Sabre Team

Sabre Team

Title: Walkthrough v1.00 for Sabre Team (PC)

Contents:

Introduction
Embassy Siege
Jungle POW
War Games
Liner Hijack
Missile Guidance
Cheats
Running
Credits


Introduction

The most important information is you do not need a walkthrough to beat this
game because it is so easy compared to X-COM or even Laser Squad. For example
the enemy does not have opportunity fire whereas you have. And it is not
opportunity fire anyway but opportunity move, meaning you can also just walk
for shelter instead of shooting for example.

Well, I am not saying your operatives cannot be shot down, for they can be,
and wounds are just as bad as being killed because there is an AP penalty.
Completing a mission with a soldier with 10 AP initial is no fun. It is
better to load game. You can save your game before every turn and you should.

Sabre Team is some kind of arcade game. I call arcade games the ones we used
to play on game machines saying insert coin. It endlessly rotates start, the
missions, and the end. You can stop it by pressing Ctrl+Alt+q and return to
DOS or by closing the DOS Box window.

You can set the difficulty and the language but you cannot set off the awful
background music. I did not notice a difference in easy and hard mode, maybe
because there is not any. The game is not difficult in hard, so I recommend
you to set it hard lest you find the game disappointing easy. I cannot
understand why the game has any language because it has not too much to say.
There are weapons called such as M16A2, and the game functions are
manipulated by icons. The mission briefings are awful in any language because
of the awful letters; you cannot tell H from K, A from R, and the like.
Thanks to the terrorists of the world and the news channels, everybody knows
what is going on in Sabre Team missions and what to do: kill the bad guys and
save the good guys.

After briefing, you have to select your operative squad. You have an initial
team of eight from which you may select one to four guys. I recommend to
choose Roderick and Teather for their good weapon skill and Ramo and Adamson
for their decent AP and leave the rest at home to keep the Sabre Team
headquarters clean and the refrigerator full.

You have a decent stock of equipment but after a little time of playing you
are going to find out as I did you just need the lightest firearm and a clip.
You do not really have to fiddle about with gas grenades, bullet proof
jackets, and stuff. The 2 kg MP5K and the 9 mm x30 clip are the way to go.
Unfortunately there is only three but you can find weapons at the dead bodies
of bad guys, so you can get the missing one. And you have to pick up any item
you want even if you complete the mission; this is not X-COM.


Embassy Siege

Four operatives are far too few to have an outdoor sniper, so I recommend to
place each guy the closest to the entry. You may have to select gun and load
it. Try to shoot to see. When everyone is ready, enter the building. Do not
fear, the first room is clear, but you should close the two doors if they are
open. The most frustrating thing in Sabre Team is when the bad guy shows up
in the doorway and your operative can hit only the door frame. And here comes
immediately the description of my successful tactics. I stall a while at a
closed door. Each turn I open it, look, close it, and wait. When the bad guy
shows up in the other room, I wait until he gets close. When he is close
enough, I just walk up and put a deadly bullet in him just like it was a
toffee in the mouth, so close. I noticed you have to do about three faraway
hits to stretch the enemy whereas a close one appears always deadly. When the
target is far away, that means three or more squares of distance (come on,
this is just a game!), you should do an aimed shot. When the target is on the
adjacent square, a snap shot is just as sure as an aimed one. An aimed shot
costs six action points and a snap shot costs three APs. Therefore you should
consider to walk up to your target if you have three APs left for the toffee
shot. Now that is why I recommend Ramo and Adamson, they are the toffee
dealers. I usually have them comb the buildings and the other two cover them.

Another important note on shooting is you should always choose one bullet to
shoot because you get no discount AP for going tak-tak-tak. You just lose
precious ammo and more precious AP when the target has been stretched.

I have not yet find out how to scroll the isometric perspective, so when I
want to look around in a room, I click on the shoot icon and then I can
scroll it by the cross-hairs and the right button of the mouse. When I have
finished looking, I just select a spot out of line of fire or select zero
bullets to shoot. In the Embassy you have to look around a lot, because
there are many connecting rooms and doors. You have to comb every room
carefully not to miss a hostage or not to have a bad guy attack your back.
This is an uneasy method of the recce. You can look at the map but on the
expense of the APs of your men.

The building of the Embassy can be walk around inside. I recommend to split
your squad and go to right and left, and you are probably going to complete
the mission when the 2x2 meet again. You do not have to hurry. When you find
a hostage, walk up to him, then you get a scene. After that you have control
over the guy. If you have combed the place the way I advised, you can just
make the hostage walk out alone safely. Whereas the bad guys do a hostage
no harm, they kill him when he is under your control. When the hostage hits
the street, you get another scene, then that hostage is saved. And do not
leave closed doors behind because the hostage can only walk.

