- 13 Dec, 2025 *
Well this is a little embarrassing
Lobster Trap 33
Normally I try to get these convention recaps up not too long after I attended them, but this year I ended up having a lot of life happen in late November1 so you’ll have to be okay with this one getting out more than a little late.
In case you haven’t read my previous entry about Lobster Trap, it’s a yearly invite-only board game convention that I’ve been attending for not-quite-a-decade at this point. It’s rather insular structure means I have some pretty strong relationships with people that I gather with to play board games once a year, which turns the event into as much of a family reunion as it is a pure game playing event. It’s a chance to…
- 13 Dec, 2025 *
Well this is a little embarrassing
Lobster Trap 33
Normally I try to get these convention recaps up not too long after I attended them, but this year I ended up having a lot of life happen in late November1 so you’ll have to be okay with this one getting out more than a little late.
In case you haven’t read my previous entry about Lobster Trap, it’s a yearly invite-only board game convention that I’ve been attending for not-quite-a-decade at this point. It’s rather insular structure means I have some pretty strong relationships with people that I gather with to play board games once a year, which turns the event into as much of a family reunion as it is a pure game playing event. It’s a chance to reconnect, learn about what’s been new for everyone. Someone’s retiring, someone’s changed their field, someone’s gotten a new partner or lost an old one.
As always, I attended this year with both of my parents. This was a nice chance to get to spend more time with them, though unlike prior years this wasn’t one of the only times I’d get to see them this year.
Things felt a little strange this year. I was only able to attend for 2 full days, limiting how much time I could spend. I chose to spend most of it trying to track down and play new titles, but in hindsight maybe I would have benefited from settling down with an old favorite or two. It makes the social interactions easier, lets me focus more on the communal bond than the new mechanics and puzzle before me. But, still, it was a great event and I’ve left it with a few highlights!
Rather than cover exhaustively every game I played, I figured I’d keep it to a few highlights, should keep things a little more readable2. So, what was good this year?
Fountains
Fountains reminds me of another great game, Akropolis3. In both games, each turn involves you drafting one of a set number of pieces, and adding them to your slowly expanding multi-layered structure. In Akropolis, this is a fairly straight forward mechanism, with most of the challenge and fun coming from how you can work with the pieces you are able to access with your resources.
Fountains, however, keeps the scoring much more straightforwards. Rather than having 5 different types of scoring structure, each of which also requires you to draft scoring multipliers, you instead only have to focus on 3 things.
- How many total pools do I have?
- How many fish do I have in each color?
- How many connected lily pads do I have?
This allows players to instead focus on the drafting itself. Players on their turn have the option of moving any one of three differently colored pawns along the elevated platform that serves as the supply of pieces. Based on where the pawn lands, the player will draft a piece of a given shape, or potentially add a bonus tile to improve one of their existing pools. Importantly, all mid game scoring is also mediated by this track, with each of the three conditions only scoring when someone lands a pawn on the scoring space matching its color.
Fountains is a surprisingly mean game as a result. Players have to focus not only on what scoring categories are advantageous to them if they come up, but which scoring opportunities will put other players in the lead. Deciding whether to go for the most ideal piece for you, or to settle for a second choice that blocks your opponent from scoring on a later round is a consistently interesting choice without feeling too overwhelming.
If I had any negatives to say about this game, I would note that with 5 players it can feel a little more random. But at lower player counts, this design sings. Definitely worth considering adding it to your collection!
Kilauea
In Kilauea, players inhabit Mo’o, lizard like spirits that are tasked with building a bunch of Tikis to win the favor of the goddess Pele. But how do you determine who gets the most favor?
Well - As players harvest tikis, they may on subsequent turns to choose to place them either on their own personal island, or at the base of the volcano in the center of the map. Both of these are split into 5 regions, and players score points section by section. In each section, a player checks how many tikis they have of a given color, and how tall the column of tikis on the island is. If its the tallest tower, players score 1 point per tiki. however, if the color is not amongst the tallest tower, players an instead score 3 points per tiki.
This leads to a lot of jockeying between players. Looking around at everyone’s mats, you can see which colors of tiki they would much rather not come out in front. This leads to players dynamically forming sorts of alliances, with players with a mutual interest in a color frequently working together to try and make other colors tikis grow higher.
There’s brinkmanship to it. But like Fountains, much of the depth and the tactical interest comes from trying to limit your opponents movement. Where a player can take actions on any given turn, and what bonuses they can interact with, is determined by where they are able to move the shared central Mo’o pawn that patrols the waters between the volcano and the Island. Dropping a player loaded down with a boat load of tikis just far enough that they can’t place a tiki exactly where it needs to go, or denying them a bonus ability they need to even up the game, feels great.
Since all the information is exposed, I imagine for a set of very serious players this game could drag4. But I really enjoyed my time with it, and I’m looking forward to giving it another play!
Wine Cellar
Wine Cellar is the game I had the strongest urge to add to my collection in the very near future. Why?
- It can comfortably play up to 8 players without being a party game
- It’s quick to explain and quick to play
- There’s just enough strategic depth to keep me returning to it.
So how do you play?
At the start of each game, players are bid a hand of 8 wine bottles, and 1 bottle per player is laid out in the center of the table. Players are then each given a choice between two clients, each which have preferences for two different types of wine, and variable number of different countries of origins.
The game is then played out across 8 rounds. In each round, players will use one of the cards in their hand to bid for the bottles face up in front of them. The player with the highest value picks first, with subsequent picks being made in order of bid value. Then, players add the bottle to their wine rack, placing it either at the very top or very bottom of their stack of collected bottles. Players then bid again, with the bottles in this next round being the ones that they just used to bid. This cycle repeats until each player has 8 wines.
The majority of players scores in this game will come by arranging the wines correctly in the rack. The numbers along the label tell you how many points you’ll get at the end of the game for each position the wine bottle could end up in, with 8 being the highest. Since players are limited in how bottles are handled, getting all 8s is difficult, but rewarding for those who have the ability to manage their hand and pull it off. Bonus points are awarded based on those wine type and country of origin preferences, though for many clients unless a player actively tracks down these bottles these points are only enough to separate a player from an otherwise very close opponent.
While there can be cases where players will have hard times navigating the auctions due to receiving a poor hand of cards, the game plays fast enough that the bad feeling doesn’t tend to last. It expanded to lower and higher player counts without much difficulty, and there’s a lot of humor to be mined out of the tasting notes on your bottles5. It’s fun, good, compact filler, and ideally should be holding a space in my bag for most game nights going forward!
And that’s it!
New partner(?), new lease in a new city, and Thanksgiving really killed pretty much all the free time that I would have had.↩ 1.
It’s telling that my analytics tell me everyone’s favorite part of my blogging about the gathering last year was when it was over↩ 1.
Which shares this games’ BGG ranking, if you can believe it.↩ 1.
Even in our game where we weren’t trying to intensely fight over every point, it still took over 90 minutes to complete.↩ 1.
Which include notes like "Olive Oil", "Graphite", and "Black Pepper".,↩
[#tabletop games](https://johnis.me/blog/?q=tabletop games)