Day's Undone

There are times when you have to contemplate and carefully craft your next move, being patient and waiting for the right moment to strike. Then there is this current roto draft I decided to take on. 

  I have done 3 full fledged 10 man roto's and 2 1v1 roto's in the last few months. These have been by far the most interesting drafts and decks I have played in 2025. I am pretty well hooked. 

   The approach I usually have when sitting down to one of these is to select powerful cards early and see what lanes present themselves as the rest of the pod reveals what they're up to. I stick with the same color I drafted 1st for the first few rounds to further solidify my "lane" to others(which rarely gets respected). I have had decent results thus far, hovering around a 50% win rate, which is fine for me. I can chalk up most of my losses to my own mistakes combined with quality of opponents. If I had to rank myself alongside former PT competitors, Arena limited grinders and magic players with decades of experience I would place myself probably somewhere in the bottom 50% of that pool. 

   For me, drafting a cube is less about winning and losing. It's more about exploration and playing a deck I find interesting and enjoyable. I don't personally feel a pull to draft the "correct" cards. I get my fill of optimal drafting when I play retail limited. Cube, for me, is a nice respite when formats get stale or "solved". 

    So my thoughts going into this roto: I want to try to exploit a powerful synergy and force my lane early. I'm kind of done with being open and taking generic power outliers early and would like to see where this approach takes me.

  A few things I have learned by doing these rotos is you have to fight for a good manabase. Fetch lands are a premium and once they start going you have to take them or you're going to miss out. I feel this is especially true with a 12 player pod. Another fact about roto draft is that you cannot count on highly synergistic cards going late. Cards like Phelia or Ephemerate, where you have to commit to that lane early, you can't count on getting good  ETB value creatures late. Folks will just end up taking them anyways because they are generically powerful on their own. There is less respect and more of a Black Friday at a mall vibe when it comes to picks. 

   My strategy this draft is play with what I feel is a very unfair combo: Casting a symmetrical draw 7 and having Sheoldred in play. If I pull it off, it's an almost on the spot win. However, one fatal mistake I made was not properly reading and understanding the way Day's Undoing works. 

    I read it as a draw 7, which it is. However, if I cast Day's Undoing on my own turn, it ends the turn. Meaning no triggers from Sheoldred for the life drain of 14. So now, I am priced into finding a way to make these 3 cards work together: Day's Undoing, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Demonic Tutor. 

    So, I have adapted and found several other cards in the cube that will facilitate my main game plan and stand as redundancy for the combo. 

Nissa, Parter of Veils - 3 mana planeswalker that has the text that reads, my opponent cannot draw more than one card each turn. So, with Narset in play I am able to cast Day's Undoing and draw 7 cards, while my opponent only gets 1.  

Next, we have Teferi, Time Reveler. Another 3 mana planeswalker that allows me to plus his loyalty for the ability to cast my sorcery spells at instant speed. It also has a static effect that shuts down any instant speed spells from my opponents. Teferi is such a punishing card to deal with for certain decks. So, the ability for me to work around Day's Undoing's downside of ending the turn is a bonus. Teferi is just a way for me to protect my combo through instant speed interaction. 

    Stay Tuned for Part 2 and Happy New Year 2026!