Mostly Modern legal cards with a bit of extra spice. Decks should be around block constructed competitive with a few build around me cards and fun combos. It will play like a conventional draft format with a mix of better cards and worse cards, and it should be more obvious what the best cards and worst cards in a pack are. If the draft goes as planned the worst card in your deck will be Feral Maka, but it will be considered as the 23rd or 24th best card in your pool.

Themes include:
Nicol Bolas
Creatures with no abilities
Infinity
Tribal but not the good tribes
7/7

Two card combos will eventually win the game unopposed over several turns, three card combos will often win at sorcery speed, and four card combos will win at instant speed. No one card can win on its own, and generally if your opponent puts something strong into play you have a turn cycle to answer it. - Darksteel rather than blightsteel, ulamog instead of emrakul.

Most decks will be two colors splashing a third allied color, but the 5 shards aren't the "archetypes" to build around. Draft archetypes, combos, and synergies can be found in most colors and are stronger or weaker within each color. You can make shape-a-new work in a blue green deck, even if green is the weakest second color for the archetype.

There are no fetches but otherwise the manabase can support 8 players drafting an average of 3 colors while still requiring some thought into which lands to prioritize. Lands are kept in check by the fact that there is a sharp drop off in power level within the draft environment - emphasizing lands means you will likely need to play feral maka.

A high priority for the cube is good interaction and good card advantage, which are balanced by the power curve within the draft. Games tend to go a bit longer, allowing both players time to find some sweet engine or cast a big dragon. You can be reasonably confident you can put a 7 mana spell into your deck and that you can both find it and cast it.

The game isn't accelerated to battlecruiser levels, like rise, but rather the play pattern of expensive cards emerge as these cards are awesome you get more for your mana and you get plenty of cheap cards to buy you the time to get there or find your bombs. You want to have as many 7 drops as you dare. Deck design has tensions between superior expensive cards and natural pressures of high skill magic to lower mana curves and push tempo.