Round 98

Round 98 is a round in Bloons TD 6. It is the third-to-last round in Impoppable Difficulty and CHIMPS. It is characterized by a dense rush of fortified BFBs accompanied by a smaller but denser group of ZOMGs.

Description
Round 98 begins with the spawning of a continuous stream of fortified BFBs. The ZOMGs spawn right after a few BFBs out of the stream appear, but lag behind due to being slower than the BFBs.

Summary
Round 98 is considered one of the toughest rounds in a CHIMPS game, mainly because there are very few single counters to that round for cheap. Additionally, this round often requires the use of many properly timed abilities in order to obliterate the whole round. Unlike DDT rounds like Round 95 and Round 99, Round 98 is dangerous due to the sheer volume of Super Ceramics (some Fortified) coming out of the blimps that overwhelm unprepared setups. Defenses that excel specifically against relentless streams of super ceramics are necessary to survive.

Additionally, this leads to another major factor that contributes to 98's difficulty, being that Round 99 immediately comes after this round. Many abilities are desirable against 99's Fortified DDTs, but there is next to no time for them to refresh if the abilities are used on 98. If one wants to use a specific ability on both 98 and 99 (such as Bloon Sabotage) stalling is a must.

Countermeasures
Good strategies against Round 98 balance blimp damage with cleanup potential. Strategies that fit such criteria include the following:
 * Master Bomber boosted by 20 Shinobi Tactics
 * Avatar of Wrath boosted with Poplust and Obyn Greenfoot
 * Super Maelstrom + Pat Fusty
 * Grandmaster Ninja boosted by 20 Shinobi Tactics
 * 1-3-0 MOAB Maulers + Level 20 Striker Jones + anti-Ceramic defense
 * Sub Commander and an army of bottom path Monkey Subs
 * Apache Prime + Overclock
 * Sky Shredder + Stronger Stimulant
 * Total Transformation + Druids of Wrath + Poplust
 * XXXL Trap
 * M.A.D

Effective cleanup options include the following:
 * Downdraft, for blowing back Super Ceramics at will allows for direct control over what bloon targets should be interacting with other defenses or not.
 * Arctic Wind slows down Super Ceramics within range, no matter how many of them. Pierce is quite high, allowing it to freeze Super Ceramics in place for other options to clean up the rest.
 * Cryo Cannon freezes Super Ceramics in place quickly for a rather low cost, and can catch them better. Less pierce than 0-1-2 Ice Monkeys, but superior at catching at any range.
 * Perma-Spike is good against the super ceramics, but needs to be paired with blimp attackers to avoid all its spikes being soon exhausted.
 * Bloon Solver can deal with masses of Super Ceramics, but it is not always a viable option because its solvent glue replaces MOAB Glue's blimp slowdown glue.
 * Glaive Lord can also be used to deal with Super Ceramics in the same way as Solver, the only major difference being that proper positioning is the key factor for its cleanup role and not damage-over-time.
 * The Biggest One has very high pierce and enough damage to pop Super Ceramics and lower tier MOABs, making it good for cleanup.
 * Prince of Darkness easily handles and benefits from the large amount of Super Ceramics on this round, allowing its graveyard to be replenished quickly.

Low-cost support options for combating the blimps on Round 98 include:
 * Shattering Shells is one of the best single support counters to this round, although it will only help counter the Fortified BFBs.
 * Unstable Concoction is a useful support tower that can lower the RBE of the round through concoction explosions, but beware of the dense groups of offspring produced from a chain reaction.
 * Groups of 2-0-4 MOAB Press + 0-2-3 MOAB Glue is another cheap counter to Round 98, although this will only deal with the blimps and not for the Super Ceramics. Use another tower to counter the children MOABs and Super Ceramics underneath, such as The Biggest One or Prince of Darkness.

Low-cost support options for combating the Super Ceramics on Round 98 include:
 * Downdraft helps control a select group of Super Ceramics against reaching the exit too soon. Add this if the main defense is too heavy at blimp damage. Plus, Downdraft helps stall rounds out once all the blimps are done with, so ability cooldowns can recharge.
 * Cryo Cannon freezes Super Ceramics in place quickly for a rather low cost, and can catch them better. Less pierce than 0-1-2 Ice Monkeys, but superior at catching from further range.
 * Arctic Wind slows down Super Ceramics within range, no matter how many of them. Slows them down and freezing them in place to reduce speed passing Super Ceramics. Pairing with Downdraft further improves setting back progress of Super Ceramics.
 * 0-1-2 Ice Monkeys, which are cheap and provide efficient Super Ceramic stalling.

Powerful wipeout abilities include the following, but require proper ability timing and stalling to make best out of them:
 * Tsar Bomba ability can guarantee to wipe default-health Fortified BFBs, and stuns ZOMGs. If health of ZOMGs is low enough, it can one-shot them all. Try using it such that all except a few blimps die; intentionally letting a few blimps survive ensures the ability cooldown can refresh as far as possible.
 * Ground Zero can be used to wipe out Fortified MOABs and Super Ceramics, but it may take more than a few ability uses to wipe out Fortified BFBs and higher. Its ability can deal high damage to bloons no matter where the Ace is, provided said ability doesn't reach its arbitrarily high 1000 pierce.
 * Tech Terror's Annihilation ability can wipe out default-health Fortified BFBs with ease and deal with large clumps of Super Ceramics, thanks to the ability's 2500 damage. However, the ability's range is somewhat limited and therefore placement-dependent.
 * Once achieved, Level 20 Psi's Psionic Scream ability can instantly destroy Round 98 in one go with proper timing and positioning. This can be achievable by building up Psi's levels with Energizer in many rounds preceding Round 98.

Additional Tips

 * Don't blow all abilities on this round, because if all abilities on cooldown then Round 99 will likely be death.
 * MOAB Mauler spam does well against the blimp layers, especially when boosted by Striker Jones's level 20 ability. It will need support against the super ceramics, however.
 * If reliant on abilities, make sure to use a 0-1-2 ice monkey stall with 0-3-0 heli pilot to keep super ceramics frozen at the end of a round for abilities to come off cooldown, or use a 4-0-2 Maim MOAB set to Last to permanently stun a Fortified BFB to stall for cooldown.
 * Anti-MOAB-class towers like Armor Piercing Darts and Archmage are notorious for effectively popping MOAB-Class Bloon layers but being almost useless against super ceramics, and having low single target DPS, and as such often can do more harm than good on Round 98. Other DPS options like Perma Charge that can take care of ceramics better and can have more versatility perform better here.
 * Unless the defense is specifically designed to deal with enormous waves of weaker bloons at once, focus on destroying a few blimps at a time, starting with the Fortified BFBs and later each ZOMG at a time.

Trivia

 * Unsurprisingly, Round 98 has the highest amount of RBE of all rounds in a standard Impoppable or CHIMPS game, which uses rounds up to Round 100. The second highest goes to Round 96.