You Make the Card

"You Make the Card" is an event held on magicthegathering.com where the audience is given the opportunity to design a card through multiple votes and submissions of ideas.

You Make the Card 1
The first "You Make the Card" event resulted in the creation of Forgotten Ancient. It began on January 16, 2002 and required 24 steps of audience participation before its completion on December 6, 2002 and its inclusion in the Scourge expansion. It began as a very open vote for color and card type.

You Make the Card 2
The second "You Make the Card" event resulted in Crucible of Worlds. It began on January 31, 2003 and required 14 steps of audience participation before its completion on November 18, 2003 and its inclusion in the Fifth Dawn expansion. It began similar to the first "You Make the Card" event with the choice of color (except for green) or artifact.

You Make the Card 3
The third "You Make the Card" event resulted in Vanish into Memory. It began on January 25, 2005 and required 9 steps of audience participation before its completion on January 25, 2006 and its inclusion in the Coldsnap expansion. This time the process began with the selection of a piece of artwork created by the audience for a more "top-down" approach to card design.

You Make the Card 4
YMTC4 was originally scheduled in 2008 but was then scrapped. On March 11, 2013, Wizards announced You Make The Card 4 with an initial vote for the card type. This resulted in the card Waste Not.

Create a Creature
A direct predecessor to "You Make the Card" was the "Create a Creature" contest, launched in the late fall of 1999. In this contest, Magic players were asked to describe the most bizarre, monstrous, powerful creature they could possibly imagine. Ten winners had their monstrosities illustrated by top fantasy artists, and the winner would see their creation made real in the Magic world. The brother team of Gregory and Bradley from Wisconsin were the lucky winners. Their winning concoction was a creature named Spirit Monger.

Spirit Monger was originally selected as one of 11 semi-finalists from amongst over 12,000 entries. A select panel of judges including members from Magic R&D, Brand Team and Creative Team, read every single entry and submitted their list of finalists to be narrowed down. From there, an even bigger panel of judges looked at the lists of creatures and weighed each creature's impact on the world of Magic. After much deliberation, the 11 semi-finalists were chosen and announced. 'The final decision was left to the Magic players on the Wizards of the Coast website. Voting commenced, and in the end, Spirit Monger was the creature that won the contest with the most votes.

From there, the task of turning Spirit Monger into an official Magic card was left in the hands of R&D. After looking at the creature's description and illustration, the R&D team went to work deciding when and where Spirit Monger would appear. Since the Spirit Monger was part tree creature and yet used a protective shield of dead spirits, it was decided it would have Green and Black abilities, and was most likely a product of the green and black magic surrounding the conflict in the Urborg swamps. The renamed Spiritmonger was an obvious fit for Apocalypse.