What the Carambor Machine is and Why it Doesn't Work
Summary:
Spying out the Land actually lets your opponent play new/different hazards every subsequent movement/hazard phase. And
Healing of Nimrodel and
Hall of Fire don't work to untap
Carambor.
Washed and Refreshed does work but your opponent can play hazards every M/H phase to try to tap or wound
Carambor. Plus, the opponent can sideboard to get
Blind to the West in their hand and a ton of great hazards into their deck to stop the Carambor Machine at least shortly after the first time that their deck exhausts.
Blind to the West will prevent the Machine from starting up again.
How the Carambor Machine is supposed to work:
- Minion character Carambor can tap at the end of the Movement/Hazard phase to move to an additional site, taking another M/H phase.
- Hero resources have effects to untap characters each M/H phase, such as Washed and Refreshed, Healing of Nimrodel, and Hall of Fire.
- Minion resource Spying Out the Land requires the hazard player to show their hazards in the organization and prevents them from playing any other hazards. This effect reapplies when Carambor moves again.
- A Fallen Wizard player can play Carambor and all of these Hero and Minion Resources. The Carambor Machine cannot be achieved by Wizard or Ringwraith players.
- Carambor can move an infinite number of times because he will always be untapped by the hero untapping resources so that he can move again and Spying Out the Land will prevent any hazards from being played to tap him.
- You can exhaust the play decks twice using Carambor's infinite movement such that you can "Call The Council" at the end of your first turn (with some luck in card draws), ending the game after opponent takes his first (or second) turn.
- You can move from Hidden Haven on Weathertop in Arthedain to The White Towers wizardhaven in Arthedain to limit the playability of any hazards your opponent had in their opening hand.
- You can start with Great Patron to get 7 Character MP and then play characters and allies and other easy MP since you can draw your entire deck.
- Your hand is stacked full of good resources and hazards so that you will be ahead of your opponent in MP and you also have the hazards necessary to stop them from getting enough MP.
- You will double MP categories since your opponent has no MP, giving you that sweet sweet 6-0 win.
Why the Carambor Machine doesn't work (rules explanation below):
- Spying Out the Land actually lets your opponent reveal new/different hazards EACH movement/hazard phase. It does NOT limit your opponent to only playing those hazards revealed back in the organization phase (per CRF on "Movement" and "Choosing a New Site").
- Healing of Nimrodel and Hall of Fire don't work because (A) it is too late for Carambor to tap after these effects have untapped Carambor due to the timing rules on currently resolving chains of effects and (B) these effects actually invalidate the conditions for Carambor taking an additional M/H phase per Annotation 5.
- While Washed and Refreshed does untap Carambor, it does so at the beginning of the M/H phase. And with proper application of Spying Out the Land's effects, your opponent will have new hazards every M/H phase that they can use to tap or wound Carambor. And your opponent can save up a ton of hazards and drop them all at once. However, Spying Out the Land still prevents the hazard player from playing hazards that they drew for that current M/H phase.
- Furthermore, Washed and Refreshed is the only workable untapper so it is even more difficult to get "The Machine" running with just 2 copies of that card and 2 copies of Spying Out the Land.
- Note that the untapping effect of Washed and Refreshed only works "when the company's new site is revealed." This means that Carambor and other characters would NOT untap when moving to a face-up site, such as Hidden Haven Weathertop where another character sitting.
- Also, eliminating the Spirit-magic character that played Spying Out the Land will cancel the effects of Spying Out the Land per the CRF on "Movement" since the conditions ("the [spirit-magic character's] company") are no longer met.
- Your opponent can sideboard hazards with Nazgul or Outpost to put 2-3 Blind to the West in their hand, and then put Nature's Revenge, Cave Drake, Adunaphel, Lure of Nature, Scorba Ahunt, Neeker Breekers, Veils Flung Away, Enchanted Stream, etc, into their discard pile so that they are all there when the decks exhaust the first time. The Carambor Machine player only has a couple Crams/Pastes and two Hundred Butterflies, they can't stay untapped or unwounded forever.
- If Carambor's company even makes it to the first exhausting of the play decks, he is not going to make it untapped much longer, and his company will stop moving.
- Blind to the West will be in your opponent's hand to cancel Washed and Refreshed if you try to play again.
