So a lot, recently I have heard people talking about blocks and there design. So when talking about some blocks people refer to them as top down blocks or designed. Can some one please explain to me what "top down" means when they are talking about a specific block?
Basically, top-down means "flavor first," and bottom-up means "mechanics first."
Top-down means they start with a high-level theme, like " Gothic horror" (Innistrad) or "Greek mythology" (Theros) and go from there, resulting in extremely thematic mechanics and cards like {Zombie Apocalypse} and {Chained to the Rocks}.
By contrast, "bottom-up" means picking a more mechanical theme and building upward. For example, Ravnica started with "let's do a block about every color pair and what they mean," and the idea of the guilds came later.
Note that I'm not very confident in the accuracy of my Ravnica anecdote.
Well put +1
You're right about ravnica. The guilds and all the lore were a byproduct of the 2 color combos idea.