Nik, that 2nd one, I know those guys and am friends with several of them
yes I know that and if remember well you played together in some asso group.
I 'm also friend with one of them and appreciate him as a very good manager as well.
I think all of them are good managers and without the mutants project they would have great success too.
But I 'm not speaking about this group, it;s more the new culture (as @IImaestroII mentioned) .
You see now, every ambitious platinum or top100 group is talking about team's quality and skills, not tactics.

Didn't your normal players defeat a mutant team in that association 2-1 a couple weeks ago?
yes, using (both of us) exactly the same orders (we shared our orders) and teams (at least mine was the same and oppo had 2-3 changes ? not sure).
Indeed some things have changed the last year.
- After the new team set up, tactics are not the same (the position in the box - back and forth), the behavior of the wingers, the blue and red arrows .
- The tweak in game mechanics so not to have large domination scores vs weak or illegal teams.
- The beatable margin (as Khis calls it) has increased.
Maybe in some games the skills of the players don't matter so to neutralize the mutants effect, but still I don't think a "normal" group can disqualify a "mutant" group.
Maybe now can win few points more.