Gulf, Mobile & Ohio

In Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, the third entry in Winsome Games's Historic Railroads System, players build railroads in the South that existed between 1830-1860, with the game board featuring cities from Richmond to New Orleans, and from Memphis to Savannah. Twenty-three different railroad lines exist in the game, each represented by two shares of stock: a charter share for the player who founds this railroad, and a common share that might be auctioned later in the game. Eight railroads are designated as starting lines, and initially only the shares for these eight lines are available to players. Railroad lines will be represented on the game board with wooden cubes that come in six colors, with the number of cubes ranging from 6 to 32.

On a turn, a player takes one of four actions:

• Charter a railroad: The active player starts an auction for the charter share of a railroad that hasn't yet been founded. Players place bids for this share, with the winner claiming this charter share, placing a cube of the color that's most common on it, then using the money spent in the auction to place additional cubes on the game board at a cost of $3/cube. One cube of the same color is placed in the railroad's starting city (and sometimes you have a choice of starting city), and additional cubes are placed on track intersections and in connecting cities. You must bid enough that you can place this line in at least two cities. If the color of the cube that's most available in the stock is already in this city (thanks to railroad lines previously built), then the active player can't put this line up for auction.