Why would I want to lose X tokens?

[pjt33]

Browsing the bugs and suggestions, I see a couple of comments on #84082 that there are situations where it's actively useful to throw X tokens away. It seems to me that the same effect is achieved by simply gaining them and hitting the cap. Can anyone explain the advanced strategy scenarios where it's beneficial to throw them away? Are there cards which trigger when you gain an X, and rather than gaining and instantly discarding them when you're at the cap you simply don't gain them?

[Tisaac]

Browsing the bugs and suggestions, I see a couple of comments on #84082 that there are situations where it's actively useful to throw X tokens away. It seems to me that the same effect is achieved by simply gaining them and hitting the cap. Can anyone explain the advanced strategy scenarios where it's beneficial to throw them away? Are there cards which trigger when you gain an X, and rather than gaining and instantly discarding them when you're at the cap you simply don't gain them?

You can't take the "gain 1 xtoken" choice if you are already at 5. It's not "take and lose", it's litteraly "can't make that choice", which can be sometimes painful if you want to slide a card or discard a venom token, but i think these are pretty rare

[parliboy]

I played a two-handed game last night where the ability to spend an X-token won be the game.

We both competed the first-slot requirement for the middle project, but neither of us had workers, so whoever triggered the break would lose out on the 5CP space and be limited to the 2CP space instead. And the break token was one away from triggering. I had money and my opponent didn't, so I was able to Build, spending X's unnecessarily as I did, while my opponent got to 5 X's and was then reduced to taking either Cards or Sponsors, both of which would trigger the break. It pretty much determined the winner.