Dan_Elkington

Again, there seems to be a lot of subjective commentary about whether being a playtester materialises in an advantege. This is irrelevant. I'd love to playtest new stuff, I've a real eye for detail and rules and do some technical copywriting on the side of my job, as well as my academic work in my professional sphere. If I were honoured to be a playtester at some point in the future, would I use the new stuff; no. Why; because I wouldn't want my opponent to think that the only reason I won was because I had the book for several months longer than they did. In fact, I'd probably take some meta busting lists that I knew would ****** with the new book to help the community work out how to beat the new stuff. @Jack Armstrong

It's a basic question of fairness. Playtesters have an advantage as they know the rules beforehand. Whether they can capitalise on that advantage is an irrelevance. It's interesting you display a load of wins and say that playtesters haven't got an advantage because they win with relatively old books, you're making the case that by not playing the new stuff, it won't affect their performance. Therefore, playtesters not being able to enter a tournament with the new book doesn't cause them a detriment and eliminates the potential for an unfair advantage. Put another way, if it's no Biggie to play with the new stuff, then why argue that you should be able to, when you could easily not, and protect your reputation.