Jagged Alliance 3 – How to Survive Ambush Battle

Ambush Battle Tips

1. Post all people behind the tent near the colonel — no one is down below on that side of the hilltop to snipe at you, and the tent is cover. They didn’t target the hilltop with gas in my two attempts until the third round, which the battle is largely won at that point.
2. Good big with the boomy ordnance here to to balance the battle quickly. Make sure Barry has his shape charges. Ideally 3-4. Hand one to the merc besides Barry with the best explosives. One merc talks to the colonel and starts the battle. That was my IMP char. Immediately run behind the flag pole / dead guy / chimney thing and either go prone or hit the duck for cover button.
3. Headshot the point blank dude by the tent. For me, that was Ace bursting his FN-FAL.
4. Barry should be able to throw two grenades on round 1 if you intelligently located him near the tent but not right next to it. That lets his shape charges go up and over the tent. And one other person with decent enough demo should huck another one. With luck, that should take the nearest 2-3 people off the board.
5. At this point, there was a dude down low near the entrance and he has no shot on the hilltop if you stay down. He has to run up — leave him this round. So that leaves 2-3 additional dudes at some distance to you near the tents near the hilltop. They will get shots off, but only the Colonel talker should be in any real jeopardy.
6. Next round, you do you how you normally fight. For me it was snipey headshots (often 2x required due to their armor) or underslung grenade moves (if cover for them was a problem). Watch the big tree near the hilltop because I want to say the guy climbing up from the entrance is a grenadier — don’t let him get to the top. For me, this dropped 2 more dudes and a few remained pretty far away.
7. At this point, I’ve dropped 6-7 people and 2 are far off and just spraying bullets. And then they say the gas is coming down on the hilltop. If you know you can end the battle that round, you don’t need to frantically run out of danger — just put them down (the mortars won’t arrive if the battle is over). If you don’t think you can finish them that round, bolt for the tree and take what cover you can.

Hard fight made FAR easier by acknowledging how ridiculous it is and just planning the hell out of starting it well. I think this is vaguely justified when Livewire said ‘we should come up with an exit strategy’ in talking to the Colonel, so I just took her advice in advance.