Let's just see some spoilers and be on with this. If some pro teams have the spoiler ahead of time, YES that is a huge advantage practice makes perfect. And pro players have more time than the average player to play with their cards anyway.

Its hard for people like me who have 5 pc points from 8 pcq's cuz I want to win with my own deck. It's pretty easy for SOME not all people who think they are pros to belittle people for net decking when they have the cards 6 extra weeks. Believe you me they would be net decking if they didnt have that extra time.

Is it wrong if this is taking place? Yes. All it does is to increase the distance between pros and casuals. If it is going on it should stop and be more fair. But if not what can we do except walk away from the game or suck it up and play.

Lots of stuff flying around here but here are my comments:

1. Having spoilers early is a HUGE advantage. You can spin it however you want but the more testing you do... the better prepared you are. Has anyone broken JLA yet? Exactly. Look how long it took for SqSu and Avengers to be Tier 1. More time gives you the upper hand... especially in a format where there are only 2 sets to worry about.

2. There are no outside playtesters so be assured that UDE is not purposely leaking sets to non-UDE employees or contractors. But like any company... leaks happen... but don't blame UDE.

3. Although UDE playtesting is not perfect, it is far from bad. Has anyone noticed they have hired pretty good players over there (except for Yip)?

4. If UDE were to release the spoilers early... would it really affect their sales? How? This sentiment baffles me. But I also don't think UDE will release the spoilers early. Is that a good solution? A few people got the spoilers so now UDE should give them to everyone? If you owned UDE, is that what you would do?

Who do you blame if not UDE?

I'll chime in on this one. Having a spoiler a full month before everyone else is DEFINITELY a very distinct advantage. It is not only because of the (multitude of) reasons listed here, but because of the testing of the potential synergies with the cards from previous sets. The finding of potentially powerful combinations and synergies a month or more before everybody else gives a jump on deck-tweaking that everyone else will be hard-pressed to defeat. You'll already have extensively discovered the weaknesses and strengths of the new (or revisited) teams, and will be able to adjust those decks to the metagame you see forming before the big event far better than the people still taking their baby-steps with the new cards.

If these spoilers really are being released to pros, it is a truly unfair advantage that will make it much, much harder for new players to achieve pro status. Those pros are not only already deeper into the game, since they (at least partially) make a living with the game, but now they also have knowledge of how the metagame will develop at least a month before everyone else (including other pros!!!).

UDE most assuredly needs to address this, and nip it in the bud. Other pros should be whistle-blowing if they catch wind of (or better yet, gain access to) a spoiler so far in advance of a release. Not that I expect most people to do anything other than look at the spoiler themselves to get the same advantage, but really, a little bit of whistle-blowing would go a long way.

What I meant is that other posters are blaming UDE for actually giving the spoilers to players to test. They are not.

UDE has a NDA (Non-disclosure Agreement) with all people affiliated with them. If someone who has signed that NDA decides to break it and leak information, can we really blame UDE? UDE can try to punish that individual but what if they can't find out who the source is? Do they start sending out subpeonas? Start hiring lawyers to go after these "tech-leakers"?

They just make it harder to leak it and trust their employees and contractors to honor the NDA. I'm sure if UDE knew for sure who the source was, that person would be looking for work elsewhere.

I blame the schools.

LOL, I blame an awful lot of our current woes on the public school system. So yeah, I blaym da skoolz two!

Ah, ok, misread.

EDIT: Concerning UDE's security issues. Basically, with a leak such as this, they're undermining the integrity of the professional side of the game. Pro tournaments are based on parity--one group should not have an advantage over any other group except what htey can generate for themselves in testing. Yes, this is probably a hard thing for UDE to stop, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't try, or that we shouldn't say something about it when it happens. No matter the manner of the leak or how hard it is to catch, the integrity of the PC is still affected by it.

Alright, two more things-

First, people talk about how big an advantage having the spoiler three weeks early is, and maybe it is. But think about it. Those three weeks will be spent playing with your inner circle. You can't let anyone you don't trust in, for fear of them blowing the whistle and getting you all banned. So you're testing with maybe 3 or 4 other people. If you're really lucky, you might have enough to run some practice drafts. Is this insignificant? Probably not. But it's not as big an advantage as some people think.

Why not? Because the strength of your testing is directly proportional to the size and skill of your testing pool. We've all heard people who clobberize everyone with some jank at an 8-12 person Hobby League then come to the boards talking about how their deck is the best ever. (My previous sig quote related to this.) Now, if you're with a big time team, the quality of the players is better, but the same principle applies. All players have blind spots, and no single person or small group of people can account for everything. If you were to make a scientific experiment, you'd need more than just a handful of subjects.

By that reasoning, the 6 weeks you spend testing with trusted confederates are comparatively small compared to the 6 weeks where you can test with anyone you can flag down. And both pale compared to the knowledge gained by taking the deck to a major event and trying it out in a wide-open competative field. This is why people who want to keep tabs on the metagame study the $10Ks.

Now, if you want to argue that even a small advantage is an advantage, I won't dispute that. But don't overstate the problem. It's not a direct relationship between the time spent testing and the strength of your deck, there are other factors to consider.

Number 2:

I think before we go making a federal case out of this we should check to see if it's even true in the first place. Right now all we've got is people talking about people who have "trusted sources" and who claim to know people who have the spoiler. Not very strong evidence. Let's see this mysterious excel file itself, or have some evidence of it's existance. Until we do this is nothing but an unsubstantiated rumor, for all we know it was cooked up by some trickster to enflame the tensions between pros and casuals for the purpose of watching the flames fly.

Hmm... question is, if this has happened before in the past, why -hasn't- a 'borken' JLA deck shown up? Why hasn't anything other than 'rush' shown up from Avengers?

Has any PC really demonstrated a single dominant deck that came out for a 'new' set that would show how this has happened in the past, and no one saw it coming?

Just curious...

First, drafting is irrelevant. Drafting in Atlanta is 3x JLA.

Second, wouldn't it depend on the team that has the spoiler? Let's take, as an example, FTN. That's not 3 or 4 people--that's 10 or 12 of the best players in the game. Your principle doesn't really apply at all. These are the people that catch just about everything, and have a very large list of people who've won a very large amount of money recently. Now they would have two months' worth of testing advantage over the rest of us, and their 'trusted confederates' are fellow PC winners. Why the heck would they want to test with Joe Blow off the street anyway? The same goes with what's left of Realmworx, or the King's Games/YMG guys, or the TOGIT guys. Extra testing time is a huge advantage.

The idea that someone made this problem up to watch people argue on a message board is asinine.

damn this thread was long. after reading all this BS, only one thing pops into my conspiracy-addled brain...someone posted earlier that the set has been done since august. what if these teams have had the spoiler since then? that's LIKE 7 months!

so with 7 months, some of you are saying that no team could figure out all the best decks in MMA in time for PCATL? man, we have a lot of stupid pros then.

false alarm.



TBZ

I respectfully disagree with your theory of the numbers of players being proportional to the quality of metagame tech. Here is a list of a few decks that were built and tested by less than 8 (some less than 4) players:

1. Curve Sentinels
2. IDM: Anti-Matter Control
3. Superman Fraybots
4. Flying Circus
5. GLock

A good team can break a format, especially if they have more time than other teams. Heck, PC Indy may have not been so GLEE heavy if there was a few more weeks of testing.

And, if you have your archetypes already built before the actual cards come out, then you have that much more advantage over everyone else because while they are figuring out the builds, you are already tweaking the matchups.

erick, yer so smart.

Should I have mentioned Solitaire? That was built by and played by only 1 person right?