Your story has been summoned to the battlefield – Trackback from MTGBattlefield…

Consider:

1.) There are a finite (but extremely large) number of 60-card magic deck configurations possible in any given format. (Note that because you can play any number of cards and any number of basic land cards, there’s not strictly speaking finite decks, only finite 60-card decks… so keep that in mind).

2.) There is a finite number (but even more extremely large) of actual games that can possibly happen between any two of the possible decks in any format. This includes ALL the decisions that are possible in each game… within reason. Let’s forget about trivial decisions like how you position your cards on the table, etc… every relevant game decision has finite options, so the number of actual games are finite as well.

3.) Therefore…

There is one single deck which has the greatest win % for the above scenario in which every single deck that’s even possible plays every single possible game against every other single deck / game pair.

No? If you disagree, please explain why.

Now, I definitely agree that in terms of human potential, even with the advent of networks and computers and such, there’s a time window for each format that makes it essentially true that “there’s always a better deck” out there. But it’s not strictly true.

And even if you take away the 60 card proviso of #1 above, all decks that have 4x of every card and a marginally increasing number of basic lands, will eventually coverge on something that’s a losing deck anyway, as will the vast majority of non-60-card decks… so even though there is an unbounded number of games / decks absent the proviso, there’s still finite relevant decks and therefore games.

Massive numbers for sure, but “always” is “always”.

Using some players actively modifying the deck works. Using other players to passively modify the deck by providing other competitive decks, sideboards, and tech works better since they don’t find out about the deck in testing.