Board Game Arena

I’m trying to join a table for a game and keep getting the message “at least one player at this table does not want to play with you”

Does this mean that player blocked me, or have they set their settings to exclude newbies like me?

That message means they've given you a red thumb. As long as one (or both) of you have red-thumbed the other, you won't be able to play at the same table or directly message each other. If the table settings were excluding newbies, you would instead see a message like "Access restricted to average and above players"