Mortar Tower

"Targets a specific bit of ground anywhere on the screen. Launches explosive mortar shells to that spot. Useful for placing far away from the track to make room for other towers."

- Bloons TD 5 Description

"Targets a specific area of ground over any distance with an explosive attack."

- Bloons TD 4 Description

 is a tower operated by a monkey that attacks slowly by shooting mortar shells at a pre-selected target on the map. It is one of the few towers with infinite attack range. Its target area can be selected by first clicking on the Mortar Tower before clicking on any area on the map you want it to attack. On the Mobile/Steam version, the target can be re-aimed by tapping the tower once, tapping TARGET and then tapping where you want it to aim. It will continue to attack the selected target area every 2-3 seconds.

This tower is effective at bombarding the beginning area to thin out bloons and also when shooting at areas such as U-shaped tracks and in between two close tracks due to its area effect. Once it has its Bloon Buster upgrade, it can destroy two layers of bloons, although it is still ineffective against Black Bloons and Zebra Bloons until it is upgraded to Burny Stuff or The Big One in BTD5, or Heavy Shells or The Big One in BTD6.

Total Costs


Total Costs


Differences Between BTD5 Flash and BTD5 Mobile
Explosions are generally nerfed in mobile, and like the Bomb Tower, the Mortar Tower is no exception to this nerf.
 * Explosions from the Mortar Tower are smaller.
 * If a 3/x Mortar Tower attacks a Rainbow Bloon, it will not be popped down to Black and White Bloons. This happens even if the tower is under the influence of an x/3 Monkey Village.

Update History (Bloons TD Battles Mobile)
Previously, the Mortar Tower was not a popular tower. This was because compared to its flash counterpart, the Mortar Tower had a much smaller blast radius, which drastically hurt its reliability. Over the years, however, it has gained popularity through a set of buffs, particularly with Version 4.1's update, and has now become part of the meta. Even with a somewhat major nerf in Version 4.6, it still remains as one of many popular towers in the game. Popular loadouts include Ninja Farm Mortar, Tack Farm Mortar, and Bomb COBRA Mortar.

Quotes
"Mortar Monkeys can target large areas at any point on the track with increasingly effective bombs. Powerful upgrades include: Burny Stuff, Signal Flare, The Big One, Artillery Battery."

- BMC Flash tower summary of the Mortar Monkey

"Launches explosive mortar shells to a single targeted spot."

- BMC Steam tower description of the Mortar Monkey

Trivia

 * In BTD5, the monkey next to the Mortar Tower when players upgrade to Bloon Buster and The Big One wears the same clothes as the Glue Striker and Glue Hose.
 * In BTD5, after upgrading to Bigger Blast, the explosion will not be heard.
 * In the towers fountain on the main menu, the picture of the Mortar Tower doesn't have smoke coming out of its cannon, but if players click it, the big picture has smoke coming out of its cannon.
 * In Bloons TD 4 this tower can detect camo bloons without upgrades. In BTD5, it won't be able to detect camo bloons without Signal Flare. This is weird because you could clearly see shells hitting bloons.
 * This is one of the three towers in BTD5 that can remove Camo status, with the other two being the Monkey Engineer (only BTD5 Deluxe and all mobile versions) and Monkey Sub (only BTD5 Flash and all mobile version).
 * Even with the Bigger Blast upgrade, sometimes the explosions won't be bigger. That's because the explosion reaches its popping limit before the animation ends.
 * The artwork of an unupgraded Mortar Tower and one with Signal Flare both show the monkey with his fingers in his ears.
 * Bloons with monkey napalm can be frozen and the flame still pops while they are frozen.
 * A 2/4 Mortar Tower under the influence of its specialty building fully upgraded can stun nearly every non-MOAB-class Bloon.
 * Due to the slow-mo in Battles, it is possible to stall MOAB Class Bloons forever by activating the ability as fast as possible.
 * The monkey with closed ears is the same in defense mode image in BTD Battles
 * In Bloons TD 5, on Co-op mode, you can aim it to be set to pop bloons on your ally's side.
 * Although it says that the Pop and Awe ability doesn't affect MOAB Class Bloons, It does stun them for a short amount of time.
 * Mortar Tower is much like the Dartling Gun as it shoots where the player wants it to, however unlike the Dartling Gun, it is not directly controlled by the player.
 * Oddly in BTD4, when upgraded to Bloon Buster, the Mortar Tower and the Monkey's helmet becomes red. When upgraded to Mortar Battery the monkey disappears and the 3 Mortars turn back into green. In Mortar Battery, the Bloon Buster upgrade is not suppressed.
 * In BTD5 mobile, with a tier 4 specialty building, the mortar can be prioritized to first, last, close, or strong like any other BTD tower.
 * The Mortar Tower is one of only 2 towers to have its BTD4 3rd and 4th upgrades to be in completely separate paths in BTD5. A player could have Bloon Buster or Artillery Battery in BTD5, but not both. It shares this trait with the Tack Shooter. In BTD6, Artillery Battery and Bloon Buster can once again be possessed by the same mortar monkey, since Bloon Buster is now a tier 2 upgrade and thus can be attained as a crosspath.
 * In the BTD4 logo and title screen there is a Mortar Monkey.
 * The Mortar tower in BTD4 takes up much less space when placing it than in BTD5.
 * In BTD5 and BMC, its footprint its the shape of its barrel before the tower have been placed.
 * This shows that the mortar in BTD5 only takes up the lower half of the space of the big square..
 * It could aim following mouse by clicking on the tower twice and hold to aim anywhere the mouse is. But this has been patched.
 * The Big One explosion sound is slightly different and has larger boom sound (not louder).
 * The circle in the middle of all "target circles" of the Mortar Tower represents the whole possible areas where the center of the explosion may hit. It may hit closer to or further away from the complete target center, but will not stray away from the target circle in the center. The Increased Accuracy upgrade allows the "target circle" to be smaller and therefore stay shooting around the center of the target.
 * Strangely in the flash version of BMC, it faces at the right side when you try placing it and same applies with the Dartling Gun in BMC Mobile.
 * In BMC, the tower is named Mortar Monkey.
 * In BTD5, the tower will try to pop Camo Bloons by aiming at the Camo Bloons, but in BMC it doesn't until it's upgraded to Signal Flare.
 * There was a bug in BTD5 where you could hold the mouse on set target, which will make the mortar do shots whenever you hold it! However, this has been patched.
 * This tower is one of the 4 towers that were not reinstated in BTD 6 when it launched, the other three being the Bloonchipper, Dartling Gun, and Engineer. However, the Mortar Monkey was added later in the 6.0 update.
 * In BTD5, the Burny Stuff upgrade would apply to black bloons. However, this is no longer the case in BTD6.
 * In BTD5 web and mobile is one of the 3 towers in mobile and one of 3 on web that have 2 upgrades which remove their weakness,in the Mortar's case are black and zebra bloons which are burny stuff and the big one. The other 2 towers are the Bomb Tower with Frag Bombs and Bloon Impact, and Super Monkey with Plasma Blasts and Tech Terror for lead.
 * The Big One slightly increases attack speed in BTD5 Mobile & Steam.