With the Regionals season heating up, I was wondering what the official ruling would be for this particular situation?

If someone targets something to damage/capture (unit, enhancement, etc.) that cannot be damaged/captured does the originating player get to re-target something else or does he lose that action?

For example, Preparation For Battle Objective is out and the Death Star Dial is below 4 (relevant game text is " Your shielded units cannot be damaged while the Death Star dial is 4 or lower. ". My opponent attempts to Force Choke a Hoth Scout who has a shield. He forgets about the gametext and is reminded by the LS player that he cannot damage the scout. Does he then get to choose another target or is the Force Choke lost?

Note, this is for a high lvl tournament and not a friendly game.

The DS player has to choose a legal target to play Force Choke (and if there is none, he cannot play the event at all and keeps it). There is no way the card is "lost".

But the hoth scout is still a legal target. It just has text that says it cannot be damaged. It does not say that it cannot be targeted. In this case wouldn't the Force Choke actually get played, have no effect, and then go to the discard

pile? Or would it be that since the hoth scout cannot take damage it is no longer a legal target?

If nothing else, according to section 3.6 of the most recent FAQ at least some of an abilities effect has to be possible in order to initiate the effect. If there isn't a target that can be damaged, then Force Choke cannot be initiated and doesn't make it past the first step of checking if it can be played.

OK, so the objective text essentially makes the scout not a legal target. Just wanted to clear that up and thanks!

There was some discussion over at cardgamedb.com about this and I believe the community's consensus was that if a player tries to play Force Choke on a target and then realizes the target is not legal, he must attempt to play the card on a legal target if there is one. If there is not, then Force Choke will go back to his hand. I'm not that high-level of a player where I would go through with that, but that's what a lot of people seemed to say would be the case for big championship games.

And you other cardgamedb members can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this.

I feel like that is ridiculous. Why not just have them out it back in their hand? You gain knowledge of their hand here, that should be enough. Knowing they have a force choke is pretty valuable in its self.

Making them waste their card on a less useful target is, just being a ...., if they can't read the board then you should probably beat them anyhow.

I agree. I can't imagine I would ever force that on them. I'd let them take it back.