tbh, kinda miss the boreal juggernaut. The way he was presented really gave me the feeling that I’m the challenger and he’s A BOSS not just some random damage sponge.
Hell, a lot of these boss fights brings another story from the often underdeveloped world of duelyst and for that, I commend the deve for bringing them to light
I’ll allow myself to quote myself by myself.
Hey, so Zane has 3 movement instead of 2, not quite flying, but we ran out of space on the card to fit that in so I can understand the confusion there. The reason why the companion is a battle pet is so that the fight can’t be cheesed by just hiding it safely in a corner. Of course there’s clever ways to get around the battle pet mechanic like you saw with Hailstone Prison but every faction can also use repulsor beasts to clear a path for Zane to strike only Vol.
Healing is the most obvious solution for the fight and the one that most players seem to have gone with, but there’s other options depending on which faction you’re playing.
Spoilers for anyone who doesn’t want any of the boss strategies revealed:
Lyonar in addition to all the healing they also have Prism Barrier, Magnetize, and Grandmaster Z’ir.
Songhai can Mist Dragon Seal for safety or Mist Dragon Seal + Obscuring Blow behind Vol for 12 damage backstabs.
Vetruvian have Scion’s Second Wish, Fountain of Youth, Astral Phasing, Inner Oasis.
Abyssian have Breath of the Unborn, Nether Meld, Echoing Shriek.
Magmar have Eternal Heart and Egg Morph.
Vanar have all the various transform effects, Hailstone Prison, and if you really want to get cheeky, if Zane is low cast Flawless Reflection and then kill a clone for an easy win.
Phew okay now that that’s out of the way, what I’m trying to get at is that there’s a lot of different ways to tackle this boss. It was kind of expected that some of the easy ways to get around the mechanics like Hailstone Prison would be figured out by the community pretty fast and that’s perfectly fine. If you’re not enjoying the fight and just want to be done with it, we have no problem with you using Hailstone Prison. If you feel like messing around with the escort mechanic, that option is there too 
Thank you though for the feedback. Always looking out for ways to improve the fight!
Welp, turns out trying to get 2x Kujata + Fractal Replication with a Twin Fang and a Sand Burrower was too much to ask for this time around.
I ended up just going with Drogon Smash Vaath with Eternal Heart. Kinda ironic that a heart saves you because there’s no way you actually have a heart if you can just stand there and watch Zane die trying to help you win. 
Scion’s Second Wish was not preventing damage for me.
Considered giving forcefield. Breath and Fountain of Youth are specifically clever ideas. I was considering Mirror Meld at a time, but never attempted. I’d guess if 1 died, I’d still die.
Minor points first:
The Songhai method is suspect at best, especially considering the amount of provoke minions this boss has.
2nd Wish would be nice in theory, but that’d require Zane to actually attack the boss.
Repulsor beast doesn’t work since Zane acts first.
This isn’t true though, as a battle pet he goes prior to my attempt of trying to save him from his love of hitting his face on things. He reallllly loves it. If he would have been made to act at the end of the player’s turn, this fight would play out much differently and a lot more fun, but I can imagine a lot of effort being required for just one boss (though the mechanic could be possible for future unit expansions)
The major point/flaw:
Previously mentioned potential “solutions”: Egg Morph, Hailstone Prison, Aspect Fox/Shim’zar
These solutions are an attempt of handling and avoiding the entire concept of the boss fight to begin with. The performance of the first seriously attempted AI ally boss fight is understandable, but by nature, a battle pet with a bonus to a specific target is counter-synergistic (which has occurred in past boss fights, cough provoke+flying clone monkey cough)
It’s nice to have an out, but a quick/easy evaluation for boss quality may be able to be reduced to, “am I as a player looking/able to utilize the unique concept here, or do I have to manage it?” This whole boss (like a fair number of others) feels like the attention isn’t on beating the boss, but on babysitting Zane/Ion for my own sake.
