Rocky Roads is the third expansion for Days of Wonder’s fantastic HEAT: Pedal to the Metal, and very much represents a kind of “more of what you like” expansion in the best possible sense. There’s no attempt to fiddle with what works well, and just as in the prior two expansions, Rocky Roads adds just enough texture that experienced players will immediately feel the difference with the kind of rules overhead that can be taken in your stride.
Physically, you know the score with these expansions by now. In Rocky Roads you get a large double‑sided board with two new tracks (South Africa and Deutschland), a full extra player set in white (car, gear pawn, basic cards, player mat), plus a stack of new cards: Heat, Stress, Upgrades, Track cards, Sponsorships, Events, and a new scorepad and rules booklet to use everything in Championship mode. I appreciate this, but I now have three (or maybe four) scorepads that are all a little bit different — this might be considered excessive.
The South Africa Grand Prix is probably the headline act. This is the “rocky roads” of the title: A long and winding track with seven corners and crucially, gravel sections that sit mostly on the outer racing lines. Whenever you end your movement on a gravel space, you take some Heat. Suddenly, the usual tactic of taking the wide, fast line is no longer a free optimisation; it’s a resource decision that can come back to bite you in the latter half to the final third of the race. A bit like the wet sections of the prior expansion, the gravel sections add just a little something to think about, but thankfully they don’t dominate the experience enough to distract.
Germany, on the other side of the board, is a more “classic” style track. This one is not quite as long and has slightly fewer corners, with a long straight punctuated by a two‑speed chicane. There’s no new terrain type here, but the layout is all about rhythm and nerve. The long straight demands fourth gear if you want to maintain momentum, but the chicane demands precise downshifting (to second at the fastest) and hand management (because first or second, you’ll need to really scrub off that speed). It feels a bit like a love letter to old‑school high‑speed circuits of the 1980s — demanding that racers thread the needle at full tilt without overcooking their cars.
As (again) with the other expansions, new upgrade and Sponsorship cards add flavour. As expected, you get the Stress, Heat and Player cards support the new white car, but more interesting are the 15 Upgrade cards, 7 Sponsorship cards and 4 Event cards that plug into Championship mode. Upgrades lean into the new ideas: things like better handling (which can help with gravel), or ways to exploit slipstream more aggressively. Sponsorships and Track cards help define the personality of the new circuits and give you fresh levers to pull when building a season. The Events let you run a full Championship, with scenarios that highlight the expansion’s key features — gravel risk, chicanes, and enhanced slipstream.
Slipstream itself gets a little twist with “golden” slipstream symbols that allow you to slipstream twice, which on the right straight can feel absolutely filthy. Combined with the new Sliding Skirts innovation (essentially a thematic hook for improved aerodynamics and drafting), you get races where timing your position behind other cars matters even more. It’s still the same simple slipstream rule, but the new symbols and cards make it a more central part of your planning rather than a happy accident.
So is there anything about HEAT: Rocky Roads that I don’t like? Well, my criticisms are mostly about managing expectations. If you were hoping for a radical new system or deep car customisation, then like the others, this isn’t that expansion. Rocky Roads is conservative in the same way as Heavy Rain and Tunnel Vision were. The gravel rule is one line of text, but it changes how you drive. The chicane in Germany is just a speed‑limited section, but it changes how you think about the straight and will definitely cause problems for inexperienced players. The new cards are familiar types — Upgrades, Sponsorships, Events — but tuned to emphasise the new track features rather than to rewrite the game.
From a big fan of HEAT, this is really all I want from my expansions: two tracks that feel genuinely distinct, a simple but meaningful new hazard, a bit more Championship meat, and the ability to seat one more player if that were ever a realistic prospect… More likely, I’ll use the extra car to run another Legend (automa) car. It doesn’t fix anything because HEAT wasn’t broken anyway, it just gives you more reasons to keep it on the table and more ways for experienced drivers to misjudge a corner and end up in the gravel, swearing they knew better.
Heat: Rocky Roads is available now from Amazon.
