I'm sure this has been asked a long time ago but I'm catching up to some of the nuances of Armada (only recently jumped in).

Turbolaser Reroute Circuits: While attacking, you may spend 1 <evade> defense token to change 1 red dice to a face with a <crit> icon or 2 <damage> icons.

By spend, does this card mean discard or does this card mean exhaust (flip over)?

Additionally:

Is this effect limited to once per attack? Can it be used twice in the same attack if you have 2 evades?

Finally:

Is this effect limited to one firing arc or can it be applied to both arcs?

TL;DR - How does this card work?

"While...." is the trigger, which means, "You can do this while doing it, but only once per thing..." So :"While attacking" means, "once per attack."

This stops you endlessly rerolling with Darth Vader, for example.

Rules Quote:
(Event Use and Timing)

• A “while” effect can be resolved during the specified event and cannot occur again during that instance of the event.

Spend means Spend.

Spend means Readied goes to Exhausted, and Exhausted goes to Discarded.

Rules Quote:
(Defense Tokens)

• Defense tokens begin the game on their readied side. When a readied defense token is spent, it is flipped to its exhausted side. When an exhausted defense token is spent, it is discarded.

• Defense tokens can be spent as part of a cost for upgrade card effects. If spent in this way, a defense token does not produce its normal effect.

"While Attacking", as described above, means "Once per Attack."

So you could apply it to each of your attacks each turn, if you want... But you must spend the Defense Token each time..

Perfect. That's pretty much how I thought it worked but the more I read it, the more I questioned it's limitations. Started to see ways it could be exploited. Glad to see my initial belief was the correct one.

Not gonna lie, for the longest time I thought "spend" in this circumstance meant to get rid of it completely, and wondered about the worth people were putting on TRC.

"Spend" and "Discard" are two discrete terms in the Rules.

Spending may Result in Discarding, but they mean two different things...

Its what makes Admonition Powerful - You can use an ACC to lock down a token so it cannot be spent , but Admonition allows you to Discard ...

So knowing the difference is very important.

Until you start talking about dice.

Then spend does mean discard.

Although I guess you can't dis- card a dice.....

Until you start talking about dice.

Then spend does mean discard.

It doesn't, though.

For dice, spend always causes discarding (edit: technically, "removing from the attack pool").

But other effects, such as Solar Corona, cause discarding of dice without spending .

The relationship between spend and discard (both for tokens and for dice) is one of causation, not one of identity.

Let's have a concrete example.

Imagine an upgrade card, say an ISD title, with the following (very strong) ability:

"While attacking, after you remove a die from the attack pool, you may discard a different die to return the removed die to the attack pool, unspent and showing the same face."

Clumsy wording aside, this would let you do a number of really cool things, for example:

-With Solar Corona, discard a blank instead of an accuracy.

-With Precision Strike, Flechette Torpedoes and similar cards, discard a blank to trigger the effect and still do damage with the triggering die.

-When spending an accuracy, keep it and discard a blank instead (so you would get two accuracies from a single die, or an accuracy and still 1 damage from SW-7).

Now consider if the wording was:

"While attacking, before you spend a die to obtain an effect, you may spend a different die to obtain that effect."

Neater, isn't it? But it's not quite the same, which becomes rather apparent with Solar Corona or Jamming Barrier.