Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Thousands of board games enter the world every year. Some are great and rightly acclaimed. Some are average and get acclaimed anyway. Some boast and bluster and are put in their place. Some sidle quietly into the corner, overlooked and inconspicuous.
Meet Tipperary, a corner-lurker if ever there was one. No big noise on release, no splash or subsequent ripples. Tipperary is, if anything, a ripple from several other games, an unassuming undulation resulting from the late 2010s/early 2020s craze for polyomino tile laying games. A cat’s paw rather than a ship full of felines.
Of course, as anyone living in the UK with an appreciation of chocolate knows, ripples can be pretty good in their own right.
Here’s the general premise. You’re tasked with creating the ‘ideal’ Irish countryside, a mix of meadows, fields, bogs, castles, ruins and distilleries. Each round involves the spin of the ‘magic stone circle’ which determines which of the pairs of polyomino tiles clustered around the circumference each player can choose from. Everyone simultaneously chooses a tile from the two in their segment of the spinner and adds it to their growing landscape and then the process is repeated with a fresh spin of the wheel and a fresh(ish) selection of tiles.
There’s a small variety of landscapes on the tiles, and an equally small variety of effects they have. There are sheep you try to shepherd into the biggest flock, wheat fields you want to put next to distilleries to make barrels of whiskey, ruins that sprout castles if arranged in a row, and bogs clamouring to be clustered. Along the way you’ll collect stray sheep, stone circles and bonus landscape tiles, all in the hope of hitting the highs of the five scoring criteria.
I was looking forward to Tipperary, even putting it on my most anticipated games of Essen Spiel in 2023. Back then I said: “Charming as it looks, I don’t think Tipperary is going to change the tabletop landscape forever. But sometimes you just want a solid experience with interesting but not too taxing decisions that plays in under an hour.”
I wasn’t wrong.
It sounds like damning with faint praise, but Tipperary is one of the most pleasant games I’ve played in a long time. Rather like the landscape you’re creating, there are no great peaks or valleys. Instead, it burbles along gently like the brook on the round tracking board. The game moves from turn to turn uneventfully and then it’s over.
This isn’t wholly a criticism. I enjoy playing Tipperary; the mild restrictions of the spinner’s selection, the quiet puzzle of deciding which landscape types to prioritise this turn. Unlike most polyomino games, there’s no real restriction about where you place your tiles, you aren’t trying to fill a player board or being punished for failing to do so. I like the feel of the thing. There’s a decent puzzle here. The decisions you make matter, but Tipperary’s vibe is set to easy going, its demands almost completely absent. Largest flock aside, it’s a solitary and silent affair, and sometimes that sits well with me.
All in all, Tipperary is smooth, competent and engaging. For me, however, Tipperary is so smooth as to be featureless.
I like a little tension, a little edge in my games. I like something to remember. Doesn’t need to be much, but even family games should have a spark. In fact, I’d argue that family games especially should have something to help you acknowledge and appreciate the family members you’re playing with.
I’m reminded of one of the best family-level tile-laying games in the business: Kingdomino. The central puzzle of the game of where to place each domino is fine, sure, but it’s the battle for tiles and turn order that elevates the experience unexpectedly. Tipperary doesn’t have anything like that. It doesn’t have anything to make you wince or hold your breath in anticipation, nothing that quickens the pulse. There’s an official solo mode on the publisher’s website and it’s almost an identical experience to the multiplayer game. A testament to the solo design, perhaps, but not such a great reflection on the core game itself.
In addition to there being little tension with the other players, there’s little with the tiles as well. Pretty much everything scores you points, a trickle of endgame attributes that never really differentiate themselves from each other. You might want a certain tile but you’ve a random 1-in-5 chance of actually getting it and, to be honest, any of the other four sets of choices you’ll get instead are probably just as good if you focus on a different landscape this turn.
If anything, the scoring feels slightly off. Four of the 5 scoring criteria score 5-20 points each. The bulk of your points, however, come from creating a big rectangle – you can get 50-60 points from that without trying too hard. It diminishes the importance of the other scoring opportunities, especially when two of the landscapes (ruins with their single-tile castles and bogs with their single-tile bonuses) support the grand rectangle project by filling awkward gaps. Is fighting for the most sheep really worth it? I’d argue not.
The result is a gentle game where everyone quietly makes a big rectangle, collects a few sheep and some whiskey barrels, sighs with mild appreciation when the scores are totted up and then helps to squeeze all those tiles back into the way-too-small bag*. Pleasant.
*Lookout Games have said the bag size was an error and it’ll be corrected in the next printing.
Some people online have suggested that instead of spinning the wheel randomly, one player should set the spinner to where they want it each round, giving players more agency and the ability to deny their opponents of certain tiles. It’s a fine solution if you want to double the length of the game, with players assessing the relative pros and cons of ten tiles rather than two. Rather like tile-laying royalty, Carcassonne, the challenge and interest in Tipperary comes from making the best of what you’re offered; too much choice turns it saggy.
Instead there’s a dead simple print and play official expansion (‘Objectives’) on the publisher’s website and, honestly, it should have been included from the start, at least as an in-box expansion. It’s nothing groundbreaking (shared goals to compete over) but it adds a spec of grit to muddy the waters of your decision space each turn. You care a little more about the humans around you.
I like Tipperary, I do. It’s enjoyable and competent, with soft pleasantness baked deep into its bones. Tiny tile bag aside, there’s nothing that Tipperary gets wrong. But getting nothing wrong isn’t the same as getting everything right. My assessment back in 2023 was accurate: it looks lovely, comfortably plays in 30-40 minutes and the simultaneous play is a definite plus. I guess I just hoped that the decisions would be a little more interesting, a little more memorable. As a board game critic, I play lots of different games and I look for things that stand out. Sadly, not much does. Tipperary sidled onto the scene in 2023 and has been lurking quietly in the corner ever since.
Tipperary details
- Designer: Günter Burkhardt
- Artists: Ari Oliver, Klemens Franz
- Publishers: Lookout Games
- Release Date: 2023
- Player count : 2 - 5
- Age range : 8+
- Time range : 45 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Chaining, Connections, End Game Bonuses, Roll / Spin and Move, Tile Placement
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.22542 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Tipperary.
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