This is part 1 of a series of articles about my upcoming Combat Commander: Adversary game module—a solitaire system that lets one player duke it out with an automated opponent on the storied battlefields of GMT Games's classic tactical wargame.
I didn't start thinking about a Combat Commander "bot" (as they are commonly referred to) because I needed one. I am blessed with an environment filled to the brim with CC nuts; that includes my closest friends and—it seems at times—most of the adult population of the greater Montreal area.
So no, it wasn't for lack of opponents that I started to pull on the automated opponent thread, but rather because I began asking myself a singular question: if I ever decided to build a bot for my favorite game, how would I go about it? After a while, I decided to try to answer that question.
Still, I kept telling myself I was not designing a solitaire system for CC: I was merely exploring how I'd do it IF I were to do it. And much like that delicious snippet from The Princess Bride ("Good night Wesley, I'll kill you tomorrow"), I kept telling myself, "I'm not designing a CC bot; but if I decide to build one tomorrow, this is how I'll do it."
Before long, however, the problems became so engaging—and my imagined solutions so exciting—that I had to come to grips with reality: I was designing a bot for Combat Commander. The battle plans were coming along rather nicely, as a matter of fact. So nicely that I felt I had better pump the brakes a little and ask myself a different question: Where was I going with this? Was I just doing this to challenge myself, to try to crack/untie that nut/knot (pick your metaphor), or did I harbor ulterior motives?
Allow me to take a step back before I continue, because at this point I need to demonstrate just how much of an idiot I can be.
* * * * *
Back in ancient times, circa 1999, I was living in California and working for Lucasfilm. (That's incidentally when I met and befriended Combat Commander designer Chad Jensen, who was—unbeknownst to me—already at work on his seminal opus.) I was also spending my weekends doing some translation work for Steve Jackson Games, which meant that Steve and I were trading emails on a regular basis. At some point I came up with the concept for what would be my first published game, Proteus: a chess variant where you're moving and evolving dice across the chessboard, building up your army to answer new threats over the course of the game. I had designed the whole thing and playtested it (in the game store where Chad worked, amongst other locales), and the contraption behaved surprisingly well.
Next steps? Naturally, I was wondering if I should try to get the thing published; but at the same time it was clear to me that anyone armed with the rules of the game could make up their own set using regular six-siders and any 8x8 square grid. So I fired off an email to Steve Jackson—who'd published Tile Chess not too long before (and which was one of the games I was translating for him, for crying out loud)—and asked him... well, no, not the question you're thinking about.
Because I'm an idiot.
I gave him an overview of Proteus and asked him for his professional opinion: should I just get the rules published as a DIY article in a gaming magazine (yep, those old printed things, of which there were many in existence back then), or rather attempt to get the thing published as an actual game?
To his credit, Steve didn't call me an idiot. He replied that he was curious about the design, and would I feel comfortable sending him the rules?
I happily did so. The next day, he answered my question in a way I hadn't considered: he offered to put my game out there.
(His actual words were adorable. He wrote to me: "Would you let me publish this one?")
* * * * *
Alright, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Working on and off on my little non-project, I had reached the stage where I'd say about half the solitaire system was done. There was still a lot to execute, but I had solved all of the major problems, and my entire roadmap was in place.
That was in the fall of 2019, and that's when I reached out to GMT's very own Tony Curtis, with whom I'd had occasional online encounters over the years. I told him I had been working on a CC bot, stated the current advancement of the project (half-baked at best) and briefly described the problems I'd tackled and how I'd put them to bed.
Was I pitching him my solitaire system? Of course not. (Haven't you been paying attention?) I asked Tony if they had something of that nature in the pipeline for Combat Commander. Because if they did, then I'd put my own project on some indefinite backburner and enthusiastically wait to see what they'd come up with.
Tony's reply was two-fold: No, they weren't working on such a solitaire system. And would I mind showing him what I had so far?
I was happy to oblige. And in my mind, I still wasn't pitching him my design. It was a sort of professional courtesy, a healthy curiosity between designers. Neat, right!
(My daughters just called to express their desire to opt out of wearing my last name.)
Plot twist: I didn't hear back from Tony. The guy who reached out to me, after a couple of months, was Jason Carr, Director of Game Development at GMT. He wrote "This is a sound approach" and encouraged me to finish the system. Which took a couple more years of me working on Adversary whenever Life would unclench its vise-like grip for a few hours. At some point, Jason confirmed GMT wanted to publish my system, my heart skipped an unspecified number of beats, and what followed was a series of back-and-forth messages and a visit to GMT HQ for one of those legendary "Weekends at the Warehouse," during which I had a chance to meet a gaggle of designers and rub elbows with the best and friendliest in the business. (The absolute sweetest of them all was Chris Janiec, but don't tell the others I said so.) I flew back home with a series of notes that led to more feverish late nights and never-ending weekends of head scratching and rules revising, until Gene spoke those momentous words: "I have a free slot on P500 next month, and I'd like to fill it with CC: Adversary. Is it ready enough?"
An old spreadsheet along with one of the first
versions of the German deck, pre-tarot size
There's still some ways to go until the module is considered done, but the stormy seas are behind us. And the horizon's looking mighty fine.
(Speaking of which, next time we'll talk about the Horizon Charts!)
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