Nien Numb has 1 Stress from a round before.

Nien Numb has a ship in range 1 of his firing arc and is assigned a stress token.

His ability trigger "When you receive a stress token, if there is an enemy ship inside your firing arc at Range 1, you may discard that stress token."

May a friendly ship trigger Inspiring Recruit on him to remove the second stress token? "Once per round, when a friendly ship at Range 1-2 removes a stress token, it may remove 1 additional stress token. "

Just wondering if discarding and removing is the same.

Yes, removing is discarding. The only time it's not is if you transfer the token to another ship.

I'd like to say there is a difference between preventing a Stress token from landing (which your quote from Niem Numb sounds like) and getting rid of one that is currently on the ship but I'm not sure there is.

What has me thinking about this is that discarding a damage card you are being dealt (with say Determination) is NOT the same as getting to discard a damage card you already have on your ship. There are things which will only affect new/incoming things but will not touch currently existing things.

Nien wouldn't trigger for stress tokens he already had, but he does have to receive them to trigger, so when he can trigger Inspiring Recruit shouldn't care about the difference.

Thank you guys/gals!

I'd say "discarding" is not "removing" and that Inspiring Recruit wouldn't work with Nein Numb.

Recently another player posted an email from Frank indicating that "assigning" a stress token to a different ship didn't "remove" it from the ship it was removed from, so abilities that worked on "removing" didn't trigger. I don't see why "discarding" would be any different.

5 minutes ago, kraedin said:

I'd say "discarding" is not "removing" and that Inspiring Recruit wouldn't work with Nein Numb.

Recently another player posted an email from Frank indicating that "assigning" a stress token to a different ship didn't "remove" it from the ship it was removed from, so abilities that worked on "removing" didn't trigger. I don't see why "discarding" would be any different.

That's an entirely different situation. When a token is discarded , it's removed from the board. Frank's email explained that assigning a token to another ship is not the same as removing the token. He never stated that discarded tokens are different from removed tokens. How do you discard a token without removing it from the board?

5 hours ago, Parravon said:

That's an entirely different situation. When a token is discarded , it's removed from the board. Frank's email explained that assigning a token to another ship is not the same as removing the token. He never stated that discarded tokens are different from removed tokens. How do you discard a token without removing it from the board?

How do you assign it to a different ship without removing it from the original ship?

4 hours ago, kraedin said:

How do you assign it to a different ship without removing it from the original ship?

But it's not being removed from the board, is it? And the dictionary definition of discard is to remove something, as in removing a card from your hand in card games. I see no difference in this game. If you discard a token, it's most definitely being removed as it's no longer in play. A token assigned to another ship has not been removed because it's still in play.

9 hours ago, Parravon said:

But it's not being removed from the board, is it? And the dictionary definition of discard is to remove something, as in removing a card from your hand in card games. I see no difference in this game. If you discard a token, it's most definitely being removed as it's no longer in play. A token assigned to another ship has not been removed because it's still in play.

Is there a rule/ruling that indicates that "remove" refers only to removing from the play area?

Same question for using Electronic Baffle in combination with inspiring recruit.

Electronic baffle: When you receive a stress token or an ion token, you may suffer 1 damage to discard that token.

inspiring recruit: Once per round, when a friendly ship at Range 1-2 removes a stress token, it may remove 1 additional stress token.

Is there adifferent between "remove" and "discard" ?

2 hours ago, kraedin said:

Is there a rule/ruling that indicates that "remove" refers only to removing from the play area?

No, because it's common sense. Don't believe me? Ask FFG.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/contact/rules/

24 minutes ago, Parravon said:

No, because it's common sense. Don't believe me? Ask FFG.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/contact/rules/

Actually there is an official ruling on this:

According to Frank, removing a token from a ship to put it on another ship doesn't count as 'remove' for the purpose of abilities, which leaves removing from the board as the only valid 'remove'.

I disagree that it's common sense though. IMO prior to Frank's ruling there was no clear indication whether remove was a specific game term or a plain english word. However, AFAIK prior to Inspiring Recruit this wasn't relevant (as there were no 'when you remove...' mechanics).

If it's not specified in the rulebook as a proper game term , then by default it must be plain English and therefore we must use the standard definition of the term or word. The reply you got was specifically the one that kraedin tried to use as justification that "removing" and "discarding" were not the same thing under the rules.

I'll admit that the text used on some cards can be inconsistent with others, but we can't really expect FFG to define every word they use on a card as "official game terms", can we?

