If you're playing an Ackbar deck and are paired against a Dooku deck, whom will you generally target first: Dooku or his companions? The general accepted logic is that Dooku should be targeted second due to his ability keeping him alive, however I don't think that's strictly the case when playing as Ackbar since if the Dooku player empties his/her hand they'll take extra damage.
For example, if they have 2 cards left and you have 2 1-ranged sides, choosing to hit Dooku twice would result in one of 3 possible outcomes:
- Dooku takes 2 damage
- Dooku takes 1 damage and discards 1 card
- Dooku takes 0 damage and discards 2 cards, triggering Ackbar (which they'd presumably drop the damage onto the non-Dooku character)
I'd like to assume that a clever opponent wouldn't pick the third option, however should those 2 dice have been 2 3-ranged dice they may well do so just to keep Dooku alive (on whom they've probably put most of their upgrades), in which case you effectively gain free discards without losing out on damage output. If you happen to have a discard side out as well, the Dooku player may feel hesitant to discard even moreso, which additionally limits their ability to re-roll or use card based dice control.
Obviously for certain character combinations it may make more sense to target the other character(s) (Dooku / eGrevious comes to mind, since Grevious is the larger threat), however for, say, eDooku/eKylo or eDooku/eJabba targetting Dooku first may not be a bad idea.
In one particular example, I rolled into 3 ranged sides (2x 3, 1x 2) and a +2 ranged side whilst against eKylo/eDooku, both of whom had 1 damage on them and 3 cards in hand and nothing threatening on their dice (all of which had been rolled). Given that Dooku had 2 attachments and Kylo had 1, as well as Dooku having better dice, I decided to go for Dooku with the roll forcing them to discard 2 of their cards to keep him alive, but preventing the third being discarded without being forced to take damage on Kylo. As such, Dooku was left on 1 hp and easily died in the next round, leaving Kylo isolated.
What are your thoughts?