With 2018 coming to a close, I’m taking a look at my yearly challenges and, well, they don’t look good.  The first one where I try to get through 100 games of a single game is going to fall woefully short.  I’ll dive into the whys and wherefores after year’s end but getting more games of Walking Dead in before the end of the year won’t happen so even though it was abandoned long ago, I’ll officially admit defeat.

poor walking dead

I’m doing much better on my goal of hitting 100 unique games this year but after a fallow fall season of gaming, I’m trending on the short side of that stick as well.

With 84 games down as of this writing, I will have 16 games to hit in the next 21 days. It’s not impossible but for me to get across that finish line, I might need to get creative.  I have a few true solo games I might need to tap into to go the distance and trying those out will be a good exercise to see if they hold up as a solo option.

Some of the options I’m looking at are games that need to sanity check to also see if they should still be on my shelf.

We’ve tried Zombie Survival a few times with mixed results at best.  The rule book is a bit hard to get through and the game itself seems to take longer than it really should.  With a glut of zombie games at my disposal.  I’ll see if a solo shot can keep this game around.

Descent’s shelf placement isn’t in jeopardy but I’d like to run some of their single session games from the digital side to see if they can encapsulate an adventure for an evening. If they can, I may push this to my kids as well to intro them into heavier games.

While also not on the chopping block, I do need to figure out what to do with Vast.  The separate rules sheet per player is hard to work in with the gaming groups when we’re already not focusing heavily on repeated game plays.  Solo might be an interesting way to flex the game and learn the roles in more depth, making it easier to teach.

I was really hoping to hit this when the 10th anniversary set comes up but it looks like that delivery is slipping to Q1 of 2019 so a solo run through by the end of the year may help me re-familiarize myself with the rules just in time for the robust re-issue.

By no means will these solo games get me there but I have some time as my schedule lightens up a little and I’ll push on towards the goal of 100 unique games.  When the dust clears and I see if I was able to push through or fall short, I’ll give thoughts to what these challenges taught me about my game consumption and playing habits.  Until then, time to get more of these games to the table.