Understanding the mechanisms of confinement and the dynamics of low-energy QCD remains one of the central open problems in the Standard Model. In this talk, I will describe how these issues can be explored in a close relative of QCD, constructed by starting from supersymmetric QCD and systematically breaking supersymmetry through anomaly mediation. These models reproduce the same phases as ordinary QCD, while allowing us to probe confinement from a different dynamical perspective. Within this framework, one can compute the η′ potential, study θ-dependence, and analyze the phase structure associated with spontaneous CP violation at θ = π. Moreover, the construction permits a derivation of the analog of the chiral Lagrangian, enabling explicit tests of the size of a dynamically generated up-quark mass. Strikingly, we find that in these models the generated contribution could be large enough to account for the full observed up-quark mass.