Board Game Arena

On the BGA page for the game of Break the Code it's given a zero for the luck factor! That cannot be further from the truth. The game is practically ALL luck. On your turns if there are useful/relevant question cards for you to take, you win, if not, you lose, even to a novice. The game is all about getting lucky with the cards. There is absolutely nothing you can do if the good cards turn up for your opponent and not for you. There is nothing to even mitigate the luck factor. The major flaw in the game is that there are only 6 face-up cards. They could all be weak cards such as "Where is you X tile", where X is a number, or "How many odd/even numbers you have", or the like.
The Description page needs to be edited to show a luck factor of 4 instead of zero.

Just play 3 player. Less luck. Also i swear this game actually takes skill. There's aspects to this game that people dont know about

I think you are right about less luck factor in the 3-player game. As for skill, what I mean is that with roughly equally skilled players the game boils down to luck of the cards. But of course a higher skilled player has better chance against less experienced players.

ssaamm wrote: ↑06 March 2026, 00:40 As for skill, what I mean is that with roughly equally skilled players the game boils down to luck of the cards.

As opposed to what?

The game definitely takes skill. I'd give it a 1 or 2 for luck. Zero's are for games like chess

I've played a few games of Break the Code, and I agree the Luck rating should not be 0.

It is mainly a deduction/skill game, so I don't think 4 is right either. But 0 implies a fully deterministic game, which this is not: the hidden tiles are randomly dealt, and the available question cards come from a shuffled deck with only 6 face up. That can affect the deduction path, especially between similarly skilled players.

The internally consistent rating on BGA is Luck = 1: low luck, but not zero.

Please vote up the report here:

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=225733

That is the only way this can be corrected in the game metadata; discussion here will not change the rating.

The luck the game suggests vs what it ends up being on BGA is totally different. I could say getting an X or check on a verifier in Turing machine makes it luck based as it may change what I ask and how much information I actually know. The reason people are complaining about luck includes many aspects (one of the worst being constant 50/50s that people are forced to guess at times). It is undoubtedly the worst code cracking game I have ever played, but is still worth playing sometimes. I mean just the fact that the #1 in a code cracking game is below 500 is enough to suggest the luck is very high....The arena scores are literally lower than Piraten Kapern. The questions that randomly pop out help whoever they choose to. If only one person gets one of the 3 very good color questions (or sometimes even also include the 2 ok ones) then they are very likely to be in a position of strength towards the end of the round. Most rounds do not have solutions complicated enough to separate a 200 from a 400 elo player, so it comes down to who is giving the code to who or who is guessing the 50/50 right. Also opponents can easily screw you over (one of the most frustrating parts of the game to me). Often times I will go first in a round and they will just straight give the code to the 3rd player and they are the only to solve, this can be argued as luck but not really. Either way, luck is definitely at least 3 when it comes to actually playing, but on BGA I say a rating of 2 is fair.