The Splendor part was a but confusing. The author's point is that the simple strategy has no meta, because players can't interfere with each other. It's just a race. But the strategy of saving up points opens up a metagame because players can now interfere with each other, so the game becomes about guessing opponent strategies and counterstrategies.

Another analogy is a bicycle race. You could have everyone run separately and compare their best times. But by racing together, you get peloton and team effects where players can attack opponentns and support teammates, but expose weakness that could be exploited, and the success of an act, like passing or drafting, depends on how others react.

That’s exactly my point. Nobody calls a peloton meta racing. A peloton is just strategy. Always has been.

The peloton strategy is the current meta.

In this instance, the metagame is the optimal strategy given your gaming group’s current strategic preferences.

I’ve found that over time, the dominant tactics in Splendor for my group swing between build and buy. People do whatever is necessary to win. Tactics used 50 games ago go away and then get brought back. People hold grudges against others over old games, and act to disrupt each other. All of this can be predicted and folded into game strategy.

I’ll admit, it’s a little difficult to see this type of meta in most gaming groups — my group happened to be my entire office, and we played Splendor every lunch break for probably a year. That’s hundreds of games within a small group of people.

You do see this in Chess, various openings fall in and out of favour over time. I guess you could call this "meta" - tactics change in line with strategy, strategies change in line with the meta game. But as GP says, I've always considered this as just "strategy".

Made me think, though. Thanks :)