December 23, 2009: Dice City Roller and Aces Up

Aces Up Challenge
Pilot Wings Badge
Serve 500 customers this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

Play Buddy has a great bot in Aces Up Buddy - as my extra 3,791 tokens can attest to - but during the 1 hour 43 minutes it took to complete the badge, I noticed a few little buggies that could make this bot even more of a flying ace. For instance, one time-waster was a loop that the Buddy would get stuck in when it ran out of moves; sometimes it would keep pressing "undo move" time and time and time and time again. So if you happen to see this, you can complete the badge faster just by clicking new game on behalf of the bot. Similarly, sometimes in those "dead end" game scenarios, you can see the dead end on the board before the Buddy does... starting a new game immediately at that time also speeds up the process.

Dice City Roller Challenge
Slice and Dice Badge
Correctly place 350 dice this week! (Finish the game to check your progress.)
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

Sadly no Play Buddy for this game, but at least the game was pretty fun and easy! So first off, bid for extra dice if you're playing the auction round, but I highly recommend playing the "No Auction" option since it goes a lot faster. I started out with the auction verson, not immediately realizing there was a no auction version and this definitely contributed a chunk of time to the 42 minutes it took to complete the challenge. Once I was in the no auction room, the dice count sped up noticeably and at the end of it all I earned an extra 1,937 tokens.

WARNING: You must get through all 4 quarters before you're awarded the final dice count.

December 16, 2009: Makeover Madness and Canasta

Canasta Challenge
Hooray Beret Badge
Make 25 Canastas this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

Thanks to Canasta Buddy I CAN CANASTA! Honestly, I never knew what a canasta was, let alone how to get one so thank goodness for this canasta Pogo cheat. And actually, now I have a pretty good idea about how this game is played, thanks to my helper. Anywho, on to the juicy badge challenge details...

If I had known how to play and had been paying closer attention at the start of the challenge, I could have reduced the 57 minutes it took to achieve this badge (but hey, can't shake a stick at the appealing 6,346 extra tokens I won in addition to the challenge token bonus!). HOW?! You ask? Well, I had "meld cards immediately" checked under options and during Canasta Buddy's play, I noticed that it would use a 2 and joker wild cards to make a meld with cards in my hand (ex. I have 244777 in my hand so it selects ALL the cards to meld, applying the 2 to the 4's) but I'd place it with cards that were already melded, to increase my canastas (ex. I have KKKKK already melded, so instead of using the 2 in the prior example to go with the 4's, I apply the 2 to the KKKKK instead).

Final comment: remember to play against a computer robot, as they are easier and faster to beat (and is only 1 player instead of the group canasta games that you can play).

Makeover Madness Challenge
You're Gonna Make It Afterall Badge
Serve 500 customers this week!
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

Ahhhh, for a while there I forgot how nice it is to have a Play Buddy. And now this week it's back to two (YAY!). I love love LOVE that Makeover Buddy was available - I shudder to think how long this badge would have taken me on my own - as I wrapped this challenge up in 24 minutes with an extra 1,198 tokens. Make sure to put the difficulty level on "Holy Cow" because you get a whole room full of seats and clients, and Makeover Buddy is able to handle it all. I watched, mesmorized, at how game pieces were flying around the room and customers were zooming out of their chairs... it really is remarkable, especially considering my bumbling struggle with three chairs / customers on the easy level! Anyway, the challenge flew by and was a breeze thanks to my Buddy.

December 9, 2009: Lottso! Express and MONOPOLY

The Lottso! Express Challenge

Express Yourself Badge
Reach the fourth goal 6 times this week!
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

Sadly, no Lottso express Play Buddy to be my partner in crime this week (although there is a really awesome Lottso! pogo cheat available). And WHAT A SURPRISE from Pogo! The badge on the game page and badge challenge page says that you need to reach the 4th goal 6 times BUT after exactly 2 HOURS of playing (and 6,178 tokens) later, the green text that displays the progress in the chat room said I had reached 6 out of 15 4th goals! And once you log out of the game and return to the badge area, it says "COMPLETED" after the 6, even though the "badge complete" does not pop up and you don't receive the extra 3,000 bonus tokens. Of course who knows with this Pogo glitch... is it truly completed after 6 or did it suddenly change to 15, I dunno. As I was completing the MONOPOLY badge, Pogo put an announcement of this issue in the chat room but it had not yet been resolved.

