Bloons Card Storm glossary

This is a list of terminology pertaining to Bloons Card Storm.

In-game terminology

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Active Ability
A Hero Ability that requires the player to manually activate it at the cost of a certain amount of Bloontonium.
Add
To generate a temporary copy of a card that disappears at the end of a match. For example, Arcane Master adds a Yellow Bloon to the owner's hand.
Adjacent
A friendly Monkey in the space directly next to a Monkey on its left or right side (as in Monkey Village or Radar Scanner Village).
Ammo
A resource representing the number of times a Monkey can attack before it needs to reload.
ATK
The amount of damage a Monkey deals with its attack to a Bloon. Originally referred to as "Attack Power" or "AP", but was renamed in version 4.4 to avoid confusion with Armor Piercing.
Attack
This term has multiple definitions:
  • A Monkey hitting a Bloon, damaging it (except in certain cases, e.g. an attacking Monkey's ATK is 0). Some card effects depend on a Monkey making an attack.
  • A Bloon sending itself to the opponent's Hero, destroying itself and damaging the Hero.
Attacks Twice
An effect of Missile Launcher and Robo Monkey that causes it to attack the target Bloon twice when the player declares an attack with it, while only consuming one ammo.
Bloon
A category of card that is played in a queue, attacking the Hero once it reaches 0 delay and the player's turn ends (barring effects such as ARBITR).
Bloontonium
A resource gained primarily by playing Bloons that most Hero Abilities and some Power cards require in order to play.
Board
The set of spaces a player can place Monkeys or Bloons onto. The set of Bloon spaces is also referred to as the "track".
Can't Attack
A property of a Monkey that indicates it cannot attack and has no ATK (treated as zero ATK by cards like Bed Time) or reload stat.
Card
A playable entity with statistics. A card is stored onto the player's deck and hand, and consumed after it is played.
Controller / owner
The player whose board a card is placed on. There does not appear to be a distinction between a controller and owner (Emboldened Bloon uses "control", while Return to Sender uses "owner", but they refer to the same concept).
Cost
The amount of Gold or Bloontonium a card or Hero Ability requires to play and consumes when played.
Damage
This term has multiple meanings:
  • The amount of health that a Bloon loses from a Monkey, Hero, Power, or card effect.
  • The amount of health that a Hero loses from a Bloon or Power.
Deck
This term has multiple definitions:
  • A player's total cards, which they bring to a match.
  • A player's set of all their cards left to draw during a match.
Delay
The amount of turns that a Bloon has before it's able to attack the Hero, barring any additional card effects.
Destroy
To remove a Bloon via popping or leaking. All non-Undead Bloons that were destroyed go to the Graveyard.
Does not attack normally
A property of a Monkey that indicates the card can attack, but the player cannot control when or what it attacks.
Draw
This term has two meanings:
  • An action that adds a card from the player's deck to their hand. Most drawing actions draw the top card(s) of the player's deck to their hand, such as the draw that occurs at the start of each turn, but some actions can search for and draw specific kinds of cards.
  • An end-of-game state in which both players have reached a win condition at the same time (i.e. both players' Heroes have 0 or less health). The game considers it a lose condition for both players.
Economy
The base amount of Gold the player earns at the start of their turn, represented by a number on top of a green coin.
Effect
A modification to intrinsic gameplay mechanics by a card, Hero Ability, map, or some other modifier. For example, an attack from a Monkey is an intrinsic mechanic of the game, but Alchemist Monkey has an effect that causes its attack to additionally place an Acid Pool. All Powers and Hero Abilities have at least one effect, and all keywords are either effects themselves or describe conditions under which an effect triggers.
Enemy
A card the opponent controls.
Friendly
A card the player controls.
Gold
Currency during a match, which most cards require spending in order to play.
Gold spent
Indicates that the cost of the card is equal to the player's current Gold. All cards with this term have an effect that depends on how much Gold was spent to play them.
Graveyard
A list of Bloons that were destroyed throughout the game. This is important for cards such as Reinflated, which draw from this pool.
Hand
The player's current set of playable cards. A player can only hold up to 8 cards in the hand at a time.
Heal
An action that restores the health of a Hero or Bloon, but cannot raise the target's health above its maximum health. Actions that can raise health above the normal amount are usually referred to as "gaining <x> health" in descriptive text, and they usually also raise the target's maximum health for the purposes of healing.
Health
This term has multiple meanings:
  • The amount of damage a Bloon can sustain, causing it to pop if it reaches zero, and the amount of damage it deals when it leaks.
  • The amount of damage a Hero can sustain, causing the player to lose if it reaches zero.
Hero
A playable character that has special abilities that require or cost Bloontonium, and is capable of equipping cards unique to them.
Hero Ability
Leak
To allow a Bloon to hit the opposing Hero, destroying the Bloon in the process.
Map
A playing field for Heroes to play Monkeys and Bloons, with additional game conditions (e.g. +5 Bloon Health on Dark Castle, +2 starting Gold on High Finance) that are unique to the map.
Match
Max ammo
The maximum amount of non-temporary ammo a Monkey can hold at a time, and the amount of ammo it gains when it reloads.
Monkey
A category of card that is played onto an available space to attack Bloons, or assist defense and/or offense.
Opponent
The opposing player, who is always placed at the right of the map.
Passive Ability
A Hero Ability that triggers its effects automatically as long as that Hero's Bloontonium is at or above a specific threshold.
Play
Player
Pop
To destroy a Bloon by reducing its health to 0 with damage.
Power
A category of card that only has an effect and no placeable unit.
Random
Indicates that the game chooses the target of an effect using random number generation.
Rarity