Remove is a nice easy English word, but the question before was "did you mean 'remove from a ship', like to assign it to another ship, or does it have to be removed from the game?" And we do have an answer for that now.

Unless FFG ever makes it clear that "Discard" and "Remove" are two separate events, they are the same thing.

In the English language they are synonymous. The literal only difference is phonetically correct. You can say discard in place of remove in every sentence, but it might sound weird.

1 hour ago, Vineheart01 said:

Unless FFG ever makes it clear that "Discard" and "Remove" are two separate events, they are the same thing.

In the English language they are synonymous. The literal only difference is phonetically correct. You can say discard in place of remove in every sentence, but it might sound weird.

They are not the same thing.

If you "discard" something then you are also implying that you are completely getting rid of it completely. Maybe you could recover it but you've gone through with every intention of not getting it back.

When you "remove" something you are just taking it from somewhere. While it may not be where it was you still actually have it until you do something else with it. Perhaps it goes with the rubbish and effectively is the same as discarding it but perhaps it is just going somewhere else and is instead be transferred.

I don't know about you but I see a big difference between discarding a $20 from my wallet and simply removing a $20 from my wallet to do something.

1 minute ago, StevenO said:

When you "remove" something you are just taking it from somewhere. While it may not be where it was you still actually have it until you do something else with it. Perhaps it goes with the rubbish and effectively is the same as discarding it but perhaps it is just going somewhere else and is instead be transferred.

The Frankmail quoted above demonstrates that the rules don't actually consider the case where it's just going somewhere else to be removal.

3 minutes ago, digitalbusker said:

The Frankmail quoted above demonstrates that the rules don't actually consider the case where it's just going somewhere else to be removal.

That could be but Vineheart is saying the ARE the same thing in the English language. Perhaps they are functionally equivalent in the game but outside of the game they are different things.

"i got my appendix removed" you clearly got rid of something with no intent of getting it back. You can totally say "i got my appendix discarded" but it just sounds weird.

Look in a thesaurus and you will find the two listed together. Different dialects may make them out to be completely different, but thats opening a whole nother can o worms. Rather not derail too much with that topic.

Bottom line is theyre not defined to be different things, and the two are tossed around casually to mean the same thing.

This thread has me scratching my head...

The email from Frank that keeps getting referenced isn't making a difference between "remove" and "discard" - it is making a difference between "removing" and "removing to assign to another ship". Using said email to infer that "remove" and "discard" are 2 separate, different game effects is wrong.

What you can use Frank's email to say is that "discarding" and "removing" a token is different game play effect from an ability-triggering stand point than "removing to assign to another ship".

It's quite literally what Frank says, in both emails:

• since the token is being assigned to another ship and not being “removed” in the game sense
• Assigning a token from your ship to another ship does not count as “removing” the token for the sake of abilities.

His email has nothing to do with a potential difference between "remove" and "discard".

Don't try and give words minute differences where there aren't any.

IMO, if they had thought of this before hand, they could've worded all the "remove a token from your ship and assign it to another ship" abilities to simply say "transfer a token to another ship". Then it would be clear that there is a difference between "remove / discard" and "transfer". The disadvantage would be that they'd need to reword some other abilities to say "when you are assigned or transferred a token".

On 3/19/2017 at 9:26 AM, kraedin said:

Is there a rule/ruling that indicates that "remove" refers only to removing from the play area?

Not exactly, but there is now a FAQ entry that states assigning a token to another ship is NOT removing.

Quote

Q: Is assigning a token from a ship to another ship the same as "removing" a token from that ship?
A: No. For example, if a stress token is assigned from one ship to another ship, it does not count as "removing" it from the first ship for the sake of game effects. Additionally, if a red target lock token is assigned from one ship to another, it is not "removed" from the first ship as the accompanying blue target lock is not discarded.

17 hours ago, Parravon said:

Not exactly, but there is now a FAQ entry that states assigning a token to another ship is NOT removing.

If "remove" is a game keyword, as that FAQ entry implies, that would imply that Inspiring Recruit wouldn't interact with Nien Numb who "discards".

The FAQ entry states that moving a token from one ship to another does not count as removing the token. I don't see anything in there that remove is a game keyword or that discarding a token is somehow different from removing a token.

4 hours ago, kraedin said:

If "remove" is a game keyword, as that FAQ entry implies, that would imply that Inspiring Recruit wouldn't interact with Nien Numb who "discards".

You keep flogging that dead horse, buddy. I'm sure it'll come back to life any moment now.