Duos 3* insanely fast?

Seems like people are getting insane 3\* quickly without losing on gold/levels and I am at a complete loss why... over the past 3 nights the first 3\* for multiple teams are round 5-10 and 3 3\* by round 15 etc. even if I'm the only person building my team it's consistently been round 15-20 for my first 3\* and then I can snowball if I don't get destroyed by stars alone. I got "lucky" once in the past 10 games and got a 3\* before round 10 and a couple between rounds 10-15. Am I missing something? Did something change?

My duos team is sitting at 158 games, 58 1st place, 105 top 3... comparable team level and gold throughout the matches.