How To Play Rock Hard 1977

Rock Hard 1977 takes you on the rock and roll lifestyle as you try and go from garage band to playing the biggest stages. All of this while which gives you points as you play shows and hangout after hours with fans, business, or whomever is at the late night locations.

Rock Hard 1977, at it’s core, is a worker placement game. You place your worker three times each round. One time in the day phase, one time in the night phase and once in the after hours. Each area has their different elements that they focus on, but there are also some generic actions that you can do every time.

The Three Phases

In the day phase it is about leveling up your reputation and chops. Things that you need so that when you when your demo tape is ready you’ll be ready to rock and sign a record deal. Because in the day you also might be getting crew so you can play bigger shows or getting that record deal.

The evening or night is about performing. There are small bars or locations you can play at, but as you play more, and level up you gain access to bigger venues that are going to give you more points and raise reputation or chops and give you points.

After hours is about hanging out at different hangout spots. You might run into fans which can boost your reputation. You might strike up business deals, get inspired for a song or get some candy. But you can also get your demo tape ready and work on getting ready to record.

Basic Actions

You always have four basic actions that you can take. And three of them it doesn’t matter what time of day it is. You can buy or sell candy. I will talk about candy next. You can donate blood and get a dollar. Or you can write a song.

The final option is one that you do during a specific time of day. But for the player it might vary as to when that is. Each player starts out with a job. You are not a successful rocker yet, you don’t get income from it. So you work a job, but you can skip. However, skip three times and you’re fired. But each job is during a specific time of day

Candy

Finally it’s time to talk about the candy. You can infer that candy is whatever you like in the game. But it is a resource that you use to potentially get extra actions. So if you take a candy in the day phase you might flip over soft or hard candy and get an extra 1 or 2 actions. But there is a risk that you flip over sugar-free candy and then you don’t get anything.

There is also an added risk because when you increase your cravings for candy as well as then need to roll a die. If you roll less than your craving level you crash and the next day phase you need to go to recover. It doesn’t mess with the actions you get, but it will mean that your day phase is locked in. And if you crash on the last round, you lose five points.

At the end of the day the rocker with the most points wins. And checkout the Man vs Meeple playthrough below.

What Might Not Work?

I think for some people there is going to be an element of randomness that they don’t like. There are a few points where the randomness can come in. Firstly there is an event that happens each round. That might mess you up because it blocks off a location that you’d wan to go to in some phase.

That is probably the biggest random element along with what you draw for candy. There are eight candy cards and one is hard candy that gives two actions. One is sugar-free that gives no action, and the rest are soft candy that give one action.

The final thing is what you get from the hangout spots. A lot of the time you can kind of guess, but it isn’t a guarantee. And while most of them are good, not all of them are great. As some of them might care if you are a guitar player, lead singer, etc. to get the better reward on it.

What Works?

Let me just go ahead and push back on what might not work. I think that element of the game works well. For me, it is a way to remove planning out something perfectly. Sometimes the ideal spot isn’t available, so how do you adjust to that? I like that a lot in a game because it adds replayability to the game.

The game is also pretty simple once you get down the basics. You place your worker at one spot per phase of the day per round. That is simple. There are a couple of things that make it a bit trickier. But the game itself does a good job of showing it. So the two things are what is a cost versus a requirement versus a reward. It can be a lot of symbols but they color coordinate them. And then how turn order works, but that sorts itself out as well.

The theme is also great for the game. There is a ton of flavor on the text of the cards. But the actions you do are also thematic. You need to complete certain things, like bump up your reputation or write songs, before you get a record out there. And the text on the cards, you can tell that the designer knows the 1970’s rock scene well.

The Designer

A little tangent, but let’s talk about the designer. This is one of the big reasons, to go along with an uncommon board game theme that this game has been so hot. Jackie Fox, the designer, was the bassist for the Runaways. She is also obviously a big board game fan and less obviously a lawyer and four time Celebrity Jeopary champion.

I think that is why the theme can come through so much. It is theme put out there by someone who was there. That is a fun element to the game. But for designing a bigger game, this is a very impressive design.

Who Is Rock Hard 1977 For?

