User:Polavux/Strategy:Bloons Card Storm

This article was last updated for: version 4.2

Card roles

• Board clears: cards that damage all of the opponent's Bloons, like Spike Storm!, Super Monkey Storm, Thunder Druid, Accident at the Lab, and Firestorm. Almost every viable deck is going to run at least a few of these.
• Scalers: Monkeys that get stronger over time, like the Wizard Monkey, Spike-o-Pult, and Heart of Vengeance Druid. Typically run in control decks to allow ample time for them to scale.
• Card draw: cards that draw other cards without targeting specific kinds of cards. This includes Powers like Supply Drop, Restock, and Archer's Instinct, as well as card-drawing Bloons like Black Bloons, White Bloons, and Zebra Bloons.
• Tutors: cards designed to draw specific kinds of cards from a deck, such as Signal Bloon, Bloon Reinforcements!, and Rare Power. Decks using these will typically be set up so the tutors will always draw specific cards (e.g. Extractor Bloons being the only Basic Bloons in a deck running Reinforcements).
• Removal: cards that remove or move a Monkey or Bloon, such as Expert Negotiator, Bed Time, Shrink, Return to Sender, Bloon Redirect, and Bloonsday Device. Often run by midrange and control decks to stop the opponent from outlasting with high-value Monkeys and Bloons.
• Finishers: cards designed to finish off an opponent at low health when the opportunity comes, such as Pink Bloons, Quick Ready, Bloon Strike, and Hastening Bloons. Often run in aggro and midrange decks with Bloon-boosting cards like Double Trouble and Fortify.
• Stallers: cards designed to slow down the opponent, such as Red Bloon Apopalypse, Glue Storm, Slowing Bloon, and Powerful Slowing Totem.
• Protection: cards that protect the Hero from damage, such as Defenders, Hero Protection, and Corvus Academy of Arts, to prevent one turn kills.

Deck archetypes

Aggro

Aggro is all about winning as fast as possible. Aggro decks focus primarily on sending bloons often, and only utilizing Monkeys and defensive Powers to leverage against an opponent's aggro push. Some aggro decks don't even use Monkeys at all, just to have enough variety of bloons. Bloon-boosting cards such as Booster Bloon, Fortify, and Bloon Embiggen are commonly picked alongside lots of Bloons worth 3 or less Gold, and will often pick Pink Bloons and/or Bloon Strike for finishers if the opponent's health is critically low. Aggro decks are almost never designed to last past Round 6.

The most common Heroes for this archetype are Zee Jay, who buffs the first of his bloons sent per round, Quincy, for his cheap and flexible defenses as his Bloontonium grows from sending bloons, and Amelia, with her Bloon Shield reducing bloon damage and her discounting Act of Power aiding bloon combos.

Control

This section is incomplete. You can help out by expanding it. The editor who added this notice did not specify a reason.

Control is all about outlasting the opponent over many rounds. Control decks often passively build up their resources early on, and only spend on defense if threatened by bloons. Many control decks involve a lot of expensive cards. They'll only equip enough Bloons to gather enough Bloontonium throughout the game, and may contain plenty of expensive Monkeys to handle mid-to-lategame aggression, as well as removals to weaken the opponent's side. However, most control decks are weak to aggro decks, which have plenty of cheap offensive cards that attack faster than it would take to afford the majority of expensive cards from control decks.

Obyn Greenfoot and Adora tend to be the most common Heroes for control decks. Obyn has various methods of building massive shield, protecting very well against most OTKs. Adora builds most of her power in early stages to reach max orbs, and may frequently utilize Sun Shield to protect against leaking Bloons, while still capable of surviving against the Storm's Pinks.

Midrange

Midrange decks, as the name implies, lie between aggro and control. They focus on surviving the earlygame Bloon spam from aggro players and attacking in the midgame before control players can fully set up. The most common Heroes for this archetype are Adora, who uses Sun Shield to prevent OTKs and Ultimate Sacrifice to weaken lategame Bloons, and Gwendolin, who uses Heat It Up / Firestorm to defend in the earlygame and Flame Strike / It's All On Fire Now + Extreme Heat to eliminate stronger Bloons from control decks. These decks typically run a few cheap attacking Monkeys to handle aggro, like Dart Monkey Twins, Burny Stuff Mortar, and Tack Shooter, but few to no expensive attackers. Support Monkeys like Monkey Investigator, Cash Drop Sniper, and Banana Farm are used to build pushes in the midgame. In addition to the usual board clearers to handle aggro, midrange decks typically handle control with Quick Ready / Hastening Bloon as finishers and Return to Sender to counter scaling Monkeys and Bloons. Some may run Ability Ban specifically to counter Adora.

Tempo decks are midrange decks that focus on applying constant pressure to the opponent throughout the whole game. These decks threaten the opponent with cards like MOABs and Steady Growth Bloons that encourage the opponent to attack them instead of the tempo player, draining their resources while allowing the tempo player to keep spending resources on applying pressure. These decks tend to be weak to hard removal, like Bloonsday Device or Bloon Redirect. The most common tempo Hero is Zee Jay, who can increase the health of one Bloon each turn for free and can generate Rad Bloons that give him more resources the longer they stay in play.

Combo

This section is incomplete. You can help out by expanding it. The editor who added this notice elaborates: Combo is making combinations with multiple cards? Mention OTK combo? Mention combo aggro (e.g. bolstered, embiggen, etc.)? Mention more combo cards, including those Eternal-specific decks?

Combo decks are variants of aggro, midrange, or control decks that focus on using specific combinations of cards to their fullest potential.

The most common kind of combo deck is a OTK (one turn kill) deck, which focuses on winning the game in a single turn with no prior setup. Cards like Quick Ready and Double Trouble allow a deck to apply a lot of sudden damage on a single Bloon with a lot of health, like a Bolstered Bloon (aggro) or The Eternal (midrange or control), while cards like Bloon Embiggen and Ceramic Glazing Kiln work better for swarms of Pink Bloons and Setup Bloons.

Deck-building

The most important element of building a deck is having a specific gameplan in mind. Not all viable decks fall into an archetype, but many do because they have clear plans for setting up wins that they can consistently execute. The key is not to pick cards just because they are good in a vacuum, but to pick cards that can execute a plan and/or work with other cards in your deck. For example, Pink Bloons are good cards, but they are rarely useful in control decks that are built to win in the late game by pushing large Bloons, and will often be wastes of card draws in those decks. Control decks will want to run cards that can enable those large Bloon pushes in the end, like scalers, removal, and board clears.

It is important to consider the number of copies of each card in a deck. More copies means a card can be drawn more consistently, but also that it is more likely to be drawn when you don't need it. In general:

• Run one copy of cards you never want multiple of.
• Run two copies of cards you typically want only one of, but can work with two (e.g. Barrel of Monkeys).
• Run three copies of cards you want multiple copies of in most games (e.g. Spike Storm!), or cards that can't be tutored that are required for specific setups (e.g. Bloon Embiggen).
• For even more consistency, decks often run multiple copies of different cards with the same role. For example, lategame decks will typically carry multiple copies of both MOABs and BFBs.