At any rate, I did discover that it's helpful to get the big Lottso card early in the game like goal 1 or 2 so you have time to fill it up. It gave over 800 points on average, which is a significant amount more than the single cards which would give me around 60 points on average. HOWEVER it's hard to fill that large card up when you're running out of balls to play, so stick to the single cards later into the game. Also, get at least 1 bonus ball on the single cards so ya get 1.5x extra... do 2 balls if you can spare them since that gives 2x bonus.

BTW, to make things move even faster, start a new game as soon as the green sign pops up saying you've reached the 4th goal; even though you're prompted with a "are you sure you want to start a new game? All of your credit will be lost" your 4th goal accomplishment IS counted towards the badge.

MONOPOLY Badge Challenge

Monopolizing Badge
Roll doubles 15 times this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

The bad news: be prepared to have your butt kicked by robots and watch everyone get doubles except for you!
The good news: this is an easy no-brainer challenge... just requires you to keep clicking "roll" and cross your fingers and hope for the best (and while there isn't a PB Monopoly Buddy yet, I did see one for Monopoly Slots)!

WARNING: even when you make your 15 doubles, do NOT stand up in the middle of the game; Pogo doesn't say this, but the doubles are counted up only at the end of games so you have to complete the entire game even if you get your 15th double on turn 1 of the game like I did (I had to learn the hard lesson... thought "great! Now I'll leave since I know I have 15 doubles!" WRONG!). By learning from my mistake, you'll likely complete the challenge faster than my 1 hour 32 minutes. And if you're really lucky, you'll beat my extra 2,120 tokens too!

Helpful ways to make this challenge go by faster are to:

1. Play against robots (they're much faster than humans)
2. Checkmark "Speedy Dialogs"
3. Buy everything when you land on it (otherwise auction has to transpire)
4. Reject all offers (otherwise have to transpire through that process)

December 2, 2009: Word Search Daily and BATTLESHIP

The Word Search Daily Challenge

Winter Search Badge
Find 120 words this week!
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens

And as Heidi Klum would say... "One day you're in, and the next day you're out." Last week I had a Play Buddy to help with every challenge and this week *poof*. No Buddies. *sad face*. Anyway... at least this game was fun (in my opinion). Now, on to the challenge details.

Three words: PLAY ON EASY! I started this challenge on medium and while medium provides more words at once, it's not easy finding all of those words and it took a lot of time. On average my puzzles took over 5 minutes when on medium; switching to easy I was breezing through 'em like Super Woman. To solve the puzzle even faster, do what I did: use the HINT feature. You can use the hint (that's right, ya only get one hint for the whole puzzle) and the word will still count towards the badge. I suggest using my strategy of saving the hint until you've solved all but 2 or 3 of the words. If you can't find them in a few short seconds, blast that hint on the shortest word since those are harder to find than longer ones.

PLAYER BEWARE: the "Random" puzzles don't count towards the badge. Unfortunately for me it took a couple of those to figure it out. So, all in all, my 34 minute finish with an extra 1,266 tokens was well done indeed... especially towards the end - I figure I did as well as any bot could on my last few puzzles! ;0)

BATTLESHIP Badge Challenge

Direct Hit! Badge
Get 300 hits this week!
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens

45 minutes into this badge and I realized WHY I LOVE Buddies, and why - if it weren't for them - I'd have pulled out all my hair and quit Pogo games a long time ago! LOL This was a doozie at 1 hour 33 minutes of blasting ships out of the water and receiving a doozie of an extra 6,903 tokens in the process. Thankfully I was playing against the computer robot which is MUCH easier to beat than a human player, and on the basic game (NOT classic which lets you shoot only once per turn... oh goodness that would take years!). Basic math will tell you that if you win the game, you're closer to clearing the 300 hits than if you're losing the game. So definitely DEFINITELY play against the helpful robots for this challenge.

Some strategy for winning: go for the powerup squares on your first move to get an advantage; I placed a hit in 3 different squares, trying to get a powerup AND hit a target simultaneously. Try to get a powerup almost every turn, especially if you're not hitting / sinking targets. BUT SAVE 2 POWERUPS! If things get desperate (i.e. computer sinks 2 of your ships) OR if you're close to winning but can't find the last ship, this is when you hit BOTH powerup squares so that you can get 2 powerups at once which turn into the heat seeking missles (i.e. your sure-fire win).

Oh please Play Buddy... what I want for Christmas is a Battleship Buddy before the next Battleship challenge!