Easy badge is not and has never been broken. I got it in 2008 on this account, and got it today on my other account. Not sure what you are doing wrong…
I find that if you to use a skill and target enemy hero, or cards right in front of the enemy hero asap. He just runs to your side of the field and dies, it makes things a lot easier.
There no reason to every let go of the A key. Just place a rock there. You move faster then the bullets so before each wave try and get as near the front of the screen as you can, then when they appear shoot and try and knock out one or 2 guys in a given lane. From there you can just stay in that lane and slowly move up and down to attack adjacent lanes. If there is crossfire from enemies that shoot at an angle then use your shield.
I think it would be interesting to have hp dependent on cards in your deck would really bring a twist to the normal play. Not saying its a good idea, but it is worth a try.
There needs to be some time limit, as it is you can get a seemingly infinite score by just waiting for it to come near the bottom of the screen. At the very least you should get more points when hitting it when it is farther away.
Your brain is the one that makes those percents seem like a bad deal. The percents on the alchemy lab are correct. If I asked you to if you would bet me $50 that a coin would land on tales, would you take the bet? 50/50 chance and a monetary gain or loss of $50 dollar chances are you wouldn’t. Even though the bet is fair people do not loosing. The average person would only take that bet if the odds were $100 to your $50. That is because loss stays in your mind longer then a gain. The memories of a loss multiply so that your body will remember to not make the same mistake. This means that anything that requires luck will often seem like a fairly bad deal. Even if combining was always a 90% chance your brain would see it as a good deal, but not 9 to 1 good. Your brain would see that and think it is more like a 8 to 2 ratio then a 9 to 1 ratio like it truly is, this is because your brain is being overly cautious.