This is exactly like A Contest Like No Other, except with one huge difference:

At the end of the contest, we'll put together all the cards to make a set and draft it. Sound cool?

First four rounds are devoted to the following things:

• If Top-Down:
1 Flavor in two words or less
2 Mechanical theme in two words or less
3 Elaboration on flavor
4 Elaboration on mechanics

• If Bottom-Up:
1 Mechanical theme in two words or less
2 Flavor in two words or less
3 Elaboration on mechanics
4 Elaboration on flavor

After the first four rounds are completed, we take submissions for the set map and what the first criterion should be.

Then, we enter the design phase of the contest. The designer who wins in each round is the one to pick a card color/rarity category (EG White Common) that's not filled yet for the next round. They may also include a prompt for the card in that category, but they aren't obligated to. Unlike in A Contest Like No Other, they can participate in their own round. However, if they win the round, they have to "pass the ball" to the poster of their choice, to prevent one player from dominating the prompt portion of the contest.

At the end of 256 rounds, we draft the thread.

Bottom-up

Subtype Matters.

Nice! I'll be entering this whenever I've got the time.

I'd definitely recommend you keep an eye on rarities though, whenever we did this on the other forum it was always just grabbing cards together and they did not always match up very well. So this should be a bit structured, so when it becomes someone's turn to put forward a round we have some guidelines [non-creature/uncommon/black] etc.

Bottom up
graveyard theme

top-down

A plane that no longer moves. One side is completely frozen and the other is a hellish wasteland where the sun never sets.

Top Down:
Midnight Sun

Also I failed again unless you don't count contractions.

Bottom up - card type matters (not subtype, I'm talking the stuff Tarmogoyf cares about)

Bottum up - Card-names matter.

Can we submit more than once?

I would like to see something like Unglued and Unhinged, wacky stuff that could really be fun to design and work into itself. So...

Top-down (I guess): Unchained

Top Down – Postapocalyptic Victorian

Top-Down
Scavenger World

This submission is invalid for two reasons:

• I would say that's a bottom-up submission.
• Un-sets don't have cohesive enough flavor for the flavor portion of this contest. What I mean is, they don't inspire a setting when viewed together.

Let's begin the voting!

We're going to do this the way Wizards did You Make the Card:

The Bracket

storyteller – Subtype Matters
vs.
Cato – Graveyard Theme

LilyStorm – Ash and Snow
vs.
Fakeartist – Midnight Sun

TPzombieW – Card Type Matters
vs.
Morgothra – Card Names Matter

ParadOxymoron – Postapocalyptic Victorian
vs.
Tevish Szat – Scavenger World

DISCUSSION OPEN. Please write what you want about your favorite submission in an effort to get people to vote for it, or against another's to say why people shouldn't vote for it.

Please vote for one person in each bracket. Brackets were determined by post-time.

As the contest-runner, I won't cast a vote. I do, however, reserve the rights to break ties should they arise. Voting is open to everybody else, including people who didn't submit anything.

You may vote for yourself.

Poll will stay open until Monday, May 5th.

VOTES
Cato
Lily
TP
Tevish

That said, I think a lot of these are compatable. Either my topdown or Parad's could work with either Lily's or Fake's because they're running in non-opposed asthetic brackers. And either the Mad Max-ness of the scavanger world or the Postapolyptic of Post-Apoc Victorian fits a Graveyard theme (Cato) pretty darn well.

mine
lily
morgothra
Parad

Lily's theme sounds cool.
A card name matters could also be cool, but feels like it's getting into un- territory. Also don't want YGO type stuff.
others are pretty meh (my own included).

A Third Option, to Spice Things Up

As Tevish Szat points out, the brackets kind of lined up such that they have very high compatibility.

I've combined each bracket into a higher dialectic truth. If both posters decide to FUSE their ideas, then they'll both advance together to the next round.

If either poster says DON'T FUSE, then the vote decides who advances.

storyCato: Imagine a Return to Innistrad mechanically [isn't Subtype Matters basically just Tribal (with possible Planeswalker shenanigans)? Didn't Innistrad have a Tribal subtheme?] storyteller and Cato fight together to bring about this forum's take on the Odyssey and Innistrad blocks, by looking at what could be done even better in a graveyard-focused set where subtype matters.

Lilyfake: A world of eternal day on one side and eternal night on the other (Lily's idea is the kind of thing fakeartist's Midnight Sun evokes anyway) Lily and fakeartist combine their ideas to evoke a world of dualities.

TPgothra: Imagine a set that based on cards like Booby Trap and Deathpact Angel on the one hand, combined with a mechanical world in which artifacts like other artifacts, creatures like other creatures, and instant/sorceries like other instant/sorceries. Imagine the possibilities! TPzombieW and Morgothra enact a truce to make a set idea greater than the sum of its parts.

Parad Szat: Imagine a set where everything is being scavenged by pirates. Civilization (which used to be hella steampunk) has collapsed. Now the small pockets of civilized creatures left battle against the ghosts that have risen from the dead of a post-apocalyptic phenomenon.

For what it's worth, I hope everybody decides to merge into teams. I think it'll make this a lot more interesting.

Oh this voting is quite different than I thought so I guess I stand a chance now!

Cato
Lily
TP
Parad

Edit: I will be okay with fusing. Parad you are making this silly and random butt that is okay.

Okay. I've been thinking about this for hours. Here's how I'm going to do it.

I'm going to fuse each bracket into a team. Everybody gets a shot in the polls. They're each going to come up with a primer for their submission.

Then I'll make two separate threads: One for voting on the flavor, one for voting on the mechanics. Then we'll squish them together. Hopefully it will all work out!

You are not bound to what you said you would do. If you talk about it with each other and realize the themes don't mesh together as well as you'd hoped, you are free to pitch whatever you think works best as a cohesive submission.

Mechanics teams:

storyteller and Cato

TPzombieW and Morgothra

Flavor teams:

LilyStorm and Fakeartist

ParadOxymoron and Tevish Szat