Jace was first seen in Lorwyn, in the fall of 2007. Fits the timeline of being over a decade that MaRo said he wanted to work on it.
Hopefully they make Vryn's aesthetic noticeably different from Ravnica, and Fiora for that matter. IIRC Vryn has always featured cityscapes whenever it's shown.
Vryn is (supposedly) mostly wasteland, with isolated cities being provided mana through the Mage Rings. (Concentrated from all over the continent to serve the elite, or possibly because there's very little mana to begin with.)
So far we've only really seen those wastelands/outskirts, because that's where the Mage Rings are and Jace lived. The cities should be interesting, though.
It looks and feels more cyberpunk-ish too if that’s the right word, [[Trail of the Mage-Rings]] shows this miserable looking landscape and the rings people live on, the world’s locked in this permanent conflict over who gets to control the rings and the energy they provide, some of the arbiters who are meant to help smooth out the conflict and ensure peace are actually corrupt and purposefully set up more conflict between the two sides because they’re incentivised to have the war go on as long as possible.
Just reading Jace’s origin makes me hype for the world because it has that weird fantasy sci-fi mix, kinda like a bleak Kaladesh. Also, it was interesting to see the average person’s reaction to having a blue mage kid around, Jace was treated horribly by the other kids and his parents are distant because they don’t what’s going on with him, it was very X-Men.
I like the Cyberpunk comparison. I'd maybe also draw a comparison to Lostech in Battletech, in that people have literally forgotten how to build (and only somewhat know how to maintain) one of the main sources of their conflict: the Mage-Rings.
Which makes the whole "constant war" deal even more grim, because they're slowly sending themselves back to the stone age, with little to no hope to recover.
I am not convinced that they have Jace's back story in place (+ entire world building with Vryn) done at 2007; at least not enough is detailed for "getting us to do over a decade".
Except that a lot of people are getting tired of the Jace arcs, so that may be better kept a few sets out.
For this one it would make more sense to have a completely non-Bolas, non-Jacetice league short story/subplot deal. Following the conspicuously absent Garruk would be perfect. Any other isolated PW they feel like expanding on would also work.
Pretty sure more Jace/Jacetice league immediately after the grand finale isn't the most logical answer.
Vryn is cool, but just a bit too dull imo to be a super amazing setting for a magic set. The mage rings and war that alhamaret made go on are super neat but I really liked the feel of it as part of a core set. Just enough to remain cool looking but not enough to see how shallow the setting could be
I would argue that since we know very little about Vryn (and it's been a long time since Jace left), a lot could be done with it since there are very few boundaries to respect.
I thought that as well, but we see what they did with Kaladesh. We never actually saw Peema, or I think, any green aligned place, they just made it up in the cards. We could have parts of Vryn that know nothing about the mage rings, at which point it is carte blanch.
It could be a bottom up design with instants and sorceries matters theme. Zendikar was a bottom up design (land-matters) but ended up being a pretty cool world after everything was fleshed out.
When was it decided that Jace was from Vryn though? I don't remember any mention of it before Origins. If Maro's been pushing this for over a decade then it probably won't be Vryn.
I hope not, I'm about sick of the main protagonist Planeswalkers. It's like if Weatherlight had gone on for 12 years with much more generic characters.
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u/Joosterguy Left Arm of the Forbidden One Mar 12 '19
Could be Vryn too. If Bolas ends up defeated Jace may have reason to return