Yeah - I think I'd agree with that assessment, though I don't know if it's the intention.

Sometimes to squash exploits you squash honest people doing honest things in the process.

Accounts are flooding battles with low level cards in an unskilled way and that might be the bigger impact than the accounts that are using low level cards to higher skilled impact.

The good news is that a decrease in rewards on an individual battle that you're winning may still work out in a players favor - because increase in rating is a bigger lever on increased rewards than most other things in the game.