The most recent of the ever expanding Valeria universe, Guild Academies of Valeria has players working as headmasters expanding their universities and recruiting students to learn and graduate so they can become productive members of society. At the start of the game, you'll have a small university with one building and a handful of professors. Each turn, you'll place one of your 3 steward tokens at one of the docks and take a die to place on your player board. Then you'll carry out the action of the dock. This can get you new buildings, professors and favors of the council. There is of course a cost. The value of the die is it's cost. After all of the stewards have been placed, the education phase is completed simultaneously. Here players will assign their students (dice) and professors to classrooms and teach them. This will give you bonuses but it will also advance the students knowledge levels. Any time they go beyond the 6th pip, they graduate. This is necessary for the next phase, questing. Here, you'll assign your graduated pupils to one or more of the matching quests for points and resources and they'll advance you up the questing track. Advancing will get you lucrative purple buildings for end game scoring bonuses. Then, reset and continue to the next round. This continues for 4 rounds and after the 4th round, you'll tally endgame scoring by tallying your tiles and if you have any council members. The highest score will be the winner.
The Good: As always, Daily Magic Games continues to impress with the Valeria series. The idea of building an expanding fantastical university with unique building types and moving students through the ranks feels like something only they could do this effectively. I loved the general concept of gaining buildings and trying to get the right ones to match the right students and faculty but also finishing the circles at the corners for potential extra actions to do at opportune times is beautifully executed. With a limited number of workers you'll need to make every action count and every die you choose must be carefully executed to make sure you have enough money for the rest of the round. Every single idea is meaningful and well thought out. The artwork from The Mico is spot on as always.
The Okay: This was a bit of a slower burn than I'm accustomed to with Valeria games. The first round felt like there was little direction because the dice and professors drawn are at random. While there's plenty of options to pick up to guide yourself, the first round or two can feel a bit more drawn out than you'd like. While minor, the rulebook layout was not great. There was a lot of text and not enough examples. It almost felt like a draft or there wasn't enough time to dress it up. Admittedly, I've never loved their rulebooks but this one was especially rough.
Final Thoughts: Any time a new Valeria game is announced I'm pretty much on board from the start but I'll admit Guild Academies snuck up on me a bit. It didn't have the usual theme of fighting monsters and doing cool fantasy stuff that I'm used to. What it did have was a beautiful execution of worker placement, dice drafting, and engine building that drew me in very quickly. This was a spectacular addition to the series that managed to remain true to the theme while also deviating into a completely different sector of the world. Guild Academies has solidified itself as one of the best in an already great series.
Thanks to Daily Magic Games for providing a review copy.