A quality of a card that determines its Token crafting cost and Card Pack rates. Some cards have effects that depend on the rarity of other cards.

Reload
This term has multiple meanings:
  • Re-supplying ammo to a Monkey, automatically or by a card effect. Some cards have an effect that depends on reloading.
  • The amount of turns required to automatically reload (e.g. "1 reload").
Remove
Replace
To place a Monkey on a space already occupied by another Monkey, removing the latter from play.
Return
To move a card in play to the owner's hand (e.g. Return to Sender or Salvation).
Round
Space
A slot on a board that the owner's Monkeys and Bloons occupy. Each player has five Monkey spaces and eight Bloon spaces under normal circumstances.
Storm
A game mechanic that summons Bloons and stuns Monkeys on certain turns.
Summon
An action that creates a Bloon, such as a player playing a Bloon card or the Storm generating a Bloon. Originally referred to as "spawning" in in-game text, but all instances of it were replaced with "summoning" (or other conjugations of the word) in version 2.2.
Target
Turn
Veto
To reroll a randomly selected map before the match starts.

Keywords

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Main article: Keyword

Keywords are terms that describe specific effects or trigger conditions of effects.

Jargon

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Players (and, occasionally, patch notes or official decks) commonly use these terms. However, they are not used within gameplay-related text, such as card descriptions or Hero Ability descriptions.

Aggro
The process of immediately and constantly applying pressure to an opponent with Bloons before their defense is established. Aggro usually sets out to kill the opponent before they can establish control of the board, and tends to use low-delay Bloons like Yellow Bloon to put on immediate pressure.
Bait
A play that forces or goads the opponent to respond in a specific way, such as playing a weaker Bloon to get the opponent to use all their ammo on it, then playing stronger Bloons on the next turn to make it harder for the opponent to defend. This term does not describe an archetype, but can describe the purpose of specific Bloons in decks (Such as a tempo deck running Swarm Yellow Bloon to bait Super Monkey Storm.)
Bounce
Another word for return.
Brick
Cards which are held in hand for an extended period of time without a way or reason to use them, thus taking up space in a player's hand. Bricks are often categorized for having either very conditional ways to play them that are infrequent, costing loads of money, or having high charges combined with high prices.
Burn
A playstyle that focuses on chipping the opponent's health with cards that are difficult to prevent damage from, like Bloon Strike and Pink Bloon. Burn decks often can be similar to Aggro decks, but are differentiated due to their higher focus on cards with instant damage.
Control
The process of eliminating as many opposing threats as efficiently as possible to ensure they are unable to react to threats in later rounds, or run out of cards in their deck. Control decks often have many Monkeys and Powers to ensure their opponents cannot kill them before or while in the lategame.
Deck out
The lose condition where a player starts their turn with zero cards remaining in their deck.
Finisher
A card that acts as a way to reduce an opponent's remaining health to 0 by itself, such as Pink Bloon or Quick Ready.
Hit face
Another word for leaking.
Midrange
A playstyle that focuses on winning in the mid-game by surviving early-game aggro decks and beating control decks before they can set up their main defenses.
Mirror
A match where both players have very similar decks or playstyles.
Mulligan
The act of discarding a card from the player's hand, returning it to the deck, and drawing a new card. Each player can mulligan a card in their starting hand up to three times before the first turn.
OtK / OTK
Short for "one-turn kill", meaning reducing the opponent's health from full to 0 in one turn. OTK decks commonly run Bloons such as Double Yellow Bloon with cards like Quincy Action Figure to set up OTKs. OTK decks also are not necessarily slow, as some OTK decks will go faster than others.
Power creep
The general trend of newer cards outclassing older cards.
Stall
The act of slowing the opponent's progress. This often involves cards that increase Bloon delay, such as Slowing Bloon and Glue Storm, though it can also include cards like Red Bloon Apopalypse that prevent the opponent from performing actions for a few turns.
Tech
Cards run in a player's deck solely to counter an opposing deck, rather than increasing the effectiveness of a player's own deck.
Tempo
The process of getting high value out of offensive and defensive cards to create a snowballing effect and win the game by having higher stats than the opponent. Cards like Banana Farm are often used to gain gold and stat leads on the opponent.
Tutor
A card that draws specific cards from the player's deck to their hand (e.g. Monkey Investigator tutors Bloon cards).

Common aliases and abbreviations

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