You get scores for killing bad guys and taking a mission objective. You get
250 and 500 points for a bad guy and 5000 for a saved hostage or a destroyed
object. Sabre Team was surely made for greedy people, for the scores could
have been 1, 2, and 20. So you can imagine the rewards can be some sort of
currency. 5000 sounds good in cash, doesn't it?

You can abort mission by pressing Esc. Then you go back to briefing and the
bad guys you have killed so far come back from hell and the hostages you have
saved get captured again, only the toffees do not return in the clips. Still,
there can be good reasons to restart a mission, but do abortions not too many
times.

You are automatically a winner if all the four hostages have walked out. It
is not going to be this easy everytime. It may happen you just stretch all of
the bad guys before the hostages can hit the street. They are about a dozen.


Jungle POW

Now this mission is harder for sure. This is a camp site with distances and
obstacles, so shooting is difficult. I recommend to give at least one op some
other weapon instead of the 200 m MP5K. I noticed they shoot better with the
600 m M16A2. You do not have to bring the Accuracy rifle, Roderick is just
fine with the M16A2. Less weight and more ammo.

The barracks have few guards, however, the game often sends reinforcements to
entertain you. These new comers usually lurk outside of the barbed wire fence
making the hostages' escape difficult. This means the splitting does not work
this time. Roderick and Teather always have to cover the toffee dealers and
the hostages.


War Games

This mission is really a relief. You have to deal with distant bad guys only
in the entrance. Your entry is easier than your exit is going to be. Two
sentries in the gate-box is there to eliminate as you cannot check in. One
way is to shoot them from far, but I recommend to place your operatives on
the right close to the building out of sight. Then Ramo or Adamson can walk
to the window and say hello to the sentries.

Your job indoors is even easier. You can split your squad or even have single
men in search for the confetti-machines. You can easily deal with the guards
by the toffee-tactics. The confetti-machine spits confetti only when you
insert coin... er... bullet. It needs one bullet for the confetti-cough, and
it needs three bullets for the 5000 credits of the imaginary currency. I mean
it is destroyed when you are told it is destroyed. The first time I thought
I destroyed it and had to go back through that damned labyrinth to destroy it
really.

The difficulty in this mission is the maziness. And while you are doing your
job inside, the game keeps sending reinforcements who patiently wait on your
return outside. I strongly recommend to reunite your squad before you leave
the maze and exit mission with the four men at the same turn. You can expect
four or five guys at least whom you have to defeat by distant shots as the
only choice.


Liner Hijack

This mission gave me the feeling I was playing Terror from the Deep, a ship
rescue mission. However, this is far easier than hunting down Bio-Drone
Terrorists who quickly make a ghost ship out of the Terror Site-1 if I am
not a superhuman. Well, you do not have to be a superhuman now, for the bad
guys do not kill the sailors.

You just have to eliminate all the bad guys. You have to comb the ship for
them, and you have to comb it very well otherwise you have to do it again
if you miss a closet and the hiding pirate.


Missile Guidance

This is almost the same as the Jungle POW without hostages, therefore easier.
The difficulty here may be the numbers of the guards. But if you are careful
enough, this difficulty by numbers remains just numbers. I recommend to bring
M16A2 for everyone or even Accuracy International too because you have to
shoot a lot and even the buildings are like hangars, that means long range
shots. No toffee today.


Cheats

You can shoot like the queen in chess. Aim the adjacent square and do a snap
shot. The bullet flies and hits accurately in line. It is not as easy as in
Laser Squad, especially the diagonal directions, but if you want to be a real
chicken, you can step a few squares here and there and do a 100% accurate
distant shot in the expense of three APs. You can hit only the sighted guys;
even if they are on the squares in the way, the bullet just passes invisible
guys.


Running

This game does not run properly on my machine under DOS. Maybe it cannot run
properly on modern machines, they may be too fast for it. So I recommend to
run it in DOS Box.


Credits

This walkthrough is by Csaba Borjati, 2010.

You must not make profit or any kind of earning by using this document.
GameFAQs is granted to host this document. Neoseeker is granted to post this
document. Everybody is granted to use this document for personal gaming
purpose. Any other publications are not granted.

Sabre Team is by Krisalis Software Ltd.

Sabre Team is currently abandonware, it can be found at Abandonia for one,
where download is free.

Laser Squad is by Krisalis Software Ltd., a very similar game.

X-COM Enemy Unknown (aka. UFO Defense) and Terror from the Deep is by Mythos
Games and Microprose.

That's all, folks!