Jeremy’s Gaming Gratons: First Impressions of TIPPERARY with the Family

Board Game Gumbo is pleased to present another game night recap with Jeremy Dobler. This time, Jeremy gives us his first impression of Tipperary, a 2023 tile laying designed by Günter Burkhardt and published by Lookout Games. This game was on my personal list at Chuck Con 2024 to play because I’m a huge fan of his previous game, Ulm. Here is Jeremy with his initial impressions after his first few plays:

I recently got in a play of Tipperary with the family. I’m very impressed with the 6 yr old’s first play. He didn’t place the tiles optimally, but he still scored well.

The rules overhead in this game is very low: spin the spinner, take one of two tiles from the section that your family crest points at, then place the tile into your tableau mainly in an attempt to keep groups of sheep orthogonally adjacent to each other for scoring.

But you can also score points by placing granaries adjacent to fields, which generates whiskey barrels that you denote by moving your marker up a step, potentially gaining extra sheep meeples to place in empty fields to connect nearby fields of sheep for maximum scoring.

Then there are the bogs, where you can create a protected bog by placing two or more bog tiles adjacent to each other, allowing you to draw a one-by-one tile you can use to fill in your tableau. Why do you want to fill in your tableau? Because you’ll also score points for the single largest complete rectangle within your tiles.

We also have the ruins, and if you connect a grouping of three ruins tiles in a vertical or horizontal line, you get a tower piece that can help fill out your rectangle too at the end of the game. Lastly you score for surrounding your starting village completely on all sides.

I absolutely love these little tile laying puzzler games like Tipperary, Isle of Cats, and Planet Unknown. Can’t wait to try it at 5p.

Jeremy is an omni-gamer from Lafayette, Louisiana, who games at home with his wife and young son, but also can be frequently hosting or visiting game nights with friends all over Acadiana. Jeremy loves games about nature, IP games involving turtles and batmen, and games appropriate to play with his young son, but expect lots of different games discussed here each time.  All photos courtesy of Jeremy Dobler.