It's often a question that occurs in a players mind when playing Warmachine or Hordes. You have focus or fury left over on a Jack or Beast. Do you go for more attacks or simply boost your chances of hitting or damaging?
Essentially the whole question boils down to three things, probability, damage output and target priorities. Firstly, in terms of probability more often than not if a Jack or Beast attacks another Jack or Beast chances are that you're going to hit, given the low DEF of average Jacks (Can't speak for Beasts, was quite surprised when I saw a Feral Warpwolf's DEF), however if you have a Jack or Beast attack infantry then you start entering the area where you may want to think about boosting. Although another issue arises where I start wondering why anyone would choose to charge a Jack at infantry, because as a friend once told me, Infantry kills Jacks. The whole point of Jacks in game is a brick that can be thrown at something in your opponents army that is relatively tough that will threaten other models in your army, granted there are exceptions (Beast 09 springs to mind due to Thresher, giving it the ability to attack enemy models in LOS and melee range), but most Jacks have two melee weapons at most, throwing that sort of model at infantry is something of a waste, if you want to kill infantry use other infantry or shoot it before it gets close enough to do it's job. However, there is one infantry unit I would always recommend charging with a Jack and that is your opponent's caster.
Anyway, when it comes to Casters I'd recommend boosting for one simple reason, Quality over Quantity. A warcaster/lock is the keystone model in an army, therefore it's stats tend to reflect that in that either the DEF or ARM will be relatively high compared with an average model, in that case you want to hit and you want to hit hard.
E.g. Juggernaut charges eVlad, on average rolls a Juggernaut would miss (average on 2d6 being 7), boosting the Juggernaut has a greater chance to hit (average on 3d6 being 10.5), however given the Ice Axe's P+S boosting is really necessary until Vlad gets down to 5 health (eVlad gets stat increases as he gets hurt, meaning if you fail to assassinate him he will beat the living tar out of whatever is stood in front of him come next turn)
Secondly, Damage output, as mentioned in the example above, the Juggernaut doesn't really need to boost to hurt Vlad, (also if the Juggernaut had just charged Vlad it's first attack would've been boosted anyway) due to it's high P+S on it's weapons, other Jacks such as the Marauder don't have quite the same power in it's weapons (which is why it has combo smite, which doubles the POW of one of it weapons for one attack, remember it's just the POW that gets doubled not the P+S) so in the same example, Marauder charges Vlad boosting to hit (to ensure the hit), and does nine damage, with it's second attack the Marauder again boosts, (probably just hitting given Vlad's stat boost from being hurt) then boosting the damage (because otherwise Vlad will likely tear the Jack to shreds next turn, or pop his feat to get a non character unit to come and kill it for him) which according to the law of averages would leave Vlad on one health and pretty mad next turn. Of course this is all theoretical, I have seen people roll 3 dice and all come up 2s and 1s and someone choose not to boost and got double 6s (Doubly hilarious given it was a Juggernaut's to hit roll, so Critical freeze took effect), but essentially the cut off point I tend to look for is when the number you are aiming for is 7 more than the stat you are rolling on, boost.
The last point I want to cover is target priorities, essentially deciding what units you want to get rid of more, would you rather take out the large infantry squad before it gets too close? Or deal with the Dragoon that will likely take a chunk of your flank before being followed by a Jack or two? In most case I would rather go for the Dragoon and not boost, because once you kill a Dragoon it's special rule dismount occurs and the model, well... Dismounts, slowing it down, but till leaving a big threat alive, in that scenario I'd choose to not boost because of the fact that the focus used to boost could go to waste, whereas using that focus for attacks guarantees (almost) that the Dragoon that was just about to flank you is dealt with and what ever was supporting him will consequently have a far harder time fighting through your lines.
The infantry example on the other hand I have only found happens with Drago, Beserkers or Beast, where I would choose intentionally charge them into infantry, partly because with Drago or the Beserkers I know if I spend enough focus I can blow up the infantry, if I don't kill them with their regular attacks, partly to get them to catch a model that's hiding behind the infantry, so best example here would be Drago with three focus charging (for free, thanks to Aggressive) a light jack huddled near a unit of errant examplars, using two focus to boost both his to hit rolls, thereby ensuring his chain attack gets off, which in this case gives him Thresher, culling the majority of the errants, then spending a focus to use his imprint to move, preferably while he's still in range of some of the original Thresher targets and then killing the rest of the squad (hopefully). Alternatively in the case of Beast I'd charge the Jack and aim to cripple it's cortex, denying my opponent extra attacks and the boosts to hit and damage, by boosting damage and then activating it's imprint to give it an additional dice against all living models (not so great against Cryx then...) and thresher the unit. Although that is a very specific example hopefully you can see what I'm getting at, basically if you want something dead, buy extra attacks nothing hurts more than a Juggernaut making 5 attacks in one turn. However if you want to ensure a certain specific model is crippled and aren't as worried about it being able to try and fight back next turn boost. A word of warning though, all of this is based off of my experiences, so it's not perfect, just use it as a rule of thumb and pretty soon you'll be able to confidently weigh up a situation and make that often game changing decision. Do I boost or not?
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