Uruk-hai

Uruk-hai are a new breed of orcs that appear in the Third Age. In this game, uruks are a Shadow-Aligned race, and thus only appear as minions. They are separate from orcs, and thus are not affected by cards that affect orcs, like Sting (1R313) .

For the first nine sets, all Uruk-hai are Isengard minions. While Isengard culture also includes orcs and Saruman, until the Shadows set, "uruks" almost always refers to an Isengard Shadow deck, and most Isengard Shadow decks focus on Uruk-hai. 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 minions are Uruk-hai culture.

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