Case 1:

Cathy Crane, Dragon Drew, and Phoenix Phil are playing.

Drew attacks Cathy with Fire and collects the Fire Ring, putting it one his Public Forum. Then Phil attacks Cathy with Fire and puts his Fire Ring on his Manicured Garden. Cathy passes (defending's taken a lot out of her). Then Drew attacks Phil's Manicured Garden with Water and breaks it. Since Drew already has a claimed Fire Ring, Phil's Fire Ring would return to his unclaimed pool. Phil plays Wholeness of the World.

What happens?

By strict ruling, Phil would keep the Fire Ring on his unbroken province forever, since no one can break it again and the Ring only goes back to pool when the Province breaks, not when the province is in a broken state.

Case 2:

Phil has claimed the Fire Ring. He plays Know the World to switch the Fire Ring and the Water Ring. When the Fire Ring would return to his unclaimed pool he plays Wholeness of the World. Since KtW says "switch" rather than "return then take" returning the Fire Ring is not a cost but an effect. Does Phil now have both Rings?

In case one, Fire ring still goes to Phil’s unclaimed ring pool. Based in a word-by-word interpretation of the rules:

Wholeness of the world says that “when a ring would be returned to...”, but in the MP Rules it says that “If the ring token to be claimed is on the defending player’s province, the ring is moved to...”

A bit of a stretch, but they use “return” in other occasions in that same paragraph, but not this one.

Or they could add "a ring cannot be on a broken province" to the rules, just to be sure.

5 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

Or they could add "a ring cannot be on a broken province" to the rules, just to be sure.

Oh, they should.

10 hours ago, Tabris2k said:

In case one, Fire ring still goes to Phil’s unclaimed ring pool. Based in a word-by-word interpretation of the rules:

Wholeness of the world says that “when a ring would be returned to...”, but in the MP Rules it says that “If the ring token to be claimed is on the defending player’s province, the ring is moved to...”

A bit of a stretch, but they use “return” in other occasions in that same paragraph, but not this one.

But then they've ruled (Embrace the Void) that return/remove/move are all effectively interchangeable terms.

Sounds familiar...