Bomb Tower

Bomb Tower is a 4-Elixir Rare building that targets only ground troops, firing splash-damage bombs at a 6-tile range with an unusually fast first strike (0.5s) followed by a slower 1.8s cycle, and it self-destructs after its 30-second lifetime or when its 1,356 HP (level 11) is depleted. Its signature mechanic is a "death bomb": on destruction it drops a bomb that detonates roughly 3 seconds later and deals splash damage to BOTH air and ground units in a 3-tile radius — a wider hitbox and broader targeting than the tower's own live attacks, making it one of the few ways a purely ground-targeting building can still punish flying troops. The card has been reworked multiple times since its January 2016 release: an August 2018 update cut its Elixir cost from 5 to 4 alongside lifetime and HP nerfs; a March 2019 update then introduced the death-bomb mechanic for the very first time — Bomb Tower previously had no death-drop at all and was, in Supercell's own words, "not a reasonable defensive choice" — with that new death bomb dealing 2x normal damage; and a 2021 update reportedly halved that death damage to its current 1x value (this last figure rests on a single, currently unreachable secondary source and remains formally unresolved, see below).

• Bomb Tower costs 4 Elixir to deploy.

• At level 11 (tournament standard), Bomb Tower has 1,356 hitpoints, losing an average of 45.2 HP/sec of exposure to its own decay-free lifetime timer (i.e. that figure is the published HP-lost-per-second-of-lifetime stat, not a decay mechanic).

• At level 11, Bomb Tower deals 222 damage per hit (123 damage/sec, given the 1.8s hit speed) with each shot splashing in a 1.5-tile radius around the target.

• Bomb Tower's normal attacks target Ground only (it cannot hit flying troops with its regular hits), has a 6-tile range, a slow 1.8-second hit speed, but an unusually fast 0.5-second first-hit speed (its opening shot fires much sooner than a full attack cycle after it locks onto a target), a 1-second deploy time, a 500 projectile speed, and a 30-second lifetime after which it self-destructs.

• When Bomb Tower is destroyed (by damage or by its 30-second lifetime expiring), it drops a bomb on the ground that explodes about 3 seconds later, dealing 222 death damage (equal to one normal hit, at level 11) in a 3-tile splash radius — and critically, unlike the tower's live attacks, this death-bomb explosion can hit BOTH air and ground troops caught in the blast, not just ground units.

• On 6 August 2018, Supercell's balance update decreased Bomb Tower's Elixir cost from 5 to 4, while simultaneously nerfing it by shortening its lifetime from 40 to 35 seconds and cutting its hitpoints by 33% — a cost-for-power tradeoff.

• On or around 4 March 2019, Supercell added the death-bomb mechanic to Bomb Tower for the first time — this mechanic did not exist before this patch: on destruction the tower would newly drop a bomb dealing 2x its normal attack as area damage, giving the previously roleless card a defensive niche as a trap against ground swarms that it had not had up to that point.

• In the 2021 Q1 balance update (~30 March 2021), Bomb Tower's death-bomb damage was cut by 50%, specifically to reduce the "universal defender" pattern of plopping a Bomb Tower into any lane to auto-answer a push.