Heat: Rocky Road - Discussion

0:09 Some viewers may find the following video disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.

0:14 Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Games Unlocked. And today I'm doing a discussion over Rocky Roads Heat's newest expansion. Uh where they, you know, I'm just gonna I'm not gonna bury the lead or anything. I I think I'm using that expression right. Um, if you are like me and you really like heat, but you have a problem with uh the way that Days of Wonder has done their expansions, well, this one is no different. It is like all the other ones where they introduce a new uh a new system, a new gimmick, which is, as you guessed it, Rocky Roads, gravel sections on one of the maps instead of uh that comes with two new maps and a new car, which unless you buy their newest their other expansion, Heat Legends, uh you can't use with the um the legends system. Um, but yeah, like I said, only one map uh utilizes the new stuff and there's no, you know, backwards compatibility of applying it to other maps or anything like that, which I mean, thematically makes sense, at least with the gravel part.

1:26 This one out of all the other ones just makes a little bit more sense that gravel wouldn't be on some of the other maps. But you would think that they would at least put two maps. The two maps that came with this one have the gravel in it. The other one, Heavy Rain, that one thematically, well, it rains at other on at other maps, but I I mean, I'm a completionist when it comes to games that I I really like. Uh, and with Heat obviously, I just I I keep buying it. So, it's working in some way. I'm the problem. and people who were buying these expansions were the problem. Even if we're also the ones that are bitching about uh the fact that this is clearly a like a a marketing or not really marketing but like a business scam. Um they have easily just taken what they could what could have been big expansions that could have actually meant something and been worth your money uh and just pieced it out. This is the equivalent of a video games live service where or or uh a a battle pass where you just have to keep buying to stay relevant to the game. Now, of course, anyone who has any common sense could just buy the base game and be perfectly fine with that. Um, but with a lot of racing games, you want to have more maps. And so it's nice that they come with more maps, but I would have

2:57 just rather them uh have done something where all the maps just, you know, are a different uh, you know, different movement and, you know, banking and then all of the rules and stuff could be applied to all of them, even if it doesn't make sense. I wish I could apply the gravel to the Great Britain map or to the I mean, hell, even one of the base maps from the base game. Uh I think it's actually the USA that's in the desert that could use gravel. Uh anyway, this is a review. So, I mean, I don't know if you're coming to this video to see if you should get it. Well, you you probably already have all the other expansions and uh you're I mean, yeah, I guess it comes with two new maps and, you know, more garage cards and more which actually uh the garage cards for this one, I don't think I've talked about them much in the other expansions.

3:52 This actually I think this is the worst expansion out of all of them. mainly because this one relies the most on having other players because the gravel system is kind of whatever whenever you are driving. And the way it works is there are these brown spots uh uh you know around the map and when you end your turn on one you have to burn a heat. If you don't have any heat to burn you just ignore it. It doesn't cause you to spin out. It allows you to use all your cooldown stuff, so you can kind of it it's easy to ignore. And there's very few spaces that cover most of the map to where you're going to have to worry about that. And the biggest issue I have with the gravel is I play heat mostly solo and every now and then I'll play with people. And so the gravel element requires you it almost feels like it's going to become a bigger issue whenever you have more players because that means no matter what some of the the gravel is going to be affecting someone when you're playing against the legends they ignore it because they ignore everything about the map. Uh so it's just kind of a non-issue and even whenever I've had games with other players it also was still kind of a non-issue. And then we go to the garage cards where it adds an

5:24 extra slipstream. And in their example, it looks really cool. Oh, hey, everyone's kind of spaced out perfectly to where you could slipstream. And then you could do an extra slipstream and then you could slipstream into that and then you could just, you know, oh hey, I slip stream between three players and now I'm in first or now I'm in second, whatever it might be. Uh, that's all great hypothetically and it all just mainly feels like a catch-up system where you if you're drafting these garage cards, you're kind of taking them hoping that you're not in first uh or second. So, it just ends up if if you are doing well, it ends up being a useless card. Uh, so I never I didn't really care for the extra slipstream.

6:13 And then I haven't played with the events, so I don't really know what they bring. Uh, so yeah, this is going to be like all the other uh reviews for this expansion that yay, you get two new maps where one of the maps actually has the new stuff and the other one is just a generic Yeah, I mean, it's in Germany, so that's cool. That's where uh my entire family is from, so that's kind of nice to have that there. but it it doesn't represent anything new. And whenever you're talking about expansions to a game, I mean, yes, technically this is an expansion that brings in new stuff, but they have now released three.

6:59 Yeah, this is the third one, Heavy Rain, Tunnel Vision, and then this one. And what's actually interesting is the white uh the white peg or the white car is the ninth one. I believe the ninth car that uh 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine. Yeah. Is the ninth car to be introduced and there are 12 spots. Well, spoiler, I have the Legends expansion and I'm going to be doing a separate video on that one. Luckily, that does include colors for all 12. So that means that if it if I'm going to guess unless they all of a sudden do one big final expansion that includes the three other colors, we can expect to see three more expansions where it's going to introduce one color car and two more maps, which I mean in terms of content, when all is said and done, that'll be cool. they will have that many maps because like I said there are that would make it five. Yeah. No, six because we'd have heavy rain, tunnel vision, rocky roads. That puts it at nine. Then 10, 11, 12. So that'd be six.

8:14 Uh six. That'd be 12 new maps. And I think there were how many were there in the base game? Four. So that'd be 16 maps for a racing game. That'd be pretty dope. And that would have a ton of content and that would I' imagine that would be that'd be it. They'd they'd be all done with heat. And I can probably imagine I'm going to be say I mean I probably won't cuz I'd be I'd be just sound like a broken record and I'm going to buy all the expansions because I don't know why. But uh but yeah, I mean, like I said, the gravel one is not that great. I think that if you were to actually go out and pick which expansion to get, I actually like the Heavy Rain.

9:06 I thought the Rain was a bigger played a bigger part in it. And then the tunnel vision was also all right. So, I mean, yeah, this one is just another one of those. If you actually didn't like any of those, I can't imagine you're going to like this one. And at but it must be selling cuz they keep releasing it. And at least I I can finally say that, hey, they give us a color that we can't even use because I know they've released the the Legends expansion. So, that kind of alleviates some. But again, that's another expansion you have to buy. Uh, which is unfortunate that they don't just include that because they got to have money. Got to give give me money. And and we're we're doing it. We're giving it to them.

9:55 But on a scale of 1 to 10, Rocky Roads, six, five, five. I'm going to give it a five. I think it's fine. I don't think this is a map that if we were to run a tournament for it and it came up, I'd be like, "Ooh, it I mean, it's fine." So, that's that's my thoughts on Heat Rocky Roads. Let me know what you think of it in the comments below. Other than that, like, comment, share, and subscribe, and have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you.