I want to say it is for people who dig the rock and roll lifestyle, but really Rock Hard 1977 is for gamers. While the game isn’t the most complex, there is enough going on that would make it a bit of a teach for people who just like the theme. Not to say that it’s too complex, but know how to play before you teach it. And keep it simple.

But for lighter worker placement, I think that Rock Hard 1977 really hits that niche well. And I think for people who maybe look at a lot of worker placement games as too dry and themeless, this is going to fix that for them. They will get a ton of theme while getting to experience the mechanisms.

I don’t know how heavier gamers will take to it. The randomness is likely going to be the element that gets them because a plan can’t be perfect. However, I will caveat that and say, with the theme, there is likely going to be more general appeal to all types of gamers.

Final Thoughts on Rock Hard 1977

First off, I really enjoy this game. And I do believe that the theme helps some with that. I say some because I don’t think it’s the biggest element that makes the game good. The streamlined nature of the game and the actions really are what shine for me. I appreciate it when a game can give me good choices but no overwhelm me with so many complex options that I can’t figure out the next turn quickly.

Overall, though, the game just provides fun. And how a game provides fun, that doesn’t matter as long as it does. This does through both avenues. And the thematic flavor on the cards is a ton of fun. It’s a bit raunchy at times and obviously there is the whole wink and a nod to what candy actually is. But all of that leans into the rock star lifestyle that you are trying to achieve in the game.

My Grade: A-
Casual Grade: C
Gamer Grade: B+

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In Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, you are playing cooperatively as a team of detectives/investigators who are trying to solve a series of linked cases. But can you figure out the links between the cases, what information from previous cases will be useful, and how much, per case, should you dig into the big picture? To do this, you have to travel around from your Antares HQ to places like the Courthouse, Richmond PD, The Lab, or various places that are all at fieldwork. At these places you’ll look at cards which will allow you to investigate a crime scene, or talk to a witness, or get some reports run on various clues. Doing any of these things costs time, and you only have so much time during the day, 8 hours, to get your work done, or you can work overtime, but too much overtime and you become too stressed and the case wraps up. At the end of the case, when you think you’re ready, you answer a series of questions about what you found out.

Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game is an advancement in deduction sorts of games where you have a pretty small deck of cards, 35 per case, that you’re going through, and with that, you probably will see around twenty of them per case. So you are only getting a limited amount of information. With that said, there’s so much more beyond just those 35 cards, there’s the whole Antares database that you’ll be using a lot as well. This will have records of interviews you’ve done with witnesses, larger descriptions of crime scenes, or clues, police reports on people or old cases, ways to tie fingerprints together to determine who was at the crime scene. The Antares database is a website that is set-up by Portal Games that they can add new cases to whenever they want. This means for expansions they can add in new cases, redo the look of the database for the time period, or do whatever they want with it. How extensive the database is, is really cool. And it adds a lot of depth and theme to the game. You also can even google some things on the cards to determine what some real events that are referenced actually were.

Out of the five cases in the base box, we’ve played three so far, and while the first two cases felt fairly similar, the third case felt extremely different. I won’t go into spoilers, but it’s fun to see how they can create different almost puzzles for you to solve in the game. Some of them you might be digging up larger parts of an old story that puts together a grand tale that is tying all the cases together. Or you may be diving back into a cold case to figure out why there was such a rush to get the case closed and to find out if there is more to it. Or you might be in a highly time sensitive situation where you’re racing against the clock to stop some bad event from happening. All of them are possible in the game, and it feels like there is even more room to expand.

I do want to talk some about the thematic immersion in the game. I’ll start out by saying that of the three cases that we’ve done, two of them have taken three hours or just a little bit longer, the last one took just about two and a half hours. So this is a pretty long game for something that just have 35 cards per case. But the game is highly thematic, and you feel like you’re investigating to some extent. You’re looking through everything that’s going on, and you can see the threads come together, you’re taking notes and connecting things that seem like they might be separate because of a clue you find at a third location. And it’s not that the game is handing you those connections, you are having to use deductive reasoning to put two and two together and get the right answer. This game really has so much theme, and in fact, so much theme that you get immersed in discovering the story, not just “who done it” that you lose track of time. Each case doesn’t seem like a three hour chunk of time, because you’re puzzling over everything trying to figure out what is happening.

