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Santa's Surprise info
"Ask Santa for the best present there is: a hail of destruction raining down on your enemies!"

Summary

  • The Santa's Surprise Spell creates Santa dropping down explosive presents on a certain area. It essentially serves as a much more powerful Lightning Spell with a larger damage radius, but with much less precision.
  • This spell was introduced during the 2012 winter theme update. When you cast the 2012 version spell, Santa comes and drops bombs in the form of presents on the defending village for a total of 1,500 damage.
  • It returned for the time period around Christmas 2016, albeit with heavily reduced damage, and was the first of three "Clashmas" gifts, the second was the Freeze Trap and the third was the Ice Wizard. It was available from UTC 10:00 23/12/16 through UTC 10:00 6/1/17. It has since made an annual appearance every Christmas period.
  • If Santa's Surprise is used in multiplayer mode, it will generate up to five gifts on the opponent's village. These gifts spawn in a similar way as the tombstones, but each one is worth 5000 Elixir instead of 20.

Offensive Strategy

  • Santa's Surprise functions similarly to the classic Lightning Spell; it does large damage in a large area. A Santa's Surprise does more damage than two (reworked) Lightning Spells at equivalent level (except at Town Hall 12, where it does slightly less).
  • Like the Lightning Spell, Santa's Surprise is most commonly used to eliminate problematic defenses. Two Santa's Surprise spells will take out a Mortar or a Wizard Tower, and three will take out an Air Defense. However, its large area of effect means it is often less reliable than using two Lightning Spells for each Santa's Surprise.
    • However, during the 2022 clashmas, the radius and randomness have been focused to a small area.
  • You can use the Santa's Surprises similarly to other damaging spells to weaken defenses, so that they can be finished off by other things like the Royal Champion's Seeking Shield ability which may be able to destroy defenses that can't be one-shot normally, such as an Inferno Tower.

History

  • This spell prompted Supercell to increase the hit points of the Clan Castle. Players were destroying the Clan Castle with this spell before it could deploy its troops.
  • The spell was available around Christmas 2012, but not on Christmas Day itself.
  • The 2012 version of Santa's Surprise took 1 day and 1 hour to make, which is 25 hours and Christmas is on December 25th. It used to cost 25,000 Gold, like all spells used to.
  • There was a potential cheat to win with the 2012 version of Santa's Surprise. You could use 3 (1,500 x 3 = 4,500) Santa's Surprise spells to K.O. the opponent's Town Hall (at the time, a maxed Town Hall level 9 had 4,200 HP). If Gems were no object, it would be possible to gain significant amounts of Trophies quickly with this strategy (though it would take approximately 522 Gems to immediately brew all three Spells each time, or US$4.10 per attack if bought in bulk, as a chest of gems used to cost $109.99).
  • Watch the Video of Santa's Surprise!
  • Many players had speculated that there would be a chance that Santa's Surprise will come again in December 2013. However, it was not made available in the December 2013 update, which instead implemented the Santa Strike trap.
  • After the 2012 version became unavailable to create, anyone who had created the spell but had not used it would still have it in their Spell Factory. There were continuing reports on the forums (as of May 2013) of people being attacked by Santa's Surprise.
    • The same holds for the 2016 version.
    • If a player has the 2012 version and did not use it at all, it was automatically nerfed to the 2016 version.
  • The spell was added back in 2017 to be available until January 3rd, 2018. It retained its statistics from the 2016 version.
  • The Santa's Surprise made another appearance starting 24/12/18 and was available up to 31/12/18. Due to the introduction of Town Hall 12 in June, and with the damage at maximum Town Hall level unchanged, the statistics for lower Town Hall levels were slightly nerfed as compared to 2017.
  • In 2019 it was re-introduced and it lasted from 23 December until 31 December.
  • In 2020, it made another reappearance shortly after the Winter update that year. Its max damage was increased from 900 to 1,200. It appeared yet again in 2021, where the max damage was unchanged but the statistics were re-scaled for lower Town Hall levels owing to the introduction of Town Hall 14 earlier in the year (as in 2018).
  • In 2022, the spell's max damage was increased to 1,500. The spell was also made more precise in that the randomness of the locations of individual presents was reduced.
Santa

"Santa and his Hogs"

Trivia

Christmas Update - New spell

The 2012 version of Santa, featuring a Barbarian with white hair wearing a Santa hat.

