Tsar Bomba

"A very, very large bomb. Someone put a stop to craziness!"

- BTD6

Tsar Bomba is the final upgrade of Path 2 for the Monkey Ace in BTD6. It grants the upgraded Monkey Ace with an improved version of the Ground Zero ability. The improved Tsar Bomba ability creates a much more damaging explosion that does 3,000 damage to up to 5000 bloons closest to the center of the Ace's runway, additionally stunning all damaged Bloons excluding the BAD (which can't be stunned at all) for 8.2 seconds. Cooldown for the Tsar Bomba is 35 seconds upon activation, 10 seconds less compared to Ground Zero. Initial cooldown is also reduced from 15s to 5s.

In addition to an improved ability, Tsar Bomba regular bomb attacks now can pop any bloon type.

It costs $25,500 on Easy, $30,000 on Medium, $32,400 on Hard, and $36,000 on Impoppable.

Appearance
Tsar Bomba is a large grey monoplane with two propellers on each wing, a black aircraft tip, a single black stripe at the front end of both wings, and its wing emblems are blue circles with yellow edges. Overall, it resembles most closely to the Tupolev Tu-95. Its nuke is now a much larger red nuke that briefly flashes red upon detonation.

Costs

 * Updated as of Version 30.0

Summary
The Tsar Bomba can be used to clear hyperdense clumps of MOABs, BFBs, and Super Ceramics, including their Fortified variants, in just a single ability use, especially during Round 94, 96 and 98. One use of the ability can also destroy Round 99, as it pops Fortified DDTs instantly, and can act as an emergency button in earlier late game. However, multiple Ground Zeroes are usually sufficient to combat most hyperdense rounds for a slightly lower cost, with exception of Fortified BFBs, while 2 Ground Zeroes outclass Tsar Bomba at eliminating Round 95 effectively.

The majority of the Tsar Bomba's power comes from its ability; because of this, effective stalling strategies should be made in order to optimize its large-scale damage. Tsar Bomba' stun is useful for stalling down surviving ZOMGs and can deal high-scale crowd control. Tsar Bomba normally shines the best on custom challenges such as 2TC or 2MPC, but is still useful outside of those.

Tips

 * Delay using it as much as possible to ensure as many bloons are hit by its ability while still keeping only a few blimps untouched. There is good reason to intentionally let a few blimps survive; this can stall out the round to refresh the cooldown of the ability.
 * Also keep in mind, the ability itself has a 0.7-second delay when deploying.
 * An interesting trick to keeping only one ZOMG is to use Pat Fusty's Big Squeeze ability on the ZOMG to "protect" the ZOMG. This will grant at least 4 seconds of extra uptime of the ability.
 * Because the ability has an arbitrarily high pierce, it's not at all necessary to worry about the ability reaching the pierce cap, even on Race Events.
 * The Tsar Bomba deals with whole rounds by instantly killing almost all bloons in a single click, so if your strategy seems to have a few unpassable rounds that are far enough for the Tsar Bomba to clear each of them, you may consider using the Tsar Bomba on those rounds.
 * Do note that this instance may be rare to come by in normal games. This is far more prominent in custom challenges (e.g. community-made 2MPC and 2TC combos).
 * Like Ground Zero, use the 1-5-0 Tsar Bomba rather than the 0-5-1 for its main attacks, although 0-5-0 Tsar Bomba is sufficient because the main point of Tsar Bomba is for its ability. The only Tier 2 crosspath that is worth mentioning is 0-5-2, as Centered Path grants access to central flight pathing and a new style of micromanagement of the plane itself.
 * The majority of the Tsar Bomba's damage potential comes from its ability. As such, optimizing stalling strategies is key. If not comfortable with timing abilities, alternatives such as Apache Prime or Sky Shredder are available, but Tsar is much more powerful when used correctly, and its true power does not rely on external buffs.

Bugs

 * Bug Reports
 * [21.0] There was a bug during Version 21.0, the update when the Tsar Bomba ability received a slightly reduced ability cooldown, where purchasing any crosspath decreased cooldown by 5 seconds. Therefore, with any Tier 2 crosspath, its ability cooldown was decreased to 30 seconds. [fixed]


 * Bug Fixes
 * [22.0] Tsar Bomba ability cooldown bug fixed.

Sounds
When activating Tsar Bomba Ability:
 * [Explosion]

Trivia

 * The upgrade's name is a reference to the Soviet Union nuclear bomb Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive weapon ever detonated.
 * The Tsar Bomba ability icon is the same icon as the artwork of the upgrade.
 * The plane for the Tsar Bomba most likely appears to be the Tupolev Tu-95.
 * This BBC news coverage about the Tsar Bomba explosion has more information about the plane that dropped the real-life Tsar Bomba.
 * Several 2TC combos with Tsar Bomba were possible before the bug concerning the Tsar Bomba's ability cooldown was fixed, mostly because Tsar Bomba could deal enough damage to take down the BAD when paired with another suitable anti-MOAB damage tower.
 * The first 2TCC (2 Towers Co-Op CHIMPS) with two of the same tower belongs to Tsar Bomba + Tsar Bomba. This does not count as 2TC (2 Towers CHIMPS), as Monkey Ace is not affordable at Round 6 on CHIMPS Mode, so Co-Op Mode starting cash was required to make this combo work. Link.
 * The 2TCC combo Tsar + Ground Zero was also done before this.
 * Along with Homeland Defense, it is one of the two abilities that create a flash effect when activated.