Puzzle Pirates: Swordfighting

In swordfighting pairs of blocks come down from the top, ala Dr Mario. You stack the blocks up and every now and then you'll get swords, known as breakers, that correspond to the color of the blocks.
Touch breaker to block and they shatter, disappear, and your opponent gets hit.

The key is in two things: Building, and combos.
Building means putting your little blocks together in large squares and rectangles to make big blocks. When broken, these drop swords on your opponent which they can't get rid of for three turns, since they must wait for them to turn back into blocks.

Combos are when you stack breakers on top of your blocks so that, when you break one block, a breaker will fall on another, breaking it as well. Combos not only send more attacks at the same time, but the raise the power of your attack, so even more is dropped on your opponent.

Example pictures soon to come for the visual learners.

Your sprinkle pattern is made up of the bottom row of your sword's attack pattern. At the start of your fight, you want to get a good idea of what your opponent's sprinkle pattern is.

Then, as you're building, align your blocks with that pattern.
They have red on the left, blue in the middle, green on the right? (A stick...) Then put your colors in the corresponding places. This makes it so when their big attacks come down, they're not as damaging to you.
Now, instead of totally disrupting your work, they minorly disrupt it, while adding blocks of the colors you're working with to your pile.
Properly done, this can turn their big combo into your big combo.

New players usually have a lot of confusion over the effect that different swords have on your swordfighting game. They usually think "Bigger sword = Bigger attacks."
This is wrong. Very wrong.

When you hover your mouse over a sword in the shop, you'll see a pattern of blocks. That is the pattern that your attacks turn into once they turn into blocks.

You want a pattern that isn't easy for your opponent to break and send right back at you. You also need to keep in mind your play style. If you sprinkle a lot, you want a sword that has a complicated bottom two rows, as that is the sprinkle pattern. If you do big, long swords, you want a pattern that doesn't have many blocks lining up vertically.