Best Surge Decks In Marvel Snap

Marvel Snap's May 2025 season opens the doors to aspiring and gifted students to better understand themselves and their mutant abilities as the New X-Men joins the growing roster of heroes (and villains) on the battlefield. With Stepford Cuckoo sibling, Esme Cuckoo, the Season Pass card for the month, the first card available through the new card acquisition system, is the electrifying Noriko Ashida / Surge.

Surge looks to shock opponents with her electric gameplay and card ability, allowing Snappers to "cheat" out a card fairly early during the game and gain an advantage over their opponents. We'll be explaining everything about Surge, including a deep dive into the card's ability, previewing her best synergies and top counters, and providing three decks to try out Surge in Marvel Snap.

Marvel Snap Surge Card Abilities Explained:

Japanese-born Noriko Ashida gained her mutant abilities at birth, where she can absorb electricity and discharge or manifest it into highly combustible speed bursts, which she utilizes to defend fellow mutants. However, her father dismissed that mutants live amongst humans, forcing her to flee Japan for the United States, where she had a tough time controlling her abilities with prescription drugs until she sought help at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

Following an unfortunate accident where she discharged her electrical powers, which saw fellow X-Institute student Josh Foley / Elixir tracking her down and Laurie Collins / Wallflower using her power to soothe her, they learn of her moniker, Surge as Henry "Hank" McCoy / Beast devised a set of gauntlets to allow her to control her power better. Surge eventually remains at the Xavier Institute, joining the New Mutants, and for this new Marvel Snap season, she joins fellow New X-Men members on the battlefield.

As a Series 5 card, Surge is a two-Cost and two Power card with an On Reveal ability to give the top deck card -1 Cost and +1 Power, which this ability repeats after that top deck card is played. With this card, particularly, there is a snowball effect where Surge can be played almost repeatedly with her synergistic cards like Grandmaster, Absorbing Man, Beast, and Toxin; the latter cards will bounce Surge back into the hand and at locations like Bar Sinister, Kamar-Taj, and Valhalla.

Surge can be countered by Cosmo if attempting to bounce the card back into the hand with Beast or Toxin, or repeat its abilities with Grandmaster or Cable if their opponent gets to draw Surge before they do. As such, Snappers can acquire Surge from the Token Shop for 6,000 Collector's Tokens or from the Seasonal Series 5 (for a limited time) and eventually the Collector's Series 5 Snap Packs, which cost 5,000 and 4,000 Collector's Tokens, respectively.

Best Marvel Snap Surge Decks: Surge n' Buff

Surge's arrival in Marvel Snap allows her to be slotted quite well in various deck archetypes like Bounce, Power Buff, and Tempo decks, especially if paired with certain cards allowing for her ability to be repeated. Power buffing decks are naturally the first home for Surge, given the number of budget-friendly cards available in Series 1 to 4 that synergize with Surge like America Chavez and Okoye.

Our first spotlighted deck, courtesy of Marvel Snap content creator ReZ Snapper, pools in a number of cards that grant power buffs like the aforementioned America Chavez and Okoye. Additionally, Phastos can either give each card within the deck -1 Cost or +2 Power, while Captain Carter is featured in this deck to add her power to the back row cards.

In the first three turns, we can see either America Chavez or Zabu playing with Surge on Turn 2 and the targeted card on Turn 3, which is for Surge's ability to be repeated once that card is played. Okoye and Phastos or Captain Carter can be next on the board with either Lockjaw or Scarlet Spider and Infinity Ultron to close out the remaining turns and hopefully secure a win!

Best Marvel Snap Surge Decks: Surging Tempo Power

The next spotlighted deck is a Tempo-styled deck based on a slightly aggressive playstyle for board control and disrupting their opponent's plays with specific cards. This can be in the form of tech cards that can eliminate or prevent specific card abilities from happening while maintaining an advantage over the game.

This electrifying tempo deck from Marvel Snap content creator Regis Killbin also includes Hope Summers to gain additional energy each turn to play on curve while maintaining location priority. Turn 1 could see either Kitty Pryde or Zabu open the game with Angela, Kate Bishop, or Jeff the Baby Land Shark on Turn 2, with Hope Summers on the Angela location on Turn 3. 

This sets up Kitty Pryde to be played on the Angela/Hope Summers location with Elsa Bloodstone in an adjacent location, or alternatively, Galacta or Gwenpool with Scarlet Spider and one of Kate Bishop's Arrow token cards on Turn 5. The final turn could see Jeff the Baby Land Shark move to swing location priority in their favor with Enchantress to remove Ongoing abilities from the opponent's cards and Kitty Pryde before activating Scarlet Spider for the victory!

Best Marvel Snap Surge Decks: Electric Surfer Boogaloo

Like with our Esme Cuckoo deck guide, Surge's best synergistic home is also the Silver Surfer archetype, with which the card could be paired up with Esme Cuckoo alongside other notable cards. However, this time we won't include Cuckoo in this Surfer deck, especially for Snappers not looking to get the card through the Season Pass, but other cards will be featured in its stead.

This silvery surfin' deck from Marvel Snap content creator Tuccrr sees Zabu played on Turn 1 to discount the four-Cost cards in the deck with Surge in the following turn, so that the targeted card can get onto the board on Turn 3. Alternatively, Captain Carter can join the board on Turn 3 with Brood at Carter's location on Turn 4 and the Surge-targeted card with either Juggernaut or Sebastian Shaw on Turn 5.

Another option is for Galacta on Turn 4 with Sera on Turn 5 to set up the final turn playline with a discounted Enchantress to remove the opponent's Ongoing cards. If they managed to get Zabu and Sera on the board, Sebastian Shaw, Silver Surfer, and Absorbing Man could be the final cards played to get that all-powerful "Victory Screen" at the end of the game.

For more Marvel Snap news, be sure to check out our dedicated section or take a look at some of our Guides & Tutorials just below: