I'm just making an assumption, but it seems to me that Alex says that he installed the cam per the instructions on the cam card, which would be straight up, no pre-load advance or retard; and then that he's set his initial timing at 12*BTDC using a timing light, which he is calling a stroboscope (strobe fires with ignition), which sounds good to me.

I may be totally off base, but that's my interpretation.