Uruk-hai

Uruk-hai (both singular and plural, and also just called Uruks) are a new breed of orcs that appear in the Third Age, as tall and strong and well-armed as men. In this game, uruks are a Shadow-Aligned race, only appearing as minions. Uruk minions generally have middling- to high strength, and often have Fierce or Damage +1, representing their ferocity in battle. They also often have the Tracker or Hunter keywords. Most Uruk decks are beatdown decks.

For the first nine sets, all Uruk-hai are Isengard minions. For these sets, "Uruks" almost always refers to an Isengard Shadow deck, possibly also including Saruman and/or Grima, but probably not including any of the Isengard orc or men minions. Complicating things somewhat, the Mount Doom set introduces Sauron-culture uruks, but most of them see little play except for Shagrat, Captain of Cirith Ungol (10R99) .

The next set, Shadows, reorganizes the Shadow cultures. In that set and all subsequent sets, all Uruk-hai race minions are Uruk-hai culture, and, except for a few versions of Saruman, all Uruk-hai culture minions are also Uruk-hai race.

Cards which specify "Uruk-hai" like Savagery to Match Their Numbers (1R139) can affect any minion with the Uruk-hai race, regardless of culture. However, cards like Brutality (11S180) that specifically mention the culture icon can only affect cards with the new culture introduced in Shadows.

While Lord of the Rings establishes that Uruk-hai are a new breed of orcs, in this game Uruk-hai are considered a separate race from orcs. Thus, they are not affected by cards that affect orcs, like Sting (1R313) .

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