This is part 5 / 5 of the April 2021 Player’s Council errata release. For more information, see the announcement post here.
My fierce text brings all the orcs to the yard!
And they’re like, it’s better than Lurtz.
Damn right, it’s better than Lurtz.
I would spot you, but you’re the wrong card.
~ Saruman, probably
History
When it comes right down to it, there are only a handful of different Shadow methods for winning, and most of these involve putting wounds on companions until they all die. When Fellowship of the Ring was first released, these archetypes for the most part fell along cultural lines:
- Moria would swarm and aim for the overwhelm (no wounds)
- Sauron would apply wounds outside skirmishes with Hate or archery (direct/indirect wounds)
- Nazgul would be fierce and fight two skirmishes apiece (2x skirmish wounds)
- Isengard Uruk-hai would be damage +1 and fight single skirmishes (2x skirmish wounds)
But then along came Saruman and all Isengard broke loose.
With the inability to be affected by the most popular archery sniping strategies (Greenleaf and Aragorn’s Bow) and also being immune to skirmishes, Saruman was if not invincible then very difficult for the Free Peoples player to sweep aside. So long as he remained on the board, all Uruk-hai would skirmish twice on top of their native damage bonuses, and you can imagine how 4 wounds per Uruk per round would start to stack up fast.
Oh, and his actual ability prevented you from ignoring Saruman and just sweeping the Uruks off the field instead, so not only was this a very powerful gut punch, but it was practically uncounterable as well.
Saruman was thus sent straight to card hell in the the very first X-list announced in April 2003:
3R68 Saruman, Keeper of Isengard
This card effectively doubles the number of skirmishes a fellowship faces by making all Uruk-hai fierce and then nullifying play that would serve as protection against those Uruk-hai.
Unlike many of the cards included in that first ban wave, Decipher’s reasoning makes no mention of cultural enforcement. Saruman is quite simply an overpowered self-contained force multiplier. Instant unstoppable army: just add Uruk.
Errata
So Saruman has three main issues: he cannot be targeted, he passively boosts Uruks, and he prevents Uruks from being targeted. An errata to bring him down to the merely mortal realm would require addressing one or more of these trifecta of obstacles.
In the end, the PC decided to focus on adding a cost to the fierce ability, which also indirectly addressed the wound-blocking as well:
Saruman’s personal immunity is retained, but he no longer automatically doubles the effectiveness of every Uruk. Instead, the Shadow player must now balance how many Uruks to make fierce against how many to potentially save from being cleared by the Free Peoples player. Shadow players will have to make nuanced tradeoffs, Free Peoples players now have the room to retaliate, and everybody wins.
Formats
(Reminder that errata only apply to the new PC-Fellowship, PC-Movie, and PC-Expanded formats. All existing formats on Gemp will be unaffected.)
Fellowship Block has Uruks as possibly the most powerful Shadow-side deck, with Saruman being no small part of the reason for that. Niche Uruk bomb decks are likely to drop even further in effectiveness, and other more straightforward Uruk strategies are likely to suffer somewhat as much.
Uruks may or may not fall from tier 1 with this change, but seeing as both Savagery to Match Their Numbers and Saruman’s Snows are both on the list for future errata, it’s uncertain where exactly everything will fall once the dust has settled.
Movie Block will no doubt see Saruman make his way into any Uruk deck, but it’s unclear how large of an impact this will make. Many Movie decks with Uruks tend to be archery decks, which have little use for fierce, but the universal wound prevention would no doubt come in handy, if the extra twilight can be spared. Decks which are built around Towers-era strategies (Machines, etc) will likely embrace Saruman with open arms.
There’s also the additional twist of Cirith Ungol Uruk-hai being affected by Saruman.
Expanded may see Saruman included in Uruk-hai decks (considering he is compatible with Uruk-hai as a race and not limited to the Isengard culture), but he has competition with other versions of Saruman who have already ingrained themselves.
Any thoughts or comments that you have on this errata are more than welcome! The PC announces errata changes early to ensure the community has a chance to chime in with any observations.
In particular we’d like to hear if there is a specific card interaction not mentioned above; we’ve put thought and effort into this change but of course we could always overlook something.
Please leave any comments below or on the PC Discord server here: https://lotrtcgpc.net/discord.
The White Council 