Now before you all rage in the comments hear me out.

Before buying the arena 8-9 bundles i was a 100% free to play player, my trophy record was 3500 and my card level was 10/7/4/2. I never saw the game as pay to win because i was among the top % of players in the world without having spent a dime. The reason i believe the game is not pay to win is because you could put 10000000$ into the game and still lose to many many players. In fact there are some level 12's, who have most likely bought quite a few super magical chests, that i have beaten.

No amount of money guarantees you a win. While of course if you just start playing a new account and spend a lot of money to instantly get to level 13 you will stomp your way through arenas 1-9, until you are around 4000 trophies. But being around 4000 trophies or even 3500 you will begin to face real players that have skill and experience. This is where the 'pay-to-win' stops. At this point if you are a bad player you will not win. Pay to win implies that regardless of player skill you can buy your way to the top. And this is simply untrue.

Now to get to the more important point of pay to win. I saw a post on this sub reddit this morning that inspired me to make this post in the first place. A guy was compalining that his clan tournament was rigged because the person who won was 'pay to win'. However, the deck that he showed was not a very well built deck with many counters. However, that deck had several legendaries lvl 2. Firstly i had 3 lvl 2 legendaries before purchasing any content from the game so having a lvl 2 legendary does not make you 'pay to win'. Secondly, in this scenario it was a tournament. Both tournaments and challenges are not affected in anyway by players who purchase gold/chests/gems etc. This is because of the tournament standard level of cards. Everyone has an even playing field. A new player can get lvl 9/7/4/1 cards in only a few short months. Especially if they only request those cards from their clan.

Challenges/tournaments and real life tournaments are all played at tournament standard. In my opinion these are the 3 things that push the competitive aspect of this game the furthest. No one cards if you are lvl 13 in arena 7 thats just part of the game, but that lvl 13 player in arena 7 cannot consistently perform well in tournament conditions. This is why the game is not truly pay to win. All competitive games are moved forward for their tournament communities, and supercell balances cards based on how they perform at tournament standard. They aren't going to nerf musketeer because a lvl 13 musketeer can kill any level 9 unit by itself, that just doesn't make sense.

So in conclusion, Free to play players need to stop complaining about pay to win. It DOES NOT EXIST if you are losing to players who have "overleveled" cards thats because that person is bad and in stuck in lower arenas you should be able to win if you are skilled. Skill is the true win condition not money. Any f2p player can beat any p2w player in challenges and tournaments thats just a fact. Please stop saying p2w is a thing because its not.