Years ago I used the term "powermax" over on MTGS and it was taken well. I think the feeling is its sort of a slight against the format philosophy. FWIW, we should probably just leave the naming the way it is ("powered" and "unpowered cubes" - are rare lists that focus on card quality - the first simply runs P9 and stuff like Library).
What we actually need to do is come up with a proper term for lower powered cubing. I mean, maybe we just call it that - low powered cubes. I don't know. There's just a huge gap between traditional powered/unpowered and peasant/pauper lists. That's the area Riptide cubes occupy and it's a really interesting design space. It needs a good name.
That's very true, but I wouldn't agree with low powered cubes as a term. That makes me think more of an environment bereft of powerful cards at all by choice, where there is a flat power band that compensates for the lack of outright bombs.
Personally my environment is decently powerful all things considered, more than the norm here, but it's somewhere in the middle between unpowered and powered. While I do play some generically powerful threats and cards that can carry themselves without much help, there is still an overarching theme of looking deeper into archetypes and interactions. I think the big difference is that the design philosophy commonly seen around here isn't centered around the power level of individual cards themselves, but on creating a certain gameplay experience. That requires looking over things as whole rather than individual pieces that just come together eventually. Synergies take higher precedence, interactions with other pre-existing cards and archetypes, and just seeing wonky applications are the main appeal to the design process (for myself at least). It's not necessarily a plug-n-chug of new X is stronger than old Y, let's give it a go. It's fine that the majority of people that design cubes are into that, but I've never thought that that led to the development of an especially interesting or nuanced gameplay experience. In fact, I've found most of those environments to feel more like a dime a dozen. Like what actually makes that environment yours? What are you doing differently? What interesting choices have you made to develop this?
Part of what makes synergistic decks in a Limited environment so fun is being able to exploit corner cases or assembling some re-occurring engine that lets you churn out an advantage. Drafters like feeling smart when they can create something like that in a draft setting; where they found this weird interaction that creates something memorable and exciting. That's what makes W/B aggressive decks with growing
Champion of the Parish interacting with the Raid from
Bloodsoaked Champion so fun to see in action. It's what makes using a
Gifts Ungiven to put card types in the graveyard to reduce the cost of
Emrakul, the Promised End a sweet value play. Use
Sylvan Safekeeper alongside
Titania, Protector of Argoth to create an army of tree people out of nowhere to steal a game. How about using looters and
Sifting type effects to turn a card like
Archfiend of Ifnir into a virtual
Plague Wind?
Honestly, as much as flak as some people give the format, I'd say EDH has been a pretty big influence on my own design. I like building synergistic decks in that format and my favorite decks to run are my
Tymaret, the Murder King Sacggro,
Karametra, God of Harvests Enchantress, and
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant Graveyard decks. I've spent so much time theorizing with new cards to add to them each spoiler season when I see something that piques my interest and the first thing I think of is all of the pre-existing cards and what new interactions I can come up with. It's using all the parts of the buffalo, so to speak. Like
Cryptbreaker by itself is pretty mediocre, but if you have a means of generating additional Zombies to fuel that card draw, that's sweet. Then if you have a
Life From the Loam in the graveyard, that additional card draw can turn into a Dredge 3 which can generate another zombie if Sidisi is out there and you pitch more things from your deck to the graveyard. But what if you also had a copy of
The Gitrog Monster or an
Underrealm Lich out there to change up your interactions with Dredge by also allowing you draw a card or the Lich letting you choose 1 out of 3 and pitching the others to generate another Zombie token? These individual pieces can do things on there own in a vaccuum, but when they come together to create something really powerful and interesting that makes it memorable.
I just feel like there's so many possible avenues to explore in design that are left untouched by a lot of people and that's just a shame. I hope we do get some more people visiting these forums to get a different look at design and hopefully come away with new ideas. I know that I definitely find myself referencing other lists here very often when I'm trying out new things or looking for new ideas.