Finally, let’s talk about replayability. I would likely this to TIME Stories, where maybe, after a period of time, I’d be able to play it again, or if you wanted to see how good a job you could do you could play it again. But this game is not that replayable. You are solving a case, and once you know the solution you need to forget it to really be able to play it again, and I think unless five years have passed or more, I’m probably going to have my memory jogged by starting the case again and be able to take an ideal path. My thoughts, because we’re playing in a group of three, is that I might run the game again for another group, be in charge of the cards, like I am now, so that people can’t accidentally spoil themselves, but just sit back and watch someone else enjoy the experience. With that said, there is a Season 1 implementation of this coming out, there is the LA Crimes expansion for this, and there is a Dig Deeper expansion coming out as well, so there’s going to be added content for it, and for the amount of time that you’re playing each case, and the enjoyment from it, I think the base game is very much worth the value.

Overall, I love this game. I know some people won’t like the fact that is uses a screen, but that adds in a ton for the thematic element. Because even though I don’t love procedural cop shows on TV like CSI or Law & Order, Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game has that feel and when you’re the detective and heavily involved in trying to figure out who committed the crime or even how multiple cases tie together, it is so much fun, and the Antares database adds so much to that feel. This is a great thematic experience, and while the questions at the end can seem random if you chased a few red herrings, the story throughout the cases has been crafted extremely well.

Is this a game that you’ve tried, do you enjoy it? Is it something that seems interesting to you?

Gamer Grade: A
Casual Grade: B
Overall Grade: A-

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This list is basically the opposite of yesterday’s list which was focused on small games that are going to have a small footprint, small box, and generally a smaller price. Epic board games are going to generally be in a larger box and they are going to pack a lot into the game, so whether it’s in a fantasy world or a sci-fi setting, the game is going to feel big and epic. Also, stocking stuffers are going to be more apt to be games for a newer gamer, these, you are going to want to know the person likes board games.

Aeon’s End: War Eternal – This game actually doesn’t have a ton of pieces to it or a giant board at least. It’s a deck building game, but the game feels epic as you face off against an giant monster who is trying to destroy the town of Gravehold. You take on the roll of a breach mage who is casting spells to deal damage or out last the plans of the giant monster. To do this, you are building up a deck of cards, so it’s a pretty standard deck builder that way, but, in a twist, you never shuffle your deck, so if you are clever, you can pull off some interesting combos.

Betrayal at House on the Hill – This game is different from the first in that it has a sprawling footprint. You’re building out this massive haunted house, and eventually, there will be a twist when the haunt happens and someone is going to be a traitor. This game is a really thematic game that leans into the horror theme. The best way to describe it would be that you are playing through the movie Cabin in the Woods, if Cabin in the Woods was a mansion instead of a cabin. You never know what the haunt is going to be, because an omen card in a certain room is going to take you to a specific haunt. The game is a bit swingy in that someone can, with a bit of luck be very strong or the haunts can be a bit unbalanced, but it’s very thematic.

Blood Rage – With a name like that, how could it not be epic? In this game, you are taking your tribe of Viking warriors through combat and area control in order to get the most glory. However, beware where Ragnorak is happening, because that can knock your troops off the board. Blood Rage is, at it’s heart, a card drafting game where the cards you pick at the beginning of the age determine your strategy for that age. But it feels like it plays out on the table in a massive way, with big epic conflicts, monsters on the board, and the strategies are all based around different deities from Norse Mythology. The game looks cool on the table and the minis help give it it’s epic feel.

Cry Havoc – In what turns out to be a bit of a euro-style area control game, you really get to play through a giant cinematic game of different factions warring over the crystals. Humans are able to attack from different areas in support. The mechs can build up stronger technology and call in satellite support. The pilgrims are a peaceful alien race that just cares about growing as many crystals as possible. And the trogs are everywhere on the planet, because it’s their home world, and they’re trying to fight everyone off. In this game you’re getting points for crystals in the few rounds that you are playing and scoring. But it has a tricky bit of combat and interesting card play to be able to get to other areas, fight your battles, or in the case of the pilgrims, set-up your fortified areas. It looks cool and feels a bit like Avatar.

