I belive i am a judge but i don't know pharoh_'s intentions.
It doeset prohibit 2 but it doeset ask for two.
also, as laserdude said, you cant use stuff you started on before the contest.
The World Is Flat, I don't intend to sound like an a**, but it's funny how people think they are judges, just by posting a "Ya, I'll judge this". Midnighters at least let me know he wanted to judge this along and frankly, I believe he has a more obvious experience in modding.
Anyway, your post about the goals of the contest shows that you didn't comprehend well. We do make variants of existing races with gameplay focus, because race remaking with the existing lore isn't a new race, otherwise this contest would be the same to the previous ones, of the same type.
I would like to mention something for the contestants. I can see a nice appearance, but I haven't seen any WIP that depicts your devotion to the strategy section of your race. A race remake that contains an alternative Rifleman called "Spearman" doesn't qualify the entry as strategy- and gameplay-oriented. I encourage you to make up new types of units; we currently have a town hall, barracks, the classic gold-gathering system, some center that hosts several upgrades, a shop and towers.
I would love to see some sort of deviation of this classic structural pattern. You might want to invent new unit types that will totally change the face of the gameplay.
Examples:
A building that absorbs nearby energies that will increase the speed of resource-gathering (of course this would require a custom gold/lumber-gathering system, but this is all about, improving common ways of playing).
A structure that lets the user pick the qualifications of their army, e.g. you pick the unit itself (that has specified stats) from the barracks and the player is choosing (within the barracks) the unit's orientation, e.g. a spellcaster or a classic footman. Several footmen result higher attack damage within the group, while several spellcasters result higher magical damage output, the closer they are to each other.
It's up to you to decide new ways of playing, but I definitely don't want to see another techtree contest that heavily affects the appearance of the race.