Santa's Surprise - Army Troop Units in Clash of Clans

Santa's Surprise temporary-spells

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

Base Attributes

Radius 1 tile

Random Radius 4 tiles

Number of Strikes 5

Time Between Strikes 0.1s

Housing Space 2

Spell Factory Level Required 1

Levels

Level	Total damage	Damage per strike	Town hall level
1	900	180	6
2	950	190	7
3	1,000	200	8
4	1,050	210	9
5	1,150	230	10
6	1,300	260	11
7	1,400	280	12
8	1,500	300	13
9	1,650	330	14
10	1,750	350	15
11	1,850	370	16
12	1,950	390	17

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, except in 2023 (where the Bag of Frostmites appeared instead).
If the 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, the 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. In the December 2024 update, the damage has significantly increased, and its radius and randomness is even more focused to a single area.
However, during the 2022 Clashmas, the radius and randomness have been focused to a small area.
In the December 2024 update, the damage has significantly increased, and its radius and randomness is even more focused to a single 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 cannot be one-shot normally, such as an Inferno Tower .

Statistics

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 25 th . 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 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.
In December 2024, where it was available in the Toyshop Throwdown event, the maximum damage was increased to 1,950. The spell is made even more accurate in hitting its target.

Sounds

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 25 th . 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 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.
In December 2024, where it was available in the Toyshop Throwdown event, the maximum damage was increased to 1,950. The spell is made even more accurate in hitting its target.

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 25 th . 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 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.
In December 2024, where it was available in the Toyshop Throwdown event, the maximum damage was increased to 1,950. The spell is made even more accurate in hitting its target.

Trivia

Santa's Surprise cannot 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 30 + ⌊ 70 ( x − 1 ) y − 1 ⌋ 100 {\displaystyle \frac{30+\lfloor\frac{70(x-1)}{y-1}\rfloor}{100}} , where x {\displaystyle x} is the player's Town Hall level and y {\displaystyle y} 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 reindeer.
The 2012 version of the spell was a Barbarian with white hair instead of yellow. He appears wearing a Santa hat and rides reindeer.
Clash of Clans' official YouTube channel released a quick video in 2017 announcing the third release of Santa's Surprise.