Introduction

This is an unpowered synergy cube with a bunch of artifact and graveyard themes. The cards are picked to minimize compelxity to hopefully make the cube less impenetrable to more inexperienced players. Regardless there are plenty compromises, my design vision is listed later.

This is also technically my first cube but i reworked it so many times that might as well be my seventh.

A thank you to Caleb, his cube is by far the biggest inspiration for the current state of this one :)

Themes and Signpost cards

The themes can be divided in wedges and the archetypes in guilds. This way to catalogue decks is just indicative but can be used to give the player some guidance and me some structure for cuts and additions.

Listed below are the wedges with their themes and the guilds with their focus and a few signpost cards for each of them.

- Graveyard-centered Midrange           - +1/+1 Counters

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- Artifact Value                  - Artifact Aggro

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- Dimir control                  - Ramp Control

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- Aristocrats                    - Sacrifice

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- Prowess                     - Haste and punch really hard

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It's worth repeating that the list above it's mostly a way to give structure. The use as stated above is to broadly show what themes and in what colour an average draft will fall into. For example an Azorius deck can play blink without a single artifact and a Rakdos one can build an aggressive deck forgoing most synergies. Also, both a Lands deck and a 5C deck should be doable.

Design Choices

If you watch the list you might notice some popular omissions, this is because after one draft too many where half of the time was spent explaining mechanics like mutate i kind of snapped.
Jokes aside, with the tide of complexity creep of the last few years I decided to set a few "rules" to pick the cards getting in.
For a beginner drafting is hard, cubing is harder, this doesn't make it easy but can help them. Of course sometimes a card is just a litte too cool and i give in but least of these cards the better.

1. The least amount of non-standard card types ("standard" not as in "the standard format")
   To give an example: No classes, No Battles, No Adventures. I go even a bit further and avoid sagas and double faced cards.

2. The least amount of different tokens
   If only a single card makes a single token it may be cut. If it makes an unique token with a long effect and uneven p/t it will probably be cut, Planeswalker emblems do not count.

3. The least amount of cards with verbose rules text
   Simple, efficent cards are preferred. Also, a card with three paragraph of text of which only one is relevant is to avoid. It's very important to me to not lead drafters into "traps", If something incidentally buffs Brushwaggs there better be a reasonable amount of Brushwaggs in the cube already.

4. Some mechanics do not pass the vibe check
   Some because of their gameplay, like day and night. Some because work the best in big numbers, like Morph. Sometimes cards mention a mechanic that dowsn't work in Singleplayer, like Partner or works weirdly, like will of the council.
   I also avoid mechanics that are similar but different to others, like dusguise and plot.

I call them rules but as I said above they are lines in the sand, boundries, that I can easly overturn if a card seems worth it. Hopefully with enough set releases a critical amount of cards that fit my preferences get printed and I won't need to compromise.

Cutting cards that would fit only because they are a Saga or double faced card is hard, there is much to love in MDFCs with a land back but I think there is value in simplicity, in not assuming a player knows some cards are double faced, in not assuming they know what committing a crime means.
This to me is true even for smaller bumps in complexity, the problem is that they add up. Players are pretty smart, especially in breaking stuff, but their patience is finite and when it runs out they just pick what's familiar.
I give up cards i like whilst designing in the hope that all of these pitiless cuts produce a pack of fifteen cards that can be read by a more or less experienced player that doesn't necessarily follow all set releases, or played for ten years.

Conclusion

That's it, not much else to add. If you end up drafing the cube on here let me know if you enjoyed it. If you have suggestions, criticism or anything you want to say, you are more that welcome to do it.
Hopefully it's a good cube :)