Abstract: The agent based distillation MANA was used for an exploratory study of the seven core skills of the Army-as-a-System model, using a bottom-up approach. Simple tactics were developed, then combined, allowing more complex behaviours to emerge. Scenarios in which simple and combined tactics were played against each were used to measure the effectiveness of various combinations of core skills. Preliminary results indicate that the complex adaptive behaviour produced multiple distinct end-states. Significantly, 'rock-scissors-paper' paradigms emerged between combinations of tactics, where a cyclic, rather than linear, relationship was observed between these combined tactics.