Dead of Winter – Dead of Winter is a survival zombie game where you are in charge of a group of survivors. You need to go out and find food, deal with zombies, get medicine to heal people, deal with crisis that are happening and complete a main objective. There is a ton to do in this game, plus, beyond that, you have your own goal you need to complete and there might be a traitor in your midst. All of that is great and epic feeling as you try and figure out who the traitor might be, but there are also crossroads cards which offer you tough decisions if the right conditions are met that makes this game feel even more epic.

Gloomhaven – This is, in my opinion, the ultimate big epic board game. It’s a massive box, massive footprint on the table, a ton of characters to play. Now, it comes with a large price tag, but the number of hours worth of play, it’s worth the price. Gloomhaven has a nice story to it, but it shines in the scenarios where you have to work with your teammates in your card play to get it really ticking, because the monsters hit back and they hit back hard. It’s a lot of strategy and it’s just fun to play, plus unlocking new characters keeps the game feeling fresh. It’s like a video game RPG, but on a board.

Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition – The only Lovecraftian game on this list, I considered Arkham Horror LCG, and while it does have a great story, it doesn’t feel quite as epic. Mansions of Madness though is an epic horror game in a box. You are using an app to drive the story and provide ambiance for the game. But that doesn’t take away from the board game piece, it just enhances it and can cause the game to be set-up differently each time you play a scenario. And there are tons of scenarios out there and expansions. You take on the role of an investigator who has been called in for something odd happening, but can you stop it in time or before you become too injured or insane to carry on?

Pandemic Legacy Season 1/Season 2 – I’m lumping both of them together, but both are pretty epic stories. As a Legacy game, it means that you have a limited number of plays through the story, but the story is good, and you feel like you get your value from them. You are playing what is basically Pandemic, a game where you are a member of the CDC going out to deal with diseases. The basic game is fairly epic, but when you add in an evolving story, it becomes more epic and challenging as you have to adapt to the strategies that the changes in the game is leading your towards. It’s fun to play through, even twice, like I’ve done, because there is a good story with it and a lot of story and interesting decisions.

Root – These are cute woodland creatures, they won’t be epic, will they? Yes, they will in this asymmetric game where players take on the roles of different factions of woodland creatures. Maybe you are the vagabond who is getting new items to be able to do more things or planning out your long term strategy as the Eyrie who need their orders to be carried out in a certain way and things will go poorly if they aren’t. Or maybe you are the Woodland Alliance who don’t start with much, but need to create a strong position on the board. And then there is the Marquise de Cat and his cat troops who are trying to keep control on the areas and expand their power. It’s big, it’s epic, and everyone feels really unique in the game.

Skulk Hollow – By far the smallest game on the list and only a two player game, it still feels epic. You have the foxen heroes who all of a sudden have to deal with a guardian. The guardian of the realm probably isn’t a bad guy, but with the foxen folk there now, they seem like one. One player plays as the guardian and the other as foxen folk, each with their own goals. The foxen folk always want to take down the guardian, but the guardian might be trying to get certain tokens out or maybe kill the leader of the foxen folk, or just kill as many foxen folk as they can. The game plays fast, but it packs a punch for what it does.

Star Wars: Rebellion – The original trilogy in a box, it’s going to be epic. Again a two player game where one person is the empire trying to find that darn rebel base. The other player, as the rebels is trying to complete missions in order to subvert the empires evil plans. It’s a good cat and mouse game with all the big players that you’d expect from a Star Wars game. It’s been close basically every time I’ve played it and while the rebels can be a bit trickier to play and this is a longer game, it is engaging the whole time and not too hard. The asymmetry is pretty limited and that makes teaching the game easier than the previous two ones, even with the different character goals.

Sword and Sorcery – Another big dungeon crawl with a lot of characters, Sword and Sorcery takes you on a tighter story than Gloomhaven does, but in what is more of a dice chucking game. The story is cool, and the monsters, while limited, offer a good variety of challenges. What makes this game especially unique is the death mechanic, where if you die, you aren’t out of the game, you have limited things you can do, but you can also respawn as long as you have enough soul gems. There are a ton of characters to play, and while the story is quite linear, I do feel like it’s a game that I could play through again with different characters and the game would feel different.

