Jagged Alliance 2 SPEEDRUN - MST (Mines, SAMs, Towns) in

I think I'm done with this game for now lol

"MST" in this case stands for Mines, SAMs, Towns. You must complete the game after liberating every town, capturing every mine and controlling every SAM site. Saving/Reloading is allowed because it's RTA.

-When you liberate a town, you will get a "Liberated XXX" message in your history. There are seven total (Drassen, Chitzena, Cambria, Grumm, Alma, Meduna). San Mona and Omerta cannot be liberated.
-When you clear a SAM site, that section of the map will appear green in the flight tab.
-When you capture a mine, you will see an income $$ under it in the mines tab. The San Mona mine cannot be captured.

The general strategy here is to attack all of the towns in the same night. This is because of the way the difficulty works. When you conquer a town, it will trigger Deidranna to reinforce the others with more troops and better equipment. So, the first 20 minutes or so is preparing to launch a simul assault on every town on the map. Most can be taken easily with one good merc, some take trial and error.

My squad for this run is...

Gus- Obvious choice for taking Meduna. Highest starting level, great starting equipment, Heavy Weapons perk for dealing with tanks.

IMP Merc- Only $3k for a permanent merc. If you answer the quiz in a 22-33 repeating pattern, you'll get either Night Ops (Expert) or Night Ops + Stealth. The only problem is he starts at lvl1, but with night ops you can overcome it.

Len- He's a budget Gus. High starting level, so good for getting the drop on the elites at Alma. He also has enough leadership to recruit Conrad.

Scope- Great merc with Night Ops perk, but most importantly starts with a ton of ammo so she can go for a while without having to scavenge for leftovers. Could have gone with Lynx also.

Magic- I need either Magic or Trevor to pick the locks in Cambria and the SAM. Magic is better obv because he's higher level.

Stephen- Cliff, Stephen and Ice are all essentially the same merc. Decent with good starting equipment and fair price. Ideal for taking the easier sectors. Stephen has Night Ops which is a bonus.

Wolf- Because Ice was unavailable I went with Wolf as a backup. Balime is the easiest to take so it can really be anyone.

Now you may be wondering, what's the most important stat in JA2? Is it Marksmanship? Dexterity? Experience level? No, it's your vision range. If you can see an enemy before they see you, you will get the first strike or an interrupt and can finish them in one turn. You will see in Grumm that a level 1 merc can take an entire sector on his own with only the Night Ops perk.

If you're wondering why I send the IMP to Tixa, here are four yellow shirts that guard the entrance. One will always drop a LAW and a long rifle (either a C7 or an M14) and the other will always drop UV goggles. I bring the goggles to Gus because trying to take Meduna without them is an exercise in frustration.

It goes without saying that Meduna takes up the bulk of the runtime. Not just because it's hard, but also because there are so many baddies that enemy turns take forever. I also had a rough start with the first two sectors. I couldn't get the enemies to cooperate at first on the bloodcat arena. The Meduna SAM is the toughest sector in the game, but it was especially painful here thanks to trash enemy placement and poor luck with the tank manips. Meduna's also unique in that there are enemy groups that can move between the sectors, you may have to retake some sectors, or worse, they can invade while you're already fighting (like what happened at the palace). Sadly, you do have to clear them or it won't count as liberating the city.