January 20, 2010: Everyone Wins Bingo and Turbo 21

Everyone Wins Bingo Badge Challenge
Frozen Acorn Badge
Pass 100 wilds this week! (Wilds passed to yourself do not count)
Win this badge plus 3000 Tokens!

One word: WOW. And this is in a good way and bad way. LOL Bad is the amount of time the challenge took. Good is the amazing mad skills Play Buddy's auto has. So allow me to elaborate.

One hour and forty three minutes later my EW Bingo Buddy acquired my badge and an additional 2,770 tokens. This challenge was like pulling teeth, and not because of the Buddy but just because it took that long to be able to start passing wilds. Anyway, the good news is that I definitely have some tips for making this challenge go by faster (I use the term lightly LOL).

First open up a 5-card room in the speedy games section.

Second open the Buddy's Options and select the "use wild card for wild bingos only" setting. "WHY?" you ask? Well, quoted from Pogo, "Wild bingos are regular bingos that also pass a wild to another teammate" and the goal of this challenge is to pass wilds. By turning on this option I got the "most wilds" award in 15 out of 17 games!

Lastly also in the Buddy's options, select the "Hold wilds" setting. "WHY?" you ask? Well, this setting is smart because it knows that you can only have 5 wilds held at a time so it will always "spend" the fifth one. Otherwise, it saves all of the wilds until AFTER all the numbers are called. This means that it won't waste a wild on a number that would have been called - only on numbers that weren't called! In other words, it maximizes the amount of wilds you will pass.

ALSO if you're an avid bingo player, this FYI from Pogo might be helpful to you: "If you reach rank 50 in Bingo Luau and Everyone Wins Bingo, you’ll unlock Double Wild Bingo buttons! Double Wild Bingo buttons will appear randomly on your bingo cards; calling a valid bingo with that button will pass two wilds to two different players on your team!"

With all that said, good luck and happy badging!
:)

Turbo 21 Badge Challenge
Convertible Badge
Get 200 Blackjacks this week! (A Blackjack is a 21 with only 2 cards)
Win this badge plus 2000 Tokens!

Ya know, I'm really getting used to Play Buddy providing such an efficient bot for these challenges! 21 Buddy also made it so I could just open it up and let it play - this was one of those challenges where a smart bot combined with the luck of the draw made it so it could be completed only so fast; 1 hour 19 minutes in this case, with a doozie of 16,612 additional tokens for the time and effort. Thankfully the auto was self sufficient as usual so once again I just let it run and occupied my time elsewhere.

On an aside note, I think for this specific badge challenge, it would be nice to have a couple of new options in 21 Buddy such as skipping the time bonus round and purposefully focusing on putting ALL 2-card 21's together, even if it means busting other lanes and getting less tokens. This would save a lot of time, although I'm sure as a result we'd only get a smidgeon of the tokens but hey, that's why they're called "options" right? :)