A topic from AEG's L5R CCG Rules forum, copied for Oracle of the Void from a copy of the forum saved in October 2015, so pages it didn't save are missing. Players' names are left out; the rules officials are named. Rulings are as they stood on these dates; later rulings, the rulebooks and the Rules Archive may differ.
A player, 14 January 2014
Scenario:
Attacker has declared and attack with Cavalry Unit 1 (CU1) attacking Province A and Calvary Unit 2 Attacking Province B. Defender chooses to defend with Defending Unit 1 (DU1) at Province B.
Attacker chooses to resolve Province A first and Cav Engages CU2 to Province A - leaving the Defending Unit defending against no attackers.
Question: When province B's battle resolves and the defender wins unopposed (assuming no other actions to move an attacking unit in) can the defender play Ring of Earth? I think the answer is yes, because there was an attacking unit during assignment, but wanted to make sure the RoE text did not somehow imply that there had to be an attacking unit during the battle resolution segment.
Thanks!
Brook Cunningham (rules official), 14 January 2014
Scenario:
Attacker has declared and attack with Cavalry Unit 1 (CU1) attacking Province A and Calvary Unit 2 Attacking Province B. Defender chooses to defend with Defending Unit 1 (DU1) at Province B.
Attacker chooses to resolve Province A first and Cav Engages CU2 to Province A - leaving the Defending Unit defending against no attackers.
Question: When province B's battle resolves and the defender wins unopposed (assuming no other actions to move an attacking unit in) can the defender play Ring of Earth? I think the answer is yes, because there was an attacking unit during assignment, but wanted to make sure the RoE text did not somehow imply that there had to be an attacking unit during the battle resolution segment.
Thanks!
Yes you could play the Ivory Ring of Earth in the scenario you describe.
EDIT: Deleted extraneous info that actually didn't matter, and was wrong.
A player, 16 January 2014
From http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=106478
Assuming the Defending unit has at least 1F, yes you could play the Ivory Ring of Earth in the scenario you describe (a 0F unit vs. an empty army is not a Win, nor a Loss or a Tie even).
Why does it matter that a 0F army doesn't win a battle against no opposition for putting the Ring of Earth into play?
Ring of Earth Play after a battle resolves at you Province, if it was not destroyed and any enemy units were ever at its battlefield.
That doesn't mention winning or losing the battle (in Ivory rules practice games I've been putting the Ring of Earth into play after losing a battle but saving my province). Or is it the case that if an army has 0F against no opposition, then the battle doesn't actually resolve at all?
Brook Cunningham (rules official), 16 January 2014
From http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=106478
Why does it matter that a 0F army doesn't win a battle against no opposition for putting the Ring of Earth into play?
That doesn't mention winning or losing the battle (in Ivory rules practice games I've been putting the Ring of Earth into play after losing a battle but saving my province). Or is it the case that if an army has 0F against no opposition, then the battle doesn't actually resolve at all?
No, the battle does resolve, you just skip the second step where you resolve the Win/Loss/Tie outcomes, because none of those happen.
That said, you're absolutely right in your first point! 1F or 0F, winning or nothing, won't matter either way for the Ivory Ring of Earth. I got tripped up by an imperfect memory and the Oracle still having the EE text on the right, when I was trying to pull all my answers from the card image on the left.
Fixing the above answer!