Actually it sounds like an SC balance to me.
Particularly SC pretenders in blitz games. It definetly made me park my Mictlan Lord of the Night early-game assassinate all of his commanders and his pretender strategy. It might be overdone and need abit of tweaking (such as not showing up until later in the game) but I wouldnt call it a bug.
But no matter what the opinions are on any of this, I can see where it might be a good idea to start all games with a MOD. Even if its just a placeholder empty mod since apparently that can be edited to make some changes mid-game?
On the other hand, if that is true then we must be even more careful to trust the host. Dom3 certainly added a lot of host-abuseable items that cant be seen by the players.