by Hermjard
No, I will not disagree. Because I know, that my interpretion is equally weak. "as if it had been expelled" can also mean, that this meeple was not expelled by shifting, but by mixing the meeples. Just a hint about a "non-regular expelling". That would mean, that the limit of one per color does still counts.The real pitty is, that we are forced to fish in murky waters, because the rules don't specify it.
And nothing about corner cases here, please. If two players have encountered and told about this situation within weeks (with a higher dark number of course, not to mention all the players, who dont know or engage in this forum), you should better ask, why the game designers didn't came across this case within hundreds of tests.