Brigade is back, and so is ProbeBot.
ProbeBot is the tournament-era AI that powered some of the most competitive Brigade play in the game’s history. We’ve been working on bringing him back online as part of the Brigade relaunch, and last week I sat down for a Classic mode test game — 206 turns, Range Attack enabled.
I hit Random Setup and didn’t look back.
That flag at (0,8) is not well protected. There’s a bomb at (1,8) and a Colonel and Marshal nearby, but a Miner and Scout at (0,6) and (0,7) mean that mounting any defense requires immediately revealing one of my heavy hitters. And my General is buried in the middle of the back row with bombs between it and the flag — hard to get into the fight if things go sideways. You play the hand the RNG deals you.
Turn 30 — The Graveyard
By turn 30, I’d lost a Colonel and a Major. Probe still had his heavy hitters, and they are threatening: Marshal & General both closing in at (1,4) and (4,5). My General was still buried trying to dig out from the back row, and my Spy was useless, way across the board at (8,7) from Probe’s advancing Marshal. From the outside, this looked like a slow-motion defeat.
Not so fast, my friend, as ProbeBot is about to find out.
Turn 41 — The Bomb
Probe pushed his General deep into my territory and ran it straight into a bomb. You can’t recover from that kind of loss without consequences, and Probe was about to find out.
Turns 44–45 — The Marshal Trap
I move my Marshal forward. Probe sees an unknown piece advancing into his space and decides to attack. He doesn’t know it’s my Marshal. I do.
Both Marshals gone in a single exchange. The difference: my General will now start working its way up the board as the most powerful piece in play. The game had turned.
The game had turned, but I was still vulnerable: Probe has a Colonel at (5,4) and if he suspected I had an unprotected flag in the left corner protected by only low ranked pieces, he could have beat my General to the punch. Luckily, he seemed too scared of my General to “probe” too aggressively, after his General met its fiery demise on my Bomb.
Turn 206 — Flag Captured
The rest of the game was grinding work — digging my General out, probing Probe’s defenses, and a lucky Miner stumbling onto a bomb that cleared the path to the flag. 206 turns. Random setup overcome. Flag captured.
ProbeBot is a worthy opponent. And Brigade is coming back.
Want to play? Brigade is relaunching soon at brigade.metaforge.net. Create an account or log back in — your old account is waiting.
Brigade is a classic flag-capture strategy game developed by MetaForge. ProbeBot is an AI opponent based on the tournament-era Probe engine.
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