No Mulldrifters allowed!

Make sure your colons are healthy because Ability cube is all about the activated abilities. The closest thing to "When ~ enters the battlefield" are some specially selected passive texts. The key to the format is using your mana (time) wisely and generating as much value as you can. Synergy is turned down to keep the value in the abilities.

The cube is verbose. There are a lot of on board interactions. At least scanning the list beforehand will help the draft go smoothly and your deck be more fun to play.

Mechanics and themes:
White: +1/+1 counters, taxing, rules-setting
Blue: drawing cards, bounce, proliferate
Black: creature destruction, life payments, draining
Red: burn, "drawing" cards in bad ways, ability punishment, X costs
Green: +1/+1 counters, ramp/lands, X costs

When the unifying element is paying costs some of the themes don't run very deep, but every card in the cube is intended to be supported. A lot of thematic support is in two- or few-card combos, so look to assemble your favorite lock and then reinforce it.