Ice Shards (BTD5)

"Creates razor sharp pieces of ice on frozen bloons that, when they pop, fly out and pop more bloons."

- BTD5 description

Ice Shards is the 3rd upgrade on Path 2 for the Ice Tower. The upgrade adds a small attack speed buff to the Ice Tower, and Bloons that are frozen by this tower have sharp ice shards embedded in the bloon layer, so that when a bloon is popped or thawed, five shards from the bloon fly out in a specific formation, popping additional bloons, including frozen ones (except in BTDB Flash due to a nerf). A bloon being popped by snap freeze counts, so ice shards come out upon freezing. In addition, the Ice Tower can refreeze the same bloon more than once, on both Flash and Mobile versions of the games.

Ice Shards can damage MOAB class bloons, whites and zebras, and frozen bloons. However they cannot damage lead bloons, D.D.T.s or the Dreadbloon outside of being nearby a Monkey Intelligence Bureau.

Strategy
This tower is something of a high risk, high reward option. On one hand, the tower's abiltiy lets it destroy tons of bloons in an instant, even destroying most M.O.A.B.s if they're close enough to the shards.

In BTD5, it is possible to horde masses of bloons with one 1/3 Ice Shards and then unleash the masses of shards with one upgrade to the Snap Freeze upgrade. Either that or a 2/3 Ice Shards can immediately shred down massive bloon rushes.

Version History (BTDB Mobile)
Due to its massive potential for extreme popping power, its price was increased as a result.

Ice Shards cost increased ($2000 --> $2800)
 * 6.6

Trivia

 * If under certain conditions: (under a x-3 monkey village and having an arctic wind slowing the bloons) ice shards can have infinite popping power. This is because the nature of ice shards (5 shards per frozen bloon) the popping power will always be 5x the amount of bloons on screen (not RBE) this is not normally shown in gameplay due to the fast nature of the game and the ice shards not being able to pop everything but due to the conditions mentioned above it can be shown to even destroy BFBs
 * This method only requires lots of bloons on screen and is not effective against M.O.A.B. class bloons on its own.
 * If many bloons are frozen by an Ice Tower with this upgrade, it will usually slow the game performance to a crawl, sometimes enough to make Flash Player or the app crash.
 * Ice shards can pop bloons even if Snap Freeze is not purchased. However, if Snap Freeze is bought all frozen bloons will automatically shoot out ice shards when frozen.
 * Glue Hose with Corrosive Glue or Super Monkey with Laser Vision, combined with Ice Shards makes a great duo.
 * On higher rounds, this tower can be lethal, setting off huge bursts of shards which can clean out hundreds, even thousands of bloons. However, this tower comes at the price of possibly causing extreme lag to the player's device.
 * This upgrade is very useful for rounds with huge rushes of bloons like round 63, 76, 78 and 79, and especially regen rushes.
 * The monkey, upon being upgraded to Ice Shards, will hold up its fists and slam them together when freezing bloons.
 * Despite the shards not popping lead, when a Lead Bloon is affected by a 2/3 Ice Monkey, the Lead Bloon can sometimes be completely popped. Has been tested in BMC Mobile on a Snow Terrain.
 * This slightly increased freeze time from this upgrade to the point that a 1/3 Ice Tower can permanently freeze bloons in place, despite this not being mentioned on the upgrade description.
 * This can be seen by putting a 1/3 Ice Tower and comparing it to a 1/2 Ice Tower.
 * In the Bloons Tower Defense Battles main menu, the tower appears to be smiling.
 * In Bloons Monkey City, Ice Shards are the only way Ice Monkeys can damage M.O.A.B.s.