Meet Surge — the mutant battery with serious voltage issues. She’s basically a walking lightning rod with a shocking personality. Her powers include sucking up every bit of electricity nearby, from power lines to your poor phone's last 5%. Even static shocks from door knobs aren't safe.
Once she’s charged up, she unleashes that electricity with bolts that’d make even Wolverine body hair stand. What happens if she absorbs too much juice? She turns into a human energy drink — jittery, rambling at lightning speed — basically like a toddler that just had an accidental first sip of coffee.
Thankfully, she wears special gauntlets that work like energy Tupperware, storing the extra zap so she doesn’t jitter like an angry chihuahua all day. Not canon but her second mutation is avoiding frizzy hair. She joins the New X-Men and becomes a vital part of the team together with the other mutants we’re going to meet during this season.
Current-ly Obsessed!
Surge is here to kickstart your plays into powerful bombshells. She is a 2-Cost 2-Power card with the On-Reveal effect of amping up the card on top of your deck with a -1 Cost and a +1 Power. And if you play the Surged card, It will trigger her effect again, meaning that you can keep that current going all the way to the end of the game with multiple discounts and power-ups.
Hazardous Voltage
Before going forward let me explain some technicalities. Surge doesn’t apply an On-Reveal effect to the card on top of the deck to keep the chain reaction going. That effect is all part of Surge’s power, meaning that if something were to happen to Surge, like she gets destroyed or has her text removed, the chain reaction would be over. She is quite similar to Firehair in that regard. Also, if your deck gets shuffled around, it is quite possible that Surge does absolutely nothing at all during the game because you might not draw the Surged card.
Stay grounded and be careful with these cards and effects:
Shocking Synergies
Keep in mind that If you’re playing Surge, more often than not, you want to follow her up with the card on top of the deck. To do so reliably, we need to play cards that are cheaper than 5 to keep the current going, and aren’t focused on countering what your opponent is doing. Let’s take that into consideration when we’re deckbuilding with her. Although almost every card in the game would benefit from her buff, the most important aspect of Surge is keeping the chain reaction, let’s see some archetypes that could work greatly with her.
Surfer is an archetype that is always hungry for discount and extra power, the archetype tried so many times to slot in Phastos without any lasting success. I do believe that Surge’s cheaper cost will make her the last piece needed for the archetype. The archetype keeps changing around but stables like Brood, Sera, Sebastian Shaw and the newcomer Captain Carter would be greatly improved by being Surged up.
Agent Venom archetype is powerful and consists of cards that cost 3 at maximum, that is simply perfect to play Surge in. There is no fixed list but we more often than not see cards that are cheap and have low power. Conduct your Thena, Havok, Sage, Cassandra, Adam Warlock, and Bast to powerful turns of positive charges. We could elevate the ceiling of the deck needed by slotting in cards like Iron Man and White Tiger if needed.
It's no joke how powerful Thanos is right now. I believe his deck gets better with Surge’s power in the mix. With the Stones getting extra power, your Strange Supreme might be even more Supreme than usual. However, some games you’ll hit Alioth or Mockingbird and the current will stop right there. Perhaps we could replace those two to make the list more Surge friendly?
Handbuff is an archetype that has been skirting around the meta for a while now. With Surge, the archetype might finally take off. All cards want to be played when drawn as they focus on making power without any restrictions and they will be vastly improved with Surge’s effect. Kahhori, Galacta, and Gwenpool are key cards of the archetype and Surge could overclock them into the field earlier than usual. Hit your extra Power into Scarlet Spider, Mister Sinister, and even the Brood for some truly menacing boards.
Dualglove’s Day One Surge Decks
Thunderwave
The obvious answer if you’re looking to try out Surge. She’ll be great in this list and I believe it's going to elevate the archetype quite a lot. If you want to play Esme Cuckoo together with Surge, this might be the best list for the duo. As for how to play, prioritize Surge and her chain reaction unless it hits Silver Surfer as he is needed for that endgame swing. Absorbing man is the most complex card in this list as he can be used for any number of powerful On-Reveal effects we got.
Grounded Power
This selection of curated cards were meticulously chosen to make big power with a low cost. Bast and Agent Venom fix the issue of our low base power found in the list. With Surge here, you’ll be able to play more cards without any effort. If the meta dictates, we can make a heavier list with Iron Man leading the charge as a card that would be greatly buffed.
Charged up Stones
He is kind of inevitable. Thanos is back on top and I believe Surge can elevate him even higher. Make the stones even more powerful and cheaper with nice zap to draw more cards and to consolidate even more power into Strange’s greedy hands. Shang and Alioth are the cards that don’t fit quite well with Surge’s ambition. So perhaps it might be a good idea to look for subs. My suggestion would be Galacta and Kahhori.
Toxic Blue
I love decks like these. Will be dragging down your opponents cards by throwing a bunch of afflictions their way. Surge will make your cards deadlier and cheaper than usual, the only card here that we truly do not want to play is High Evolutionary, but I wouldn’t mind playing a 3-Cost 8-Powered card. Mind you, he really is worth here to get Abomination cheap for a surprise last turn play. Miles might seem weird at first but we have three different ways to move cards to get his discount into play. Ajax and Laufey are the powerhouses and the big finishers of this list. Careful with Mobius.
Jittery Moon
Did you know that I love Victoria Hand? I want to play Surge together with my favorite skirt suit wearer from all Marvel. As always, Surge is priority number 1 to get on the board, unless you get Victoria hand and Frigga to follow her up for a great combination of power. Moon Girl your powerful ongoings and discounts for a powerful last couple of turns and you’ll be set. This deck is quite versatile, if you believe you don’t need Cosmos protection, you could replace him for Speed. I also want to test out Esme on a list like this, but for starters this is the list.
Variants
Surge is arriving with two amazing variants! Their style is quite different and I don’t know which one I prefer the most. She is a stylish X-Men with blue hair so she’ll probably have way more options in the future, just wait a bit if neither of these two strike your fancy.
Final Thoughts
I believe that Surge will be a great addition to any collection, she seems awesome and isn’t restrictive about which cards to play with. I say with confidence that I will grab her on day one and I’ll be trying her out during my climb after the season reset. If you’re struggling for resources, I’d suggest to feel the waters for a bit, see what the community thinks of Surge and then decide if you’d like to have her be a part of your collection. Of course, with the new Snap Pack system, she’ll be available in Seasonal Series 5 Packs for this Season and the next, after that, you’ll find her on Collector’s Packs together with Every series 5 that you don’t own.