Board Game Arena

Can anyone shed some light on the Luck rating for BGA games? Is this decided by the developer? Is it based on something else altogether?

Because - Patchwork, which has all the information sitting right there for both players to see, has "strategy 3" and "Luck 3" on the main game page here. Am I misunderstanding something fundamental about Patchwork? How is that not a "Luck 0"? I suppose player 1 probably has a mall edge, but likely no more so than in chess (which has a listed 5/0 split of strategy and luck).

And then - Earth - a great game, but one that is going to be occasionally frustrating. It's a card-based game with a deck containing several hundred cards, all of which are always random draws. You don't even get to see your starting hand when selecting your starting Island, Climate, and ecosystem cards.

And then, a major component is scoring is the randomly selected Fauna goals, which:
1) May have no correlation whatsoever to the other elements of scoring and may in fact be antithetical
2) Can often be attained by playing a lot of low or zero cost cards - if you happen to randomly draw them before the other person does.
3) May have zero correlation to the cards in your starting hand, which already might have zero correlation to the personally selected ecosystem card.

I would think this game should have at least "3" for the "Luck factor".

And it certainly is puzzling for it to have the same Luck factor as Patchwork.

Thoughts?

[ ALSO NOTE - Patchwork has a high Elo over 1000, and 40 Master level players. Earth has zero master level players. ]

As far as I know, it is decided by the developer, but

a) There is no reference about what luck 0 or luck 5 means. OK, for those I think we can mostly agree (still, a perfect information game where the first player has a guaranteed win could be luck 0 or luck 5, depending on who you ask), but what is luck 1, 2, 3, 4? It's worse for the other ratings: Complexity, Strategy, and especially Interaction.

b) Partly because of that, and partly because of oversight/ignorance, the ratings are not infrequently left at some default, which could be all 3 (https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=patchwork), or all 0 (https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=thegamemakers)

FrankJones wrote: ↑09 September 2025, 07:07 Can anyone shed some light on the Luck rating for BGA games? Is this decided by the developer? Is it based on something else altogether?

Because - Patchwork, which has all the information sitting right there for both players to see, has "strategy 3" and "Luck 3" on the main game page here. Am I misunderstanding something fundamental about Patchwork? How is that not a "Luck 0"? I suppose player 1 probably has a mall edge, but likely no more so than in chess (which has a listed 5/0 split of strategy and luck).

Thoughts?

[ ALSO NOTE - Patchwork has a high Elo over 1000, and 40 Master level players. Earth has zero master level players. ]

Perfect information alone is not "luck 0". The layout is still based on luck, and players do not get equal access, for instance whoever goes first gets to pick among the first few pieces. From the ratings, it's not enough to prevent the game from having a higher skill ceiling than most others on BGA, but the low luck factor is not on the same level as Chess.

That said, the luck levels listed on BGA aren't an objective measure of anything. I highly doubt the same entity is labelling every game on BGA, so it's not even certain the factors are meant to scale with each other at all. Or that whoever does set the labels is even paying attention to them.

Jellby wrote: ↑09 September 2025, 08:01 There is no reference about what luck 0 or luck 5 means. OK, for those I think we can mostly agree (still, a perfect information game where the first player has a guaranteed win could be luck 0 or luck 5, depending on who you ask), but what is luck 1, 2, 3, 4? It's worse for the other ratings: Complexity, Strategy, and especially Interaction.

For more discussion about this, see https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30423

Ceaseless wrote: ↑09 September 2025, 11:47

FrankJones wrote: ↑09 September 2025, 07:07 Can anyone shed some light on the Luck rating for BGA games? Is this decided by the developer? Is it based on something else altogether?

Because - Patchwork, which has all the information sitting right there for both players to see, has "strategy 3" and "Luck 3" on the main game page here. Am I misunderstanding something fundamental about Patchwork? How is that not a "Luck 0"? I suppose player 1 probably has a mall edge, but likely no more so than in chess (which has a listed 5/0 split of strategy and luck).

Thoughts?

[ ALSO NOTE - Patchwork has a high Elo over 1000, and 40 Master level players. Earth has zero master level players. ]

Perfect information alone is not "luck 0". The layout is still based on luck, and players do not get equal access, for instance whoever goes first gets to pick among the first few pieces. From the ratings, it's not enough to prevent the game from having a higher skill ceiling than most others on BGA, but the low luck factor is not on the same level as Chess.

That said, the luck levels listed on BGA aren't an objective measure of anything. I highly doubt the same entity is labelling every game on BGA, so it's not even certain the factors are meant to scale with each other at all. Or that whoever does set the labels is even paying attention to them.

Agreed, hence my question about How strong the player 1 advantage is in Patchwork. Is it 53/47 like Chess? Because if so, then I would expect Chess and Patchwork to have similar "luck scores".

