice, and by making it automatic the implementation takes away this small element out of the game.

The Steward card is a complete joke as it is. Castle Combo would be a 10/10 game for me if not for that one single card. I'm generally OK with the functionality of it, but not at a cost of 0. Adds the most insane dose of luck into the game when it appears late game, which is not what this game needs.

RollingInTheMeep wrote: ↑20 October 2026, 14:59 The Steward card is a complete joke as it is. Castle Combo would be a 10/10 game for me if not for that one single card. I'm generally OK with the functionality of it, but not at a cost of 0. Adds the most insane dose of luck into the game when it appears late game, which is not what this game needs.

if you have space on your purses, then this card needs to beat at-least 8 to make sure it's better than just taking a free card for 2keys+$6 which would also give you 8.

RollingInTheMeep wrote: ↑20 October 2026, 14:59 The Steward card is a complete joke as it is. Castle Combo would be a 10/10 game for me if not for that one single card. I'm generally OK with the functionality of it, but not at a cost of 0. Adds the most insane dose of luck into the game when it appears late game, which is not what this game needs.

There are combos that are more OP than the purses + steward combo.

Like everything in the game it's circumstantial, I'm not sure why you would single out steward when there's a lot of late game reveals that can give tons of free points to your opponent.

I think steward is actually less likely than most other cards to get you on the last turn, because at that point in the game players will generally have made sure their purses are gonna get filled, so it will be too late for the steward to have its intended effect. It will usually just give them 6 more points.