Motivation goes on Zeb 99% of the time, for reasons such as we don't want to make Kanaan a juicier target and Zeb can move 8 to RR attack so he has a better shot of hitting LOS on more of your friendly targets to use motivation for its various bonuses. It isn't just in there to be used on Ezra, it can be used on 4/6 units. Doubt is great, but generally movement is the most important thing for Spectre. If you're able to get to your opponent to hit them, they really aren't going to have many focuses left to strip after round 1 and it then becomes a lot less valuable.

There are also very situational bonuses for using motivation, for instance, motivation with Zeb on Tarkin allows you to get a SC attack on their terminal sitter/challenge the terminal to deny card draw round 1. That has a potential on its own to be a game changing swing. I don't tech Motivation for that reason alone, like I said very situational, but you compact that with all of the other bonuses and it is a very solid 1 point card.

The other main reason people run Motivation is for the mirror, Doubt is useless against the mirror besides potentially one attack in the game. And that attack can be huge, absolutely, but it also requires you to give up a CC point for Tough Luck to max out the efficiency. The 1 point cards are already pretty tight for spectre, with Negation/SiN/Force Push/Deathblow, and if I am teching my CC list against hunters (who seem to do the best against SC), I'd rather have brace or stealth to help negate the effects of EOS/Heightened reflexes.

Unless you're playing against @DTDanix who EOS's Ezra's white die, I use stealth tactics to roll a dodge and he heightened reflexes the dodge

As we would say in the slack, 'gotem'.

4 minutes ago, FrogTrigger said:

Motivation goes on Zeb 99% of the time, for reasons such as we don't want to make Kanaan a juicier target and Zeb can move 8 to RR attack so he has a better shot of hitting LOS on more of your friendly targets to use motivation for its various bonuses. It isn't just in there to be used on Ezra, it can be used on 4/6 units. Doubt is great, but generally movement is the most important thing for Spectre. If you're able to get to your opponent to hit them, they really aren't going to have many focuses left to strip after round 1 and it then becomes a lot less valuable.

There are also very situational bonuses for using motivation, for instance, motivation with Zeb on Tarkin allows you to get a SC attack on their terminal sitter/challenge the terminal to deny card draw round 1. That has a potential on its own to be a game changing swing. I don't tech Motivation for that reason alone, like I said very situational, but you compact that with all of the other bonuses and it is a very solid 1 point card.

The other main reason people run Motivation is for the mirror, Doubt is useless against the mirror besides potentially one attack in the game. And that attack can be huge, absolutely, but it also requires you to give up a CC point for Tough Luck to max out the efficiency.

Good post.

I might go so far as saying Extra Armor is a better option than doubt, by that might just be the lasting trauma of trying to kill Ezra with block tokens (as if he wasn't hard enough to kill already...)

Edit: I will say, if hunters were still the dominate meta list and Spectre didn't exist, I'd absolutely be trying to bring doubt on whatever list I brought.

4 hours ago, FrogTrigger said:

Motivation goes on Zeb 99% of the time, for reasons such as we don't want to make Kanaan a juicier target and Zeb can move 8 to RR attack so he has a better shot of hitting LOS on more of your friendly targets to use motivation for its various bonuses. It isn't just in there to be used on Ezra, it can be used on 4/6 units. Doubt is great, but generally movement is the most important thing for Spectre. If you're able to get to your opponent to hit them, they really aren't going to have many focuses left to strip after round 1 and it then becomes a lot less valuable.

I personally prefer Motivation on Kanan. It's a stronger ability when combined with Force Vision, but you may have to work a bit to keep kanan being targeted. There are some matchups that i think i can see the value in having it on zeb, but it's just stronger on Kanan.

5 hours ago, Jaric256 said:

True, but all you need is line of sight and Zeb is (or at least he is when I play him) going to be up close as well.

And yeah I do fear stun because that could prevent a SC attack which can really limit your options.

I usually reserve Heart of Freedom for that purpose, and for your same reason I don't like to be limited when I move Ezra. It's already a pain to keep Kannan in range and if I have to have LoS to Zeb as well, my decisions would be too biased by all these limitations.

11 minutes ago, Trevize84 said:

I usually reserve Heart of Freedom for that purpose, and for your same reason I don't like to be limited when I move Ezra. It's already a pain to keep Kannan in range and if I have to have LoS to Zeb as well, my decisions would be too biased by all these limitations.

First off, shout out to Heart of Freedom which might be my favorite command card.

The downside to relying on Heart of Freedom or other command cards to remove stuns, is that they're played at the start of the characters activation, so you may still be unable to remove that stun in order to have access to that character for the SC attack.

I ran into that problem trying to run a Vader list without Unshakable and just relied on command cards. Got all excited about getting a parting blow off, but screwed myself out of Vader's end of round attack because I couldn't get the stun removed

Never use Parting Blow without Unshakable.

3 hours ago, DerBaer said:

Never use Parting Blow without Unshakable.

A lesson that teaches itself