Yeah, pretty much. To check rotor phasing, I drilled a big hole in an extra distributor cap between the #1 post and the coil post just so I could point the timing light at the hole and see the rotor when the ignition fired.
With the wires reversed, the distributor tries to fire with the rotor between the cap posts even when you have everything correct physically. I once took a Mallory distributor apart and put the magnet in backwards. It had the same symptoms, in that, until you advanced it like crazy it would backfire through the carb. Reversed the wires to the distributor and it ran great. I took the distributor apart and put the magnet in correctly and switched the wires back.
With the symptoms the OP has, I would just set the advance I want on the damper, align the reluctor and pick up, reverse the wires and see what happens.