T.I.M.E. Stories – This game is basically time cops as you try and police the time stream, going to Earth in different eras as well as to completely different worlds. It’s an interesting game because you run through different stories, which are expansions for the game. T.I.M.E. Stories, for everything, is the most expensive game on the list, but it’s worth checking out. The story in the base game is interesting, and it only starts to show you the plug and play nature of the system. Each story, also, has it’s own epic feel, and you get to run through the story, making better decisions each time or maybe finally going down that rabbit trail that you probably shouldn’t have gone down.

Village Attacks – Maybe, as compared to the rest of the games, you want to play the bad guys. In Village Attacks, you and a team of other monsters has to deal with pesky villagers who are coming to your lair with their pitchforks and torches. You need to protect yourself, because that’s very rude of them to attack you. Can you survive the onslaught of monsters coming? It’s a fun cooperative game and very challenging as there are so many villagers. I had a blast playing it at GenCon, and I’m super excited to get my kickstarter copy. If you want to get this game, you need to check out the possibility of a late pledge from the kickstarter.

XenoShyft: Onslaught – Sometimes you just want to squish some bugs. XenoShyft is basically Starship Troopers where you have to defend this mining facility from all sorts of waves of bugs. This is another deck building game, and it’s a tough deck building game, but you always feel like you’re getting better and have a chance. The cool and unique part of the game is the fact that you can play your cards to help other people, because sometimes you might have a lot of weapons that you can’t use, but someone else might need them, so you have to balance it out to make sure that there isn’t a weak link. This is a tough game to win, but a ton of fun.

There are so many epic games out there. If you want a longer game that you can play a lot, there are a lot of good options out there. I’d recommend starting with some of the smaller ones on the list, XenoShyft: Onslaught, Pandemic Legacy, or Aeon’s End. But if they already like epic games, and you want to splurge, Gloomhaven is a game that you can’t go wrong with. Yes, it won’t be for everyone, but it is a massive epic game and unless you want a ton of dice rolling, which Gloomhaven doesn’t offer.

Is there an epic game out there that you really love? Or is there one that is really epic that you want to get?

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Photosynthesis is the process of plants turning sunlight into energy, food, so that they can grow. In the board game, there is a sun that is rotating around the board, and you are planting, growing, and harvesting trees in order to get the most points. But you have to think about where you’ve played everything, because a misplaced tree could end up blocking one of your other trees from getting sunlight, or you can block your opponents tree from getting sunlight. After the sun has completed four rotations of the board, you tally up your score and see who has the most points.

The game is really about figuring out the puzzle of where to plant your trees and when the harvest the trees. At the start of each round, every tree you have that isn’t being shaded by another tree gets you a number of light points that you can spend in the next part of the round. After that, you can spend those points to buy more trees and seeds and to harvest your big, old trees for points. There’s a balancing act, however, as you figure out when you harvest your large tree, which gets you three light points per round, and possibly could blocking more trees, since it has a shadow of three. That puzzle is a very strong abstract feel in the game. However, the shadow system and the rotation of the sun actually feel very thematic.

Photosynthesis does have one aspect that everyone might not like. Because of the shadow mechanism that might keep players from getting light points, it’s possible to have an absolutely terrible round. I think it was mid game when Kristen had a turn, just because of shadows that netted her no light points. That can obviously lead to a frustrating round since while I and the other player had several points to work with, she did nothing, and that put her behind. It wasn’t intentional ganging up on up her though, but just bad luck. This game could have a strong aspect if blocking other people if you wanted it to, but it would probably also be hurting you half of the time. You’d have to be able to think a lot of steps ahead to make blocking someone an effective strategy, and it probably would still cause issues for you.

For me, that’s the one negative of the game, someone can get behind and stay behind because of that. However, since this is a more abstract game versus a thematic game, it works. It really is a giant puzzle to get your engine up and running and running consistently throughout the game. Even though Kristen had that one bad turn, she was only about one tree harvest behind the rest of us in terms of gaining points, so it didn’t cause her to be completely out of the game.

I think that Photosynthesis is a very good game. I think it’s a very pretty game, and I think that it’s probably a game that most people will enjoy. There are a few bits that might not work for everyone, but for the most part, I think it is easy enough to grasp, even if it doesn’t always make perfect thematic sense. I do think that Photosynthesis also has the chance to be poor game for analysis paralysis prone players, but that’s going to be the case for most games.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C+

Have you had a chance to play Photosynthesis?

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