true, or they could time it differently so that the timer starts when you place a card, that would fix it

I recently tried running the Finish Battle category, and in the banner update, it is impossible to skip the banner animation that plays at the start of the match. Because of this, the earliest you can place cards is at 4:56, which means that it might be impossible to get a top 10 time in the new update. Hopefully this is fixed in a future update, but honestly I doubt it.