In my experience, this is a misfeature of closed board gaming groups. They come up with a local metagame, and nobody new comes in to disrupt it. New players are

In my experience, this is a misfeature of closed board gaming groups. They come up with a local metagame, and nobody new comes in to disrupt it. New players are low-skill, so they learn the local strategy and stop there. You can become a tremendously consistent winner at all sorts of board games simply by knowing that most local metagames are exploitable, and constantly looking for the exploit. Are players burning their resources too fast, or holding them for too long? Are they undervaluing a resource in one phase and overvaluing it in another? Are they failing to recognize potential resource engines, or building engines to obtain things that can be obtained faster without one? Are they not recognizing or exploiting resource scarcity? Are they failing to recognize situations where they can apply pressure or force actions by threatening to end the game?