Scouting, Scraping, and the Morality of Data Aggregation

June 23, 2026 Updated June 23, 2026 · BobbyMcWho

Intent

The intent of this article is not to further a witch hunt, nor condone any of the activities being done; it is to communicate with the community, some of whom may be unfamiliar with these sorts of things, and help further understanding of what impact they may have on you. Let's start off with some basic definitions.

Scouting

It's not a secret to anyone who has hung out in a competitive TCG environment for any amount of time, but may come as a surprise to folks who are newer to higher stakes tournaments like this. Friend groups and teams frequently share competitor information amongst themselves including things like deck archetypes, color pairings, tech cards, etc. This has been an ever increasing practice harkening back to Magic: The Gathering pro tours and team scouting using spreadsheets and phones. I'm not going to get into the morality and ethics of this, just because it's a widely practiced behavior doesn't necessarily make it one that is sweet rather than sour.

Scraping

Scraping is obtaining data through programmatic means. This data could come from deck list sites, tournament reports, social media posts, so on and so forth. These are typically things that are available publicly, but could veer into using an authenticated user's login to scrape information only available to that user. It could also mean pulling data from a site's API that is never shown to a typical user but is seen by your browser. It is the responsibility of developers of websites to secure their user's information, and only return what the accessor is authorized to view.

Data Aggregation

Data aggregation is taking all of the data you have available to you, whether that be from scouting, scraping, or divine inference, and combining that data in ways that is useful in some way to you. This could be useful tools like ones created for MTG Arena that track your win rate based on mulligan decisions or cards seen in starting hand, or it could be something a bit more morally ambiguous like reconstructing a deck list from the cards you've seen your opponent ink or play. This could be done manually of course, people watch stream matches and note those things, see a spicy deck and attempt to recreate it by watching a replay of the event. Programmatic access takes away a bit of the tedious barrier and makes it much easier to aggregate this data.

AI

Artificial intelligence. I solely mention this because it's a buzz word being thrown around. It's important to understand that even if AI is used to build a tool, the end result is a product of the prompter's intent and is a program or software. It's not AI that is aggregating data, it's a program written by AI that is deterministic in behavior at that point.

DLC Indianapolis

A quick note: the following is as I understand it based on public discourse around the topic.

A group of people had created a tool similar to the one I mentioned for MTG Arena above, that let them import information they programmatically obtained about games they played against other players, including their opponent's username, and cards seen in deck. It also allowed them to see either a full opponent deck list or an approximation based on that data. Allegedly, the group didn't think about the scouting implications of the program until after R1 of DLC Indianapolis, when one of the members was told by another that they had used it to find a guess of what that player would be playing, based on matching their Play Hub username to their collected and aggregated data in the tool. The person who was informed that this happened approached the Tournament Organizer and explained the situation, and the Tournament Organizer said while not technically against any tournament rules currently in effect, it was immoral. The tool was allegedly disabled for the rest of the tournament, and the person who used it to scout was revoked access. It has been said that as of Sunday, this sort of tool is against tournament policy, but without any sort of policy document update to refer to, we can't know for sure what all this encompasses.

There is a rumor ongoing that somehow that tool was aggregating emails or user's real names and things of that nature from tournament software or other tools. To the best of my knowledge that is untrue. Play Hub currently exposes usernames and first name last initial in their application.

There are also folks saying that deck list are being scraped from Play Hub. To the best of my knowledge, there once was a vulnerability in tournament software that allowed for public scraping access of deck lists, but has since been patched (before Richmond DLC).

I think it's important to note that while one person has decided to speak publicly about their tool, there are almost certainly other groups building similar things in nature. We are in the age of agentic software engineering and the barrier for entry is lower than ever, even non-developers can create custom software in hours to days.

Morality and Sportsmanship

There are morality and sportsmanship questions around the practice of scouting and data aggregation, whether that be manual or programmatic. It certainly causes an unfair advantage to those who have a larger network or access to tools that can programmatically aggregate data. Unfortunately, because the practice is so widespread and hard to enforce against, even a policy change that states that scouting is against tournament rules will not necessarily prevent it from occurring. Ideally we want to put all players in an event on the same level of knowledge about their opponent as possible. Many have proposed (and I personally am a fan of the idea), that Ink color pairings should be public information available at the time of pairing. This helps a bit to level the playing field for solo players without a scouting network, but leaves some skill expression still in the alter. Different archetypes can exist within color pairings, and over altering purely based on color pair could be a trap. Obviously at times you can likely guess what kind of deck someone is on based on the meta and the color pair, but not always.

Streams are a fantastic tool for exposure to the game, and helping the community that can't attend be a part of the event as a whole. Players who are streamed on feature matches are at an increased disadvantage for the rest of the tournament due to a large portion of their deck list being seen over the course of the match. This leads to folks advocating for open deck lists for the whole tournament. There are both pros and cons to this. Players who build decks using unconventional strategies lose a bit of an advantage in swiss rounds. Round starts take longer as lists are reviewed. Both players have greater information to inform their gameplay, and game one plays more like games two or three.

I don't necessarily have the right answer here.

What do we do?

I think it's important for players to be informed about the things that may effect them in tournaments. I think it's also important for folks who are building tools to ensure that they cannot be used maliciously or for unfair advantage. In the end the Disney Lorcana community is one of the greatest communities I've had the pleasure of being part of. I want folks to have the tools they need to play this game, stream matches, and fulfill their personal growth desires. I want the community to come together at large events and celebrate each other and have fun. Do good unto each other, and with great power comes great responsibility.