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On January 10th, 49 BC, acting Governor of Gaul, and decorated General Gaius Julius Caesar was issued an order from his Senate to disband his army and return to Rome as a private citizen. He was promised glory, a credit for his triumph in expanding the rule of Rome after an arduous, bloody campaign that kept him and his men away from home for 10 years.

Caesar responded by sending his army towards the Roman capital, crossing the river Rubicon. This decision sparked a civil war, leading to his eventual coronation.

Nearly two millennia later, we refer to this decision of Crossing the Rubicon colloquially as ‘The Point of No Return’. 

Welcome, friends, to The Late Game.

Unless the table successfully negotiates a tie, or fosters a premature combo win, Turn 7 (and thereafter) is where 95.19% of all cPDH games end. The metadata confirms that by player negotiations, game ultimately create a rotating Armageddon Clock for when the most “wins” happen, and which seat position wins the most:

Win rate (by seat position)
Seat 1 –  32.2%
Seat 2 –  26.7%
Seat 3 –  21.2%
Seat 4 –  19.9%

Most common win: Turn 9

This is where the collective coronation ceremony happens. Like it or not, each player contributes or votes via their actions (or lack thereof) to who is made King.

Previous [cPDH.guide] authors wrote on the subject of King Making in cPDH from an ethical standpoint.

I’d like to reshape the concept of Kingmaking from their original perspective to Natural and Unnatural processes of Kingmaking.
Follow me on this for a moment… In every game of magic, the table will crown (or deny) a victor.

Whether it’s by your own actions or (the most likely outcome) by the actions of your opponents, you collectively contribute to the decision of making said King.

As we discussed in The Mid-Game, players will negotiate who wins based on deployed tactics of using cards, game actions, words, etc. – all are a part of the collective decision of if or who ultimately wins.

Kingmaking itself is a natural process… Kingmaking by form of collusion is when the process becomes unnatural, concerning judge involvement and the integrity of play. This was [cPDH.guide]’s previous author’s primary perspective, which I fully agree with.

But… I’ll ask the reader to embrace this perspective of negotiating throughout the game to crown a ‘King’ as the ultimate, time-sensitive, mutual (yet competing) goal that we all share responsibility for.

Typically, by Turn 7, these negotiations become more forceful, more permanent. These actions often create Rubicon moments that bring each player either further from or closer to their eventual coronation.

Common tactics of forceful negotiation:
– Life Gain
– Damage
– Interaction

The Purpose(s) of Life Gain:
– To delay someone’s demise
– To waste the resources of your opponent(s) …frustrating their efforts
– To waste the attack of your opponent(s) …possibly causing them to be vulnerable
– To alter the impact of Seat Position

The Purpose(s) of Damage
– To alter the impact of seat position (if well positioned, damage can paint an easy target for others to attack)
– This is self-evident: it’s to speed up someone’s demise
– To remove a threat on board
– To deliver the final blow

The Purpose(s) of Interaction
– On the surface, this is self-evident: to interfere with the actions of others
…below the surface, interaction is a form of communication to the table (we will revisit this concept in a later article)
– To alter the impact of seat position
(example: cast Fog in response to a fatal attack, leaving your opponent wide open for a counterattack) 


Understanding the Rotation of the anticipated “win”
How do you tilt the odds of winning in your favor when you’re not in Seat Position 1? Easy. Instead of being in Seat Position 1, make yourself Seat Position 1 mathematically.

Though the metadata has yet to capture this, I question how many lists who won outside of Seat 1 in the Late Game that used Life Gain tactics. In a game of finite resources and time, Life gain is longevity at the table. In multiplayer, especially so. Life gain also crushes the hopes of players in the late game whose victory relies on damage. In cPDH, this is nearly every strategy.

In the meta currently, alternate win conditions are limited. Mill simply isn’t played enough, and Infect is too noisy a threat to survive.
In nearly every game: you will die to a combo or damage… if the pod allows it.

This means that the game typically ends by rotation, with some seats at a greater advantage than others… unless that seat is changed by collective negotiation.


Conclusion
Similar to Caesar’s negotiations with The Senate, you will reach a point of collective development and be forced to a point of no return.

This focal point in cPDH exists most often within The Late Game.