Mobile gaming update time.
In Clash Royale we continue to drift between Legendary and the top of Gold. Basically, our core group is good enough to generally win wars in Gold, but once we hit Legendary, we get crushed. A couple of things explain this.
For one, I think most of us are able to build a good deck at gold league card levels (11), but most can’t do that at Legendary (12). This problem is even worse for our newer players, who might use level 10 or even 9 cards in a deck. A lvl 10 card vs 11s is fine. 10s vs 12s in Legendary is, generally, too much power to overcome, even if you out-skill your opponent. This also applies to account levels; if your account is level 10, going up against level 11 towers is doable. Vs 12s though you are at a significant disadvantage.
The second, and even bigger problem with Legendary league is that it only has one tier, and matchmaking will put you against basically anyone in that league. In one war we got matched up against a top 100 clan. They had 5x the amount of war trophies. Just insane.
That said, I’m surprised we even cracked into Legendary, and given how stable our core is, I’m now actually confident we will eventually find our footing in that league and stay permanently. Skill-wise we are basically there, it’s just a matter now of people rounding out their card collections and being able to consistently field strong lvl12 decks.
Personally I still really enjoy the war aspect of the game. Ladder climbing I do just to keep going, but I’m not really driven to climb as now it’s more a question of time vs skill or progression. My decks are maxed, and with average time I can climb to around 5k trophies. With serious play time I can climb to 5.5k+, but usually I don’t have that time.
In Clash of Clans we are in Master League III, and in our current league we are projected to finish 4th or 5th. The fact that so far we have always been behind in town hall levels means skill-wise we are above the pack, which is a nice, and means we will move up once we get more people deeper into TH12.
Personally in CoC I have my main account closing in on being maxed (not walls), while my alt is in the middle of TH11. I’m still really enjoying the Electro/Loon attack at TH12, and can execute a 3-star attack against even a max TH12 if things go well. At TH11 I’m currently switching from mass hogs to mass miners, because max hogs into a base with an Eagle generally results in murder, and basically never results in a 3 star. I’ve seen miners fair better, so in that direction I go (I don’t want both accounts using electro/loon as that’s boring).
Our clan, Supreme Cream!, is going strong in both games. In CR we are generally full but turnover is fairly common. In CoC we have spots open, and anyone TH7+ is welcome to join for regular clan wars (League wars are capped at 15, so our highest 15 go in for that).
Hardcore Casual 
Most of the time in CR it’s simply because of the turnover with our lower levels. They don’t participate and we boot, which is fine, but between that and people just leaving for reasons we don’t know, we aren’t generally rising deck levels below our top 20-25 people.
I don’t really see a way around that though as we aren’t super hardcore and thus aren’t going to be able to recruit people into our top 20 very often. I still am enjoying the game but are the same as you on ladder where with my card levels I know I end up maxing out 4600-4800 every season and get reset.
The idea with recruitment is that those top 20 recruits are rare, but hopefully we get one every now and then, or someone who isn’t top 20 stays in long enough to get themselves to that level. But yea, not much can be done about the turnover, its a casual mobile game in many respects, even if the top-end is pretty hardcore.