Gulf, Mobile & Ohio
- Designer: John Bohrer listed on BGG
- Publisher: Rio Grande Games
- Players: 3-5
- Ages: 14+
- Time: 60 minutes
- Times played: around a dozen between current and older version
This is certainly an interesting time for game reviews; it’s hard to write reviews on games when I have almost no opportunity to actually play them right now! We’re being asked to stay at home in Ohio right now, so my outlets for traditional boardgaming are about nil. I did just receive a box of games from Rio Grande; and surprisingly enough, I found a new version of an old favorite within! I have yet to have a chance to play the new version but it appears to be identical (gamewise) to the original clamshell version of the game from 2008 so I can review it based on my previous experience with the game.
Gulf, Mobile & Ohio (GM&O) is one of the last games I bought as a regular subscriber to the annual Winsome Essen package. Back in those glory days, Mr. Bohrer would sublet a corner of an Essen booth for a single hour on the Friday of the fair, and he would collect money and distribute his pre-ordered sets of Essen games. This was pretty much the only way to get the whole set of games, and you had to buy them all. Having done this for a number of years, I would come up to the booth – wearing my Bengals jersey for sure – and ask for my set. Mr. Bohrer, in his Steelers garb, would invariably grimace at my clothes, and then deliver set #69 to me. (Nice). Sure, the components were rudimentary – usually simple cubes, construction paper money and shares, all wrapped up in a thin plastic clamshell case – but the games inside were always challenging and inventive. Each year, I was almost sure to find at least one keeper in the Winsome set, and due to the relative scarcity, I could almost always find homes for the ones I didn’t like as much. (you know, anything that begins with 18…)
10 Great Card Games (Article by Chris Wray)
When we tell people we’re into “board games,” what we often mean is “board and card games.” If you just say card games, people often think of the standard deck of 52, but if you just say board games, people focus a bit too much on the board in the middle of the table. But a lot of games are made primarily — or mostly — out of cards, and at least in my world, that generally doesn’t mean the public domain deck.
There’s even an annual award for such games, called the À la Carte award.
Today’s article is part of our “10 Great” series that features 10 great games in a given subcategory. I pick a mechanic, theme, publisher, etc. In this case, I picked a component. We here at the Opinionated Gamers then all vote behind the scenes to create a list of 10 great games that meet the criteria. We’re aiming for an article a month, and I’d love your suggestions about future lists.
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