Greetings to you, dear Amos. It's equally good to see veterans of the community who still follow and enjoy the project with passion. I salute you with the fondest regard
On the matter you have addressed above: I don't honestly think that there could be many favourable grounds for a possible change of the mentioned spell. Not in the current (overhauled) design that the new spellbook is to feature in the forthcoming patch. It's true that summoning spells were quite the issue, back in the day; you remembered correctly. It must also be noted, however, that all spellbooks had not undergone the recent changes yet and therefore suffered pretty much from the very same malaise, because summons used to be really common. A sort of proliferation of identical solutions, which were both cheap and, ultimately, not much imaginative as concepts.
Now, in light of what awaits us in Edain 4.5, I believe we're not anymore facing similar problems. The presence of summoning features does retain its own role, indeed, though we'll have fewer akin spells in the future. Those which remained can be seen as quite obligated choices, methinks. All fares well, in the end, provided that the number of summons is rightfully limited to a fair amount in the game and counter-balanced by a plethora of other unique features. This is, in fact, the context of the next update. Much was literally revolutionised for the good, despite a few old remnants from the past lingering in the Mod.
In the case of Isengard,
Minions of the White Hand goes together with the revised versions of older spells like
Wizard's Tower; they were perfected anyway, and don't forget that both suit now another founding premise (long-term strategies). Such an improvement was justified by the new logic concerning short-term and long-term games. So, since the spell summons an army
in situ, this is the exact rendition that does justice to the new philosophy underlining spellbooks as a whole; it's also quite coherent with the film, given that the same army is assembled within the ring of Orthanc only.
Nevertheless, feel free to propose what you deem a better design. I myself could not think about something fitter for the scope, but people might have interesting ideas to bring to the general attention.
P.S. Moving away completely from the topic, I really like when people use that kind of old-fashioned Latin fixed expressions (like
in situ or
de facto), and very formal too. It's quite rare to see them in a place like this and I commend you for that. I'm quite obsessed with them from my part