Had a situation in a game last night where my MC30 (Admonition) came up against an ISD (Avenger)

Avenger managed to get a double arc on Admonition and triggered an overload pulse with the first arc's (thanks to Screed).

When he fired with the second arc we hit the problem:

Avenger does not allow a defender to use exhausted defense tokens but Admonition allows you to discard a token to cancel a dice.

So, does Discarding count as Spending?

My suspicion is that you can as you are not "spending" the token to gain the usual defensive bonus. At the same time though, the rules say that defense tokens can be spent as part of the cost of an upgrade card where they do not trigger normal effects.

Opinions?

You are correct. Discarding is NOT spending. Discarding may happen as a consequence to spending, but Discarding can also happen on its own,

Some Previous Threads:

Discard is not the same as spend. So you could use an effect that instucts you to discard the token.

Spending an exhausted token leds to it being discarded, but tha doesn't mean spend = discard.

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Seriously though, on my screen, it lists us both posting within the same minute... So you almost got me this time