Advanced Tactics for Candy Crush Saga
How to make colour bombs
by Adrian Gardner
Elsewhere on this site you'll find the basics for making specials / combos.
READ THEM FIRST
These are much more complex tips for Candy Crush Saga and may not make sense otherwise!!!!
(you have been warned!!)
By far the most powerful special is the Colour Bomb - on it's own it can "simplify" the board (making creating further colour bombs possible!) ... swapped with a stripe it can do lots of damage (but gives relatively few points) and with a wrap it can score lots of points (but does less damage).
As such, these tips cover creating colour bombs from less obvious boards but many of the techniques can also help make wraps, and stripes etc...
(Let's call it:) The "Snake":
Here you have most of a line of 5 green, just one end (let's call it the head!) is out of place ... making any combination that moves the head down just one place will work, but moving the red down ...
... will drop the blue above it down, making a line of three blues ...
... which will, in turn, drop the green "head" into it's required place ...
... so that you can make a colour bomb with your next move!
Note: It's this sort of combo-move that you need to be really good at this game ... ie where one move by you does lots of things, scores lots of points, eats lots of jelly (etc etc) ... AND either results in a special or (as in this case) sets one up!
ALSO note that when you do bring the green down to make the special (colour bomb) it will also self-destruct because the green stripe will detonate and (being horizontal) will hit the "new" colour bomb!
The Less Obvious Drop ...
Most people realise that you can set up for a (in this example, red) colour bomb by dropping the missing "middle" piece down, for example by making the 3x blue (below) the red will fall just right to make the red bomb in the forth column (ie just above the existing bomb)...
but sometimes a less obvious approach is to drop the 4 candies down to the missing piece ...
In the above picture, if you make the set of three purples in the centre column the 4 blues higher up the centre column will drop down so the "gap" (here, the orange) ends up next to the needed middle piece ...
Note that in this particular example you could (by luck!) have also got a second colour bomb if the highlighted red (above) had happened to have been a purple - but this is not as unlikely as you may think: there are only 5 colours on this level, so that's a 20% chance of a purple falling into the correct place AND another 20% chance of one falling directly above the highlighted red (plus smaller probabilities of other combinations which, ultimately, could have allowed another colour bomb to be created). Again playing the probabilities is all part of becoming an expert at this game!
The "M"
Again, most people will recognise this picture as being one move away from setting up a colour bomb ...
... where you make the line-of-three purples which, in turn, drop the three blues down to make the right-hand half of your potential blue colour bomb.
However, a less obvious, but just as useful position is the "M" shape ...
Here, you can do a similar thing and drop the middle three down ... in this case by making the green 3x at the bottom ... giving you ...
The Vertical Drop
If you look at this layout ...
... using the colour bomb on the green will eliminate all the greens on the board and (since the most recent changes in the way the game works) will see the five reds in the centre column of the picture "fall" down together to form a vertical line of 5 reds and, therefore, create a new colour bomb!
The Horizontal Drop
This is a more complicated pattern to spot, especially on boards with lots of colours ... but if you look at this picture ...
If you use the colour bomb on either red (above or below it) you'll remove all the reds (starred) - and therefore drop the left and right columns down ... to the following ...
... allowing another (green) colour bomb to be created!
The Missing Link
Here we have the makings of a colour bomb, but with no easy way to find the missing blue above the gap ... but there is a blue below, but a row too far down ... however if you play the marked yellow up then the horizontal striped yellow will remove this row ...
... leaving you able to make your colour bomb!
The Less Obvious Choice
If we ignore the existing colour bomb for the moment ... one of the more obvious choices below is to make the blue stripe as highlighted ...
However if you make the less obvious move shown below, you will set up a purple colour bomb instead!
Playing the Odds
If you have the following line of 4x greens but "missing" the centre one it's almost always worth making that centre column of 3x purples ...
... whilst there are six colours on this board, there are actually three acceptable positions for a green to fall into - just above and just below plus a direct hit ... so that's around a 50:50 chance of you getting a colour bomb in the next move or two.
On a 4 colour level the odds rise significantly but so does the chance of some unexpected match also happening which spoils your attempt to set up the colour bomb - but it's still worth it!
Too Much Choice?
If you are lucky enough to have the following pattern ...
I'd always take the option of creating the blue colour bomb as there is a chance (see above re "Playing the Odds"!) that the in-fill could also make the purple one! (besides, in this example by taking the blue you'll be left with a colour bomb right next to the wrapped green - lots of points!!!)
Conclusion ...
This should have shown you a number of alternative ways to view a board ... whilst a lot of the examples shown above are quite rare, quite a few are actually found just falling into place. However, even if they don't, quite often you can make one or two moves to set up one of these layouts.
And, although I've used Colour Bombs as my main theme here, a lot of the techniques will let you make other specials (such as wrapped and striped candies!).
Good Luck!