  • Santa's Surprise can't be donated to Clan Castles, due to being temporary.
  • Like all other temporary troops and spells, the Santa's Surprise can't be upgraded in the Laboratory. To calculate the statistics (Health, DPS, etc.) of temporary troops and spells, two factors are considered: the Base Statistic (as seen in the game files) and Town Hall multiplier.
    Each Base Statistic is multiplied by a fixed multiplier for each Town Hall level; the multiplier follows a roughly linear scale. The multiplier is , where is the player's Town Hall level and is the highest Town Hall level at that time. Once the multiplier is applied, the statistic is rounded down to give the final statistic.
    Note that other stats, such as training cost and death damage (if applicable), are not multiplied by the multiplier.
  • The Santa that appears upon using the 2016 version of the spell appears to resemble a Hog Rider. His "reindeer" resemble the Hogs that his brethren ride.
    • The 2012 version of the spell was a Barbarian with white hair instead of yellow. He appears wearing a Santa hat and rides reindeers.
  • Clash of Clans' official YouTube channel released a quick video in 2017 announcing the third release of Santa's Surprise.
  • Both temporary Spells (the Santa's Surprise and Birthday Boom) are the only Spells that do not end in the word "Spell".
  • Both temporary Spells are named with an alliteration.
Radius Radius Random Radius Radius Number of Strikes Number Time Between Strikes Time Housing Space Housing Space Time to Brew Time Spell Factory Level Required Spell Factory
1 tile 4 tiles 5 0.1s 2 6m 1
Level Level Total Damage Damage Damage per Strike Damage Town Hall Level Town Hall
1 750 150 5
2 800 160 6
3 850 170 7
4 900 180 8
5 950 190 9
6 1,000 200 10
7 1,100 220 11
8 1,200 240 12
9 1,300 260 13
10 1,400 280 14
11 1,500 300 15
Home Village Army
Elixir Troops BarbarianArcherGiantGoblinWall BreakerBalloonWizardHealerDragonP.E.K.K.ABaby DragonMinerElectro DragonYeti (Yetimite) • Dragon RiderElectro TitanRoot Rider
Dark Elixir Troops MinionHog RiderValkyrieGolem (Golemite) • Witch (Skeleton) • Lava Hound (Lava Pup) • BowlerIce GolemHeadhunterApprentice Warden
Super Troops Super BarbarianSuper ArcherSuper GiantSneaky GoblinSuper Wall BreakerRocket BalloonSuper WizardSuper DragonInferno DragonSuper MinerSuper MinionSuper Hog Rider (Super HogSuper Rider) • Super ValkyrieSuper Witch (Big Boy) • Ice Hound (Ice Pup) • Super Bowler
Heroes & Hero Equipment Barbarian King: Barbarian PuppetRage VialEarthquake BootsVampstacheGiant Gauntlet
Archer Queen: Archer PuppetInvisibility VialGiant ArrowHealer PuppetFrozen Arrow
Grand Warden: Eternal TomeLife GemRage GemHealing TomeFireball
Royal Champion: Royal GemSeeking ShieldHog Rider PuppetHaste Vial
Elixir Spells Lightning SpellHealing SpellRage SpellJump SpellFreeze SpellClone SpellInvisibility SpellRecall Spell
Dark Spells Poison SpellEarthquake SpellHaste SpellSkeleton Spell (Skeleton) • Bat Spell (Bat) • Overgrowth Spell
Siege Machines Wall WreckerBattle BlimpStone SlammerSiege BarracksLog LauncherFlame FlingerBattle Drill
Pets L.A.S.S.IElectro OwlMighty YakUnicornFrosty (Frostmite) • DiggyPoison LizardPhoenixSpirit Fox
Temporary Contents
Themed Events Mashup MadnessCookie RumbleDragon FestivalSuper Dragon Spotlight
Temporary Troops Ice WizardBattle RamPumpkin BarbarianGiant SkeletonSkeleton BarrelEl PrimoParty WizardRoyal GhostRam RiderBarcherHog WizardLavaloon (Lavaloon Pup) • Witch Golem (SkeletonBig Boy) • C.O.O.K.I.EFirecrackerAzure Dragon
Temporary Spells Santa's SurpriseBirthday BoomBag of Frostmites
Temporary Traps Pumpkin BombSanta StrikeFreeze TrapShrink Trap
Temporary Resource Buildings Sour Elixir CauldronGingerbread BakeryDragon PinataSuper Ice Bath
Other Temporary Contents Arcade Cabinet
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