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Rock Hard 1977

Game summary

A game for 2 – 5 players
Play time around 45 – 90 minutes
Publisher is Devir

Introduction

The year is 1977. You’re an up-and-coming musician chasing the dream of rock ‘n’ roll glory with your band. Over the next few months, you’ll hit the grind—rehearsing, rocking gigs, writing killer tracks, and building your fanbase. With sharp strategy and a little luck, you’ll outshine the competition, claim the spotlight, and rise as the breakout artist of the year. Are you ready to make history and rock the world? 🎸✨

Let’s get it on the table

Setup Instructions

Place the game board in the center of the table, choosing the side that corresponds to the number of players. The board features locations marked with:

  • Yellow: Day actions
  • Green: Night actions
  • Red: After-hours actions
  • Black: Anytime actions

Each player selects a color and receives the following components: a guitar pick, a fame token, four cubes, a standee base, $1, and 1 candy token.

Arrange the decks of Hand Out cards in their designated spaces on the game board, along with the shuffled hang-out tokens. Place the Event and Sugar Rush decks in their respective locations on the board. Position the crew member tokens on the game board as well.

Place the Candy tokens, Missed Worker tokens, and money next to the board. Also, place all Demo Tapes and Record Contract tokens near the recording studio area.

Set the Event Tracker marker at the starting position on the timeline. Shuffle the Production, Performance, and Publicity bonus cards, and place one card from each deck in its designated space on the board. Shuffle the Random Gig cards into separate stacks (A, B, and C), draw three cards from each stack, and stack them in order: A on top, followed by B and C. Place this deck on the Random Gig space on the board.

Each player draws 2 character cards and chooses 1 to keep, along with its corresponding standee and character board. Shuffle the Starting Life Experience cards and deal 2 to each player; ensure that each player has two unique cards. Each player also receives 3 Personal Goal cards and selects 2 to keep.

Next, each player draws 2 Job cards and selects 1 to keep. This job will need to be completed during one of the actions to earn money. Place the selected Job card on your character board.

Finally, but most importantly, choose a manager. Reveal as many manager cards as there are players (for more variety, we use 2 cards per player). Each player selects a manager card and places it on their character board.

Let’s play

Rock Hard 1977 is played over 9 rounds, each divided in several phase. Each round in the game represents roughly a month in ‘real time’ and what an aspiring Rock ’n Roller would do on a typical day of that month.

Each round has 5 phases:
Prep Phase
Day Action Phase
Night Action Phase
After Hours Action Phase
Clean-Up Phase

Lets dive deeper into the different phases:

Prep Phase

In this phase you are going to reveal a new Event card from the deck and read it out loud. Reveal a new Random Gig card for the night phase, remove the old Gig card from the game.
When players have a variable Job, they have to roll the die to see when they are expected to Work during this round. When a player is playing as Doc Sapphire, this is the only time when they may give one of their Sapphire Ability token to another player of their choice.

After this action, players continue playing in turn order (see the guitar picks) until all players have finished the current phase. When the After Hours Action Phase has ended, they players move on to the Clean-Up Phase.

Before each action phase, each player has the option to consume a candy once and after that you can take the normal action and when you have consumed a candy, you can take an additional action.

On the board you have some action spaces that are just for open spaces and some are limited just for one rockstar.

Take your rockstar standee and place in on an available space. Some spaces have requirements (in blue), when you don’t have the requirements, you are not able to take that action. When there are costs to pay, you see this in red before you can take the action.

Let’s continue to 3 action phases.

Day Action Phase

In this phase you can to rehearse and become better at your dream job when you choose for Rehearse. Or go to the radio station for an interview and get 1 reputation.

You can also do some Hire actions; like hire an Indie Promo, Hire Publicist and Hire Crew. You need more crew to play venues larger than clubs or random Gigs. Pay 1$ to increase your reputation and Fame by 1 each or Hire the Indie Promo. The first space will cost you 3$ and requires you to have a record deal, increase your reputation by 2 and earns 2 Fame, the second space cost 2$ and requires you to have either a demo tape or a record deal, increase your reputation by 2 and earn 1 Fame.

When you have a demo tape, you can also get a record deal. When you have at least the required chops, reputation and songs listed, you can get a record deal and earn more royalties during the Clean-Up

Night Action Phase

It’s night, the studio’s are still open for rehearsing, just like the during the Day actions.