Yes, the tiles are randomly arranged in the starting circle in Patchwork, but that only matters if player 1 has a significant advantage. And based on what I read in some discussion threads, I'm not sure that is the case?

Regardless, I could see someone assigning a luck facto of, at most, 1, to Patchwork based on the luck of who goes first. As Jellby noted, Patchwork has straight 3's listed for all 4 categories, and therefore was likely never changed from the default.

Looking at Patchwork leaderboard and seeing 1 player over 1000 Elo suggests to me that the luck component is quite low. It would probably be a 1 like chess (though not as low luck as chess), 2 at highest.

Any game where players find it nearly impossible to reach 500 Elo would suggest a high luck game to me, 3 or higher. Flip 7 and Faraway are fairly popular ones, but I'm sure there are more extreme examples.

My main game, Vale of Eternity is listed at Luck 2, which I agree with. It is a card game with a 70 card randomized deck but it has so much strategy and skill expression that luck can be greatly mitigated. Two of us have surpassed 600 Elo which is higher than many players think is possible based on how much they complain about the game being so luck driven (it's not, get good )

FrankJones wrote: ↑09 September 2025, 07:07 Can anyone shed some light on the Luck rating for BGA games? Is this decided by the developer? Is it based on something else altogether?

Because - Patchwork, which has all the information sitting right there for both players to see, has "strategy 3" and "Luck 3" on the main game page here. Am I misunderstanding something fundamental about Patchwork? How is that not a "Luck 0"? I suppose player 1 probably has a mall edge, but likely no more so than in chess (which has a listed 5/0 split of strategy and luck).

All of Patchwork's ratings are a 3 because those are the defaults and they were never set.

FrankJones wrote: ↑09 September 2025, 16:19

Ceaseless wrote: ↑09 September 2025, 11:47

FrankJones wrote: ↑09 September 2025, 07:07 Can anyone shed some light on the Luck rating for BGA games? Is this decided by the developer? Is it based on something else altogether?

Because - Patchwork, which has all the information sitting right there for both players to see, has "strategy 3" and "Luck 3" on the main game page here. Am I misunderstanding something fundamental about Patchwork? How is that not a "Luck 0"? I suppose player 1 probably has a mall edge, but likely no more so than in chess (which has a listed 5/0 split of strategy and luck).

Thoughts?

[ ALSO NOTE - Patchwork has a high Elo over 1000, and 40 Master level players. Earth has zero master level players. ]

Perfect information alone is not "luck 0". The layout is still based on luck, and players do not get equal access, for instance whoever goes first gets to pick among the first few pieces. From the ratings, it's not enough to prevent the game from having a higher skill ceiling than most others on BGA, but the low luck factor is not on the same level as Chess.

That said, the luck levels listed on BGA aren't an objective measure of anything. I highly doubt the same entity is labelling every game on BGA, so it's not even certain the factors are meant to scale with each other at all. Or that whoever does set the labels is even paying attention to them.

Agreed, hence my question about How strong the player 1 advantage is in Patchwork. Is it 53/47 like Chess? Because if so, then I would expect Chess and Patchwork to have similar "luck scores".

Yes, the tiles are randomly arranged in the starting circle in Patchwork, but that only matters if player 1 has a significant advantage. And based on what I read in some discussion threads, I'm not sure that is the case?

Regardless, I could see someone assigning a luck facto of, at most, 1, to Patchwork based on the luck of who goes first. As Jellby noted, Patchwork has straight 3's listed for all 4 categories, and therefore was likely never changed from the default.

Chess should have draws too, though the amount likely varies based on the playing level you're at. Definitely a thing at higher levels though.

I've not really dug into what the expected win/loss rates are for going first/second in either game, though Patchwork's luck factor again throws things off compared to Chess. In Chess you get the same starting position, deviations in openings come from player choices. Patchwork has various positions. You don't know in any given game what your edge will be prior to seeing the position. A player may have a stronger first turn advantage in some games than others, and I'd expect there are even positions where going second is actually better. The expected performance is less stable.

I doubt anyone put real thought into setting the values for Patchwork.

I would need to learn some of the other "0 luck" games to decide whether I think Patchwork should be a zero or a 1.

Or, if we had some hard data. If player 1 wins between 47 and 52 % of the time, I'd be comfortable giving it a "luck 0" in my own personal estimation, but I understand some people might prefer to make that a "1" rating.

I did recently make a short list of thematic strategy 5/0 games (strategy / luck) , which is rare for a non-abstract game.

I am open to recommendations for games people believe should legitimately have 0 luck. I enjoy such games. NOT abstract games like Pente or Connect6, I know plenty of those.

Thanks all! I am looking to branch out a bit from the same 11-13 games I play.

High luck factor and first player advantage are two completely unrelated things. A game with 0 luck can have significant first player advantage or second player advantage (e.g. tic-tac-toe). Regardless of the luck factor, a game may have the players balanced, or the first player could have a significant advantage, or the second player may have a significant advantage.