Best Surge Decks and Strategy Guide

Surge will kick off new Series 5 cards joining Marvel Snap for the May 2025 Season, New X-Men. It is a 2-Cost, 2 Power card that reads: On Reveal: Give the top card of your deck -1 Cost and +1 Power. After you play it, repeat this ability. Today, we take a deeper look at the new card and the best decks to try it out in.

Series 5 cards can be purchased for 6,000 Collector’s Tokens from the Token Shop as the latest Seasonal Spotlight card. They will be also be included in the Seasonal Series 5 Snap Pack for 5,000 Collector’s Tokens during their season and the following one.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Surge can easily be regarded as one of those unbalanced cards: Mighty powerful in the right situation, but pretty useless otherwise. Obviously, when played on turn two, Surge can be looked at as a better Phastos, making your game plan about playing the card you draw every turn to keep the -1 Cost and +1 Power going from a card to another. When that happens, one could consider Surge as a [-2/6] card, having granted four Power while saving you four energies.

This obvious strength comes with Surge losing appeal with every turn that passes. It could remain a fine play on turn three or four, on the condition you have a way to use your remaining Energy and play the card you draw next. Yet, as soon as turn two is gone, Surge‘s window of opportunity might have closed already.

For now, let’s focus on this ideal situation: It is turn two, you play Surge. What do we want to draw next?

The way Surge works, the ability isn’t transferred to the card on top of our deck. Instead, playing said card will trigger Surge once again, as if she just revealed. This means we can synergize Surge with Wong if we play it after Surge, while Absorbing Man would simply copy her text like it does for any On Reveal card.

Logically, this also means playing Red Guardian or Cosmo on Surge will prevent her from repeating her ability when we play cards affected by her buff.

As always with this type of ability then, we can expect some gimmicky decks to emerge, and be met with appropriate counter cards. These interactions will likely represent the first days of Surge gameplay, until the stronger, or least reliable combinations take over.

4-Cost cards

Surge wants us to play the card we draw each turn to keep the ball rolling. On turn three, unless we mix the card from the top of our deck with one in our hand, nothing beats a discounted 4-cost card. Plus, we’ve had plenty of time to experiment with Zabu to know which ones are best. Here, the only difference is Shang-Chi or Enchantress as counter cards basically not making much sense to include, as we typically don’t want to play them that early.

Easy to play when drawn

Once again, Surge wants us to play the card we just drew, meaning cards we can slam on the board without considering it too much are ideal to repeat the ability.

The Thanos Infinity Stones are great candidates for the role, but so will be cheap cards we can play without caring about their situational impact. 1-cost cards will be free when affected by Surge, so the likes of Hydra Bob or Nightcrawler can be played immediately, just as points for free.

We could aim for bigger things with Mockingbird, but this implies we are running a deck able to quickly discount it, while we played Surge on turn two. Apart from Thanos, I don’t see many candidates for the role.

The earlier, the better

One extra Power is good, but the Energy discount is really what makes Surge a potential powerhouse. Indeed, cards have a cost for a reason, and breaking their intended play patterns often results in a big power spike for them.

Sera on turn four compared to turn five gives us a lot more flexibility, same for Nimrod as we get an entire extra turn to destroy it. Storm on turn three compared to turn four makes it really difficult for the opponent to compete there, same for Professor X on four. Lastly, Namora a turn earlier means we’ve had to play fewer cards up until this point, so it should be easier to have one card only on two locations.

I am sure there are more cards fitting these ideas, and the more we’ll find, the better Surge will be. Indeed, while we could throw her in a Thanos deck as another strong 2-cost, and I’m sure some incredible deck builder will do so and call it a day. It is through finding unique pairings for Surge that the card will avoid being compared to the other excellent 2-cost cards we have at our disposal.

The Verdict: Should You Buy Surge?

At the moment, the 2-cost card slot is extremely competitive, with a particular card taking a slot in most decks, on top of many archetypes already having their favorites. Then, although I feel like Surge on turn two can be Snap worthy on most occasions, it is hard to recommend it as an immediate purchase due to how competitive the game currently is for 2-cost cards.

My opinion is that Surge will likely be a good card, probably a star in the right deck. I expect it to become a great ally to Zabu, as both cards seem to entice us to run many 4-costs in our deck. However, there are so many strong cards available at the moment, a player on a budget might want to hold on, check out the early results, and then make a decision about Surge.

The card is worth its price, be it 5,000 Collector’s Tokens through the Snap Pack or 6,000 tokens from the shop. What I am questioning is whether we need Surge, or if it will simply be another great 2-cost amongst the ton of options we have already. Plus, the fact Cosmo and Red Guardian can stop it, both cards being very simple to slot in a variety of decks, limits Surge‘s potential quite a bit.

Pre-Release Score:

Surge Decks

Deckbuilding at its finest here.

Kazoo is a textbook archetype aimed at playing cards every turn. Only Gilgamesh feels like a bad hit.

There are more bad hits in this one, but Surge not only gives us something similar to Hope Summers through the energy discount, she also allows us to skip directly to our 4-cost cards at time.

Bounced cards don’t function with Surge, but there is another interaction I find hilarious here. First, Mill is part of those decks looking to find some sort of Energy cheating in order to gain explosive patterns. Then, how unfortunate would it be if you stole or destroyed the card your opponent just buffed with Surge?

It also feels like a good time to mention Surge is an indirect buff to Silver Sable, as your opponent is kind of forced to play the impacted card to keep their loop going.

Makkari and Copycat might not be good targets for Surge, but we can easily replace them with Rocket and Groot and Red Guardian if need be. Otherwise, this is the most basic Silver Surfer deck you can think of: Draw a card impacted by Surge not named Surfer? Play it!

Very similar idea here, as our goal is just to create huge Power cards and play like Shang-Chi and Shadow King have not been released yet!

Variants

Conclusion

If you just look at Surge and her potential when played on turn two, the card is a no-brainer future star. Once, you factor in Cosmo and Red Guardian, you start to see how Surge might be quickly met with annoying cards able to limit her contribution. Last, it is important to consider Surge loses a lot of appeal past turn two, making it a very timing based card.

Overall, I feel like there is enough for me to want Surge in my collection, and I’m willing to spend tokens for that. Yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if Surge wasn’t as good as many people expected. As such, I recommend those on a budget to wait a couple of days before pulling the trigger if you are only considering Surge because you heard it was going to rock Marvel Snap.

I hope this review of the new card was helpful. You can find everyone on the Marvel Snap Zone team in our community discord to have a chat or ask any questions.

Good Game Everyone!