Players have the choice of casting the spell for the mana value printed at the top or the adventure spell for its cost, which is found on the bottom left side
Essentially, think of it in a similar way to colorless mana it isn't a color, but there are a lot of cards that care about it
Do you go to draft and sealed events
I find the Bracket system highly useful for initiating Rule 0 conversations and getting a better sense of what everybody wants to play, especially considering that EDH deckbuilding sites like Moxfield and Archidekt automatically assign an estimated Bracket based on the cards in your deck
Cranial Plating converts extra Food tokens and any other artifacts you have into more trample damage, and good ol Blackblade Reforged does the same with the number of lands you control
The card does have some big flavor implications (for example, being able to attack twice with two weapons in a turn)