- The Carambor Machine player is left with a company full of wounded or dead characters and an inefficient deck.
- Even though Carambor can still be annoying, he could at best exhaust a deck once, not twice. Your opponent will still have most of a play deck to go through similar to a 1-deck game.
- The Carambor Machine player likely looses. And hopefully they feel bad.
Explanation of how Spying Out the Land works under the rules:
People "know" that effects played during the Organization Phase carry over to subsequent Movement/Hazard phases. But I noticed that nowhere did anyone recite the text of the appropriate rules and the text of the cards when discussing the Carambor Machine.
The actual rules are:
CRF - Movement: If a company moves twice in one turn, resources played during the organization phase, like Secret Passage, are reapplied to the company at the beginning of each of their movement/hazard phases, if the conditions of the card are met.
CRF - Choosing a New Site: Effects that are played during the organization phase, and depend on the site or site path of a moving company, create an effect which is not declared until the new site is revealed. If the site or site path is not of the appropriate type when the effect resolves, the resource has no effect. If the company has multiple movement/hazard phases on the same turn, the card applies separately to each phase, having an effect only if the correct conditions are met.
The first CRF statement on "Movement" governs
Spying Out the Land. Accordingly, when a company moves again using
Carambor, the effect of
Spying Out the Land is reapplied to the company. The EFFECT. Not just a
portion of the resource's effect. The
ENTIRE effect of the resource. For
Spying Out the Land and other similar resources, the "effect" reapplied in subsequent M/H phases is the same "effect" of that resource when it originally resolved in its the chain of effects. The effect of
Spying Out the Land is NOT: "
only those hazards revealed [during the organization phase] can be played."
Instead, the entire effect of
Spying Out the Land is:
"Opponent may reveal to you any hazards from his hand, and only those hazards can be played during the character company's movement/hazard phase. Unless he is a Ringwraith, character makes a modified by -3."
How or why would only a portion of this effect apply to subsequent movement/hazard phases? That doesn't make sense looking at the rule and card text side by side. Instead the whole effect is reapplied. Therefore, at the start of the additional Movement/Hazard phases caused by Carambor, the Hazard player reveals any hazards from their hand and those newly revealed hazards can be played during that additional Movement/Hazard phase. The corruption check at -3 is also an effect of
Spying Out the Land. Good luck with corruption.
Explanation of Healing of Nimrodel and Halls of Fire work under the rules:
Carambor's effect is "
May tap at the end of his company's movement/hazard phase to allow it to move to an additional site on the same turn. Another site card may be played and another movement/hazard phase immediately follows for his company. The new site path must contain at least one Wilderness."
Healing of Nimrodel's effect also happens "at the end of the movement/hazard phase": "If the company moves to another Haven this turn,
at the end of the movement/hazard phase all wounded characters in the company heal (from wounded to untapped) and all tapped characters untap."
The problem is that tapping
Carambor is an active condition for declaring his additional M/H phase effect per Annotation 5:
Annotation 5: If an action requires an entity to tap as a condition for the action's main effect, that entity must be untapped when the action is declared; else, the action may not be declared. Tap the entity at this point; this is considered synonymous with the action's declaration, i.e., it is not a separate action. When it comes time to resolve the action in its chain of effects, that entity must still be in play and tapped or the action is canceled.
Therefore,
Carambor must be tapped when
declaring the End of the M/H phase effects BEFORE the untapping effects of
Healing of Nimrodel can
resolve. There is no time to untap
Carambor after
Healing of Nimrodel has resolved because it is no longer the "End of the Movement/Hazard phase." And if
Carambor was untapped and able to tap to move again,
Healing of Nimrodel would actually negate the movement by untapping
Carambor for the reasons stated in Annotation 5. This is the same reason why characters tapping in support of
Narya have their support negated (they must still be tapped at resolution but they were untapped in between). Hall of Fire's untapping effect happens "immediately following its movement/hazard phase" and so it doesn't work for similar reasons.
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So,
Carambor can still be annoying, and you can still create a deck with
Carambor to draw a lot of cards, but you can't actually exhaust a play deck twice to Call the Council with no hazard recourse by your opponent. You cannot use
Carambor to win 6-0 against a player that has a basic sideboard.