You can choose to perform a gig at TJ’s, Fox Den, Panda Palace, Yenser Arena or at the Carter Stadium.

When you think you’re ready, you can choose to go for a Gig, place your rockstar on the stage when you met the requirements that are listed on the Gig under the venue’s name. You can shine and give a show on that stage.

After Hours Action Phase

The show is over and it’s time to relax and chill or is it time to visit a hang out spot?

When you’re going to bed, you can start the next round as a first player.

You can also choose to record a demo for just 3$ or 4$ in a 4/5 player game. Take your demo and place it on your board.

When you’re not done with the day and want to hang out, just place your rockstar at one of the unoccupied spots. You can go to

Backstage to boost your reputation or songs
Hoovers to get more candy or money
Bud’s for various rule-breaking advantages
Jax to boost your fame or reputation
Slinky’s no special benefits

When you go to a hangout spot you take this three actions;

  1. Score hot hangouts
  2. Draw a card from the deck
  3. Form and score a set if able

When you have four the same or four different ones, you receive 5 points for each set.

Anytime actions

Some actions can be taken at any of the 3 action phases.

Buy or sell candy; get or buy for 1$ candy
Donate blood; receive 1$
Write a song; increase your songs dial by 1
Work; take this action at the moment you have to go to work. If you don’t go to work, take a missed work token.

The round ends when every player has taken the last action of the after hours action.

Clean-up phase

Follow these steps during this phase.

  1. Collect royalties
  2. Pay your manager
  3. Arrange the new turn order
  4. Take back standees
  5. Check for low blood sugar
  6. Shuffle the sugar rush deck
  7. Take the hot hang out tokens and assign
  8. Advance the round marker

The Game ends

The game ends when the Clean-Up phase at the end of the ninth round or when in any round in which at least one the player has 50 or more Fame. You will still collect Royalties and pay your Manager, but you skip the other Clean-Up steps and then you proceed to End of Game scoring.

You receive extra Fame for;
– Any end-game cards, so for the Production, Performance and Publicity bonuses you’ve achieved
– Any end-game personal goals you’ve achieved
– 2 Fame for every Base Stat that is on level 11 plus 2 Fame when all three Base Stats are at 11
– 1 Fame per $3 on cash on hand, rounded down

The player with the most Fame wins the game and is dubbed the Best New Artist of 1977!

Final Conclusion & rating

Weight: 2.46/ 5
Replayability: 8
Our rating: 9 out of 10 dices

When this game was announced we were both very excited right away. In Rock Hard 1977 you dive into the life of a rock artist game lasts 9 months (9 rounds) in which you can decide 1 day per month all by yourself what you are going to do as an artist. This day is divided into 3 parts in which you will do different actions, will you go for extra publicity or dive into the studios? Or will you perform in the evening? Or maybe you will go out afterwards.

Since you cannot yet live entirely on the income of a rock star, you will also have to work to get income. But beware; you can only fail to show up 3 times or you will lose your job and have to look for another source of income. Income is also used to pay your manager, use the ability of your manager well! It can help you sometimes. There are lots of options to receive income, so don’t worry and sometimes take a chance and skip work ;-).

While playing you can perform all kinds of actions, and if you fall short of an action you can take a candy. But here you have to be careful because if you take too many candies you can miss an action in another turn. The replayability is very high, many different cards, events and also many rock stars you can play with. The game rules are well and clearly explained, like to say in the rulebook “Too lang, that’s what they say about Hotel California; Stairway to Heaven; Layla; Bohemian Rhapsody. The rulebook is long just because they want to avoid you to ask Google for any help and avoid any frustration of not knowing what to do at any point”.

What we really like is the money and tokens for player turns (in the form of a plectrum). That is well recreated but also edited with stickers, text etc. making it look like it was really used.

The game unfortunately comes without an insert, but as you have seen, Folded Space has created a brilliant colored insert, completely in the theme.

Is this a new game for our top 9.5? We’ll see but the game is very good in our opinion.

Thanks to Devir Games for this review copy and the opportunity to write about it. In this review we also showed you the promo of Jackie Fox, we are happy that we received this from Devir! This promo is not for sale.

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