Saber

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Saber
item
Minimum delivery cost (doubloons)	10	Decay rate	90 days

A visualization between the reversed and non-reversed Saber.

The saber is one of the seventeen sword types available to players in the game. It is produced at iron mongers. On subscription oceans, the saber may only be used by subscribers.

Sabers are notorious for disrupting pirate's abilities to play the game by smothering them with a barrage of bichrome attacks that often completely bury their board - leaving them unable to act.

Due to the fast playstyle of a saber, those bichrome attacks often overlap and leave the receiving player with no choice but to play fast enough to get the critical clear all while having to maintain connection between the pieces.

Getting a fitting breaker for the bichrome board under constant attacks may take a lot of turns and often results in a onesided game:

The defending player can't counter attack.
The saber user can keep pressuring their board.

Getting the breaker almost always results in a forced clear and -unless combo'd massively - often deals little to no damage and is very easy to predict.

Unfortunately, its very common that the breaker comes too late or not at all, resulting in a premature death with a fully gem'd board and 0 counterplay.

The saber is packed with an insanely strong middle strike and astronomically good alternating sprinkles in 4 of its columns. Especially those sprinkles make the saber incredibly deadly, even moreso if the board is in an uneven state. They are disjointed by nature and losing access to a connected & organized center column often means even further reliance on bichrome breakers. While the massive corner strikes are weak, the small corner strikes do their job - they cut off the bichrome colors by introducing a new color.

The non reversed saber is a lot stronger than a reversed saber: It sends the non-dominant bichrome color as sprinkles in the center and in its middle strike, thus completely shutting down an easy connection of pieces. The reversed saber sends mainly monochrome colors - the sprinkles are easy to connect and the middle strike is very weak if small.

The saber can also be a very effective team swordfighting weapon. Teammates using complementary colors can attack with patterns that are very difficult to clear. While this can be said of any sword, the effect is much more pronounced with the saber since each pattern of sword is generally only weak to one colored breaker, whereas most swords are weak to two or more. This tactic was first employed with success by Jacktheblack's team, Saber Dance, during OCL Team Brawl Season 5.

Using a saber is generally very frowned upon and pirates will actively go out of their way to boot saber users from their tables, even in team swordfights. As a matter of fact, it was even banned in all of the competitive OSL tournaments due to its poor gameplay experience.

Pattern overview Note: Previewing the non-reversed version. Reversing the sword mirrors the pattern.
Sprinkle attack	Middle Strike	Corner Strike
A small sprinkle attack	A small strike (2x4)	A small dual strike (2x4 + 2x4)
A medium sprinkle attack	A medium strike (2x6)	A medium dual strike (2x6 + 2x6)
A massive sprinkle attack	A massive strike (2x12)	A massive dual strike (2x12 + 2x12)
Sword Damage Note: Greatly varies based on board state
Single sword (small)	Middle Duals (small)	Corner Duals (small)
Single sword (big)	Middle Duals (big)	Corner Duals (big)