I think this is a subjective but good rough process that can be tested with past bosses?
Rush boss - personally was fun for me, and definitely sought to use it’s concept
Boreas/Ice boss - pretty sure I sought to get it over with and cheese it, but definitely could be tougher to evaluate, very boss like.
9 mana boss - fun for the chance to play cards not usually able
Flying monkey - counter-synergy
Even quick glance here at least tells me that I get more fun out of the boss fights that offer me as a player extra goodies, while the boss also gets their own super goodie.
Think that’s all I can think of for now.
I totally agree with you there and it’s the type of boss that I have the most fun making. I’ll keep this in mind and try to make more like it.
Just personal opinion but i really don’t like this kind of “solving” this problem. You basically give us an impossible task that can only be solved by finding a way to “cheat” our way out of it by using cheap tricks that are “discoverable”. I’d like to have bosses that can be beaten by using strategy, not by looking for intended bugs that i can exploit.
You could have made Zane move at the end of the turn, that would have left room for using strategy. Clear the path for him while he gets his revenge. But with him moving first this was impossible. Not to mention that the rules for this fight are very confusing. Zane looks like he would count as a general, but dies to plasmastorm, can be bounced etc. He has the Battlepet rule, but Zukong doesn’t work. He can be dispelled, shows his text as dispelled, but really isn’t.
Horror Buster is to me the most elegant and efficient. Play it turn one and you can get rid of both Kron and Zane and get a nice 6/6 on board 
To be honest, the thing i liked the most about this battle was trying to kill zane. "ARE YOU CRAZY?"
no… i am inzane
Sadly it only prevents damage if Zane attacks Vor. When Vor attacks another minion, it just applies raw damage to all other friendly minions, making said buff uneffective.
Probably from a stupid heart attack after getting so much adrenaline in his veins.
Read Zanes text.
No one has mentioned this, so I thought I’d give it a try. Lion are has a new card, I forget the name, cost of 3 double a Minion’s health. I had Zane’s Health up to 69 at one point. Of course, it can be dispelled, but fortunately for me I was able to complete the battle before that happened.
Ahh you speak of life coil. Its nice but some what slow.
I thought Fountain of Youth was the sole “gem” of the fight, never considered Life Coil
Did you see the diss track by the way? I’m usually not a fan of those kind of things, but dayum it was straight fire.
An escort mission. If gaming culture had taught you anything, it’s that gamers fucking hate escort missions more than any other gaming trope, especially when the escort is too fucking stupid to keep themselves alive. Real innovation, the courage to take several steps back
I tried and beat it the ‘fair’ way, where you actually help the guy out and don’t kill him yourself. (Yes, this gimps me a lot, but I like story).
Did it with Prism Barrier BUT that was frustrating as all hell because Zane kept hitting the archons etc instead of the boss. Battle-pet mechanic made this a chore because the boss kept summoning things in front of it so I had to wait another turn etc.
In the end I beat him down with Zir’an herself because fuck.
Also he dispelled Prism Barrier from Zane Twice, once with chromatic (a staple of every boss apparently) and with shroud. That was a pain as well.
Though I like the creativity, I must say I’m not that amused by being provided a story element and then having the best/easiest way to win the match to remove or ignore that story element. I feel like someone was telling me Little Red Riding Hood and the clue of the story was her just getting UPS to get the basket to grandma and running over the wolf.
I really liked this boss battle. I had to take something else than my usual magmar or abyssian boss decks 
And all the clever ways to play around Zane are really great.
I love the boss battles and how they make me think outside of the box often. That is really great! So good job and please continue with them!
I don’t want to beat them with my ladder decks, I want to create my own decks. I mean we start with 3 mana in these so our ladder decks are a poor fit in the first place. The game is totally different.
My favorite boss was the one from last week (Archonis or something like that). I loved creating a deck which can utilize the 9 mana Kraigon on T1 is so much fun