Prologue: Comrades (Home By Winter)
This is the strongest opening in any hack I’ve ever played, and it’s not remotely close.
For those unaware, Home By Winter is a hack on psuedo-hiatus by jellyunicorn. It’s a extremely tight Berwick-inspired hack revolving around powerful bond supports, abysmal growth rates, and some other new mechanics. The maps in this hack are very bombastic, often containing one or more tricks to them that elevate them beyond standard fare, and the introduction is no different. Prologue is set in the immediate aftermath of a battle gone horrendously wrong, in which your battered army has to push their way out of an unexpected pincer. The brutal snowstorm and tense music (specifically, Jhen Mohran from MH) does a fantastic job at setting the tone for the stinger.
As for the map itself, it clearly divides itself into two sections:
The Escape
These lucky four are Caehn, Aslena, Adalyn, and Bruyne. Aslena is the Jagen on the left, while the others are somewhat standard faire for this game in stats and toolkits (Caehn being a touch better thanks to lord bias.) They start about halfways down the map, surrounded on both sides, and their objective is to escape to the south, specifically on the tile guarded by the highlighted enemy in the rightmost image.
The design here is already off to a very strong start, as this opening section is built to tutorialize HBW’s new approach to supports. Units in this game have supports at base granting a robust array of boosts, and these three form a support triangle.
With smart positioning, you can hit a number of otherwise out-of-reach benchmarks against these enemies. It’s both extremely satisfying and very tight, making the strengths of the system immediately apparent and meaningful. Additionally, Aslena also supports the three junior cavaliers, which provides incentive to quickly regroup.
This is all incredibly fun and well-designed, but the final piece of Prologue that truly elevates its incredible atmosphere for me is found on the other side of the coin.
The Massacre
These five riders (who are all named a variant of Dan) are high-level fighters in Aslena’s squadron. They’re also impossible to save from the consequences of the failed attack. This map manages to make the platoon’s failure feel incredibly tangible by forcing you, the player, to suffer the consequences in gameplay. You are given full control of them in their final stand, but there’s nothing you can really do to prevent a massacre. All five are at critical health thanks to the preceding skirmish, and they’ve been surrounded by high damage lancers and siege magic. To put it bluntly, they’re fucked, and you get to live that.
(Take note of the objective all but admitting that only the bottom four units are going to survive.)
PLAY HBW
My conclusion? You gotta try this hack out. It’s not very long at the moment, but it’s absolutely worth experiencing. While the intro is the map I chose to rant about, there’s several other fantastic maps in this game that I could’ve also written about. Sea of Spirits is a fun town map with a unique style of progression, Cornered Rat is another fantastic Escape with a secondary condition and tense first turn. The game’s just good, and its introduction is a fantastic showcase of the type of creativity you will see for the rest of your time playing it.