Spinespur: Miniatures Game Review

One of the more recent games to hit the market is Spinespur, by Comfy Chair Games. One of the interesting things you’ll note about Spinespur when you take a look at the rulebook is that it comes complete with a parental advisory label. This is not something you typically find on a miniatures game. In fact, I don’t know of any other games out there that do.

The World of Spinespur

Spinespur is a graphic and disturbing world in which the worst of the worst are sent. It is, at its core, Hell minus the lakes of fire. It is a place where the sun never shines, and its inhabitants live in fear and squalor, never knowing where their next meal will come from or who will be waiting to take it from them. The worst faces of humanity from film, fiction, and fact were used as inspiration for the personalities that inhabit this city of darkness. This is not to say that the creators just stole every character and piece of folklore they could get their hands on. No, it is explained within the fictional world that the evil men who live in Spinespur are the real faces behind the stories we’ve all seen and heard. This allows for some interesting twists and reinterpretations of old classics to fill the setting with grim and unsettling characters.

Spinespur itself is a sprawling city broken up into several districts ruled over by powerful gang leaders known as Senators. Senators each have their own agenda, though what that agenda is is anyones guess. An underlying story has not emerged and I haven’t read anything to lead me to believe that the game itself will be heavily story driven. Even so there is a lot of disturbing and entertaining fiction to be read throughout the first and currently only rulebook, Spinespur: Threshold.

The Core Mechanics

All the rage these days are the concepts of opposed rolls and alternating unit activations and Spinespur delivers on both these counts. The vast majority of the games rolls boil down to both players rolling three six sided dice, adding the appropriate stats, and determining the results of an attack or action. The interesting thing about this mechanic is that one of the three dice is a different color and it determines damage. What makes it interesting is that while you want to roll high on all three dice so you will succeed in your action, it is actually preferable for the third die to be low because the attack will deal more damage the lower it is. What possessed the designers to go this route is anyone’s guess, but its interesting and quirky enough to make me like it at the very least.