This is a great book. A REALLY great book. And I mean great. If this book was out when I started writing COTDs I hardly would have needed to - it does much of the work itself. But since it doesn't cover Dragons (one of its few disadvantages) there still is work for me until another Player guide comes out (by which time we'll be in to War Hosts and I'll be once again ahead of it). I recommend this to any METW player, beginner to advanced. As with the Companion, I'll go through each section one-by-one, not going into very much detail because there's so much information in this book. Oh, and a bit of news from the back of the book - THERE'S ANOTHER PROMO CARD COMING OUT. The spoiler for it is at the end of this review. You'll like who it is.
Introduction - Just a quick one page thing, not that much info, won't bother writing about it.
Part 1: Strategy Guide - This section alone, like several others, justifies buying this book. Unlike the tiny little strategy section in the Companion, this 38-page giant goes in to detail on every part of METW strategy. Lots and lots of useful advice (except they do give Pallando a good review in the Wizard comparisons, so it isn't entirely correct, but everything else is great). Some nice decks, too, to help you with your deck building strategies.
Part 2: League Play - This small 3-page section is actually very useful. It provides some nice guidelines to setting up and running METW leagues, with various rules and advice. If I ever set up an IRC league it'll be using this.
Part 3: Card Entries - The largest part of the book, occupying all the pages after section 2, 176 of them, has a brief review for every single card in the Wizards set, including some general summaries for regions. It also includes reviews of five of the Promo cards, for some reason they don't include Ireful Flames. In addition to the brief reviews, something I've already done (for free), there are more interesting things: descriptions of what each card represents. It tells about all nine Nazgul, for example, and their backgrounds. Plus where Smaug, Daelomin, and Leucaruth come from. And more background on the Palantiri, too. I think it's all taken from ICE's RPG books, but for those of us (like me) who don't have all of those it's extremely useful. Various notes and so forth accompany each section. The Wizard section is also nice.
Overall, the METW Player Guide is an extremely good and useful book, well worth the money and useful to any METW player from beginner to expert. I highly reccomend it, and give it a perfect 10.0 by my rating scale.
And here's the spoiler for the promo card, a much-requested Hobbit who I'll be reviewing a bit more intensively than ICE does in a few weeks:
Mind: 3
Direct Influence: 0
Marshalling Points: 1
Prowess/Body: 1/8
Home Site: Bag End
Unique. Unless he is one of the starting characters, he may only be brought into play at his home site. All of his corruption checks are modified by +1. He can tap to cancel a strike against another Hobbit in his company.
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