Train the next generation of Valerian heroes in Guild Academies of Valeria, a stand alone board game set in the Valeria universe that’s heavier than most of the other games in the series.
In Guild Academies of Valeria you recruit students and professors and expand your campus. Your goal is to educate and level up your students, and then send them off to complete quests. All while also trying to sway the whims of The Council in order to gain the most favour.
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Starting a School for Heroes, what is Guild Academies of Valeria?
Guild Academies of Valeria is a puzzley engine builder designed by Stan Kordonskiy. It features artwork by one of my favourite artists, The Mico, and is published by Daily Magic Games who initially Kickstarted it and then went on to release it to retail in late 2023 as part of their Valeria series of games.
This is a completely stand alone game and you don’t need to own or know anything about any other Valeria games to enjoy Guild Academies. If you are a fan of the other games in the series you will see some familiar icons as well as places and names, which may enrich the experience for you.
Guild Academies of Valeria plays one to four players, with BGG listing it as best with just two. Personally I found three to be the sweet spot but it is really good with two, and I do also enjoy the game with four. At higher player counts, games take about an hour and a half to two hours. As the player count goes down so does the playtime.
In Guild Academies of Valeria you play as a headmaster who is trying to build their own personal academy, recruit the best students (in the form of dice), hire professors and influence the Guild Council Members. These council members determine what you will score points for at the end of the game. You will be trying to build an engine to help your students graduate and go on to complete a variety of quests.
You can get a look at the very solid and well designed components for this game in our Guild Academies of Valeria Unboxing Video over on YouTube. You’ll see that the game includes a rather large board, lots of custom dice, a couple of drawstring bags, plenty of cardboard, and the great iconography we’ve grown to expect from the Valeria series.
The wooden components are all silk screened which not only looks cool but helps make the game accessible for people with colour based vision issues. The rulebook is very well written. It is easy to learn the game from and also easy to reference.
The only thing that I think would have made this game better is some form of box insert, though baggies work pretty well for this one. If you do want some better organization Daily Magic Games has worked with Folded Space to create an insert specifically for Guild Academies of Valeria.
Lesson One, How Guild Academies of Valeria Plays
Guild Academies of Valeria is a dice drafting, tableau building, engine building game with player driven scoring, where the dice represent students and the value on the dice represents the student’s current level from one to six.
Each round, during the Recruitment Phase, new students arrive in the city at the docks. There are four different docks and each is tied to a different action. The number of dice that show up at each dock is equal to the player count plus one.
Players each have three stewards which they will send to the docks to meet students. Each player can only place one steward per dock. When a steward is placed that player drafts one of the dice from that spot and either receives an amount of gold (the die value minus eight) or takes that dock’s action.
Dock actions cost players gold equal to the value of the die they drafted. If a player can’t afford to take an action they must instead take gold.
At the Castellan Dock players can draft one grey Town Classroom tile and add it to their growing academy. Most tiles have quarter pedestals in some of their corners. When placing the tile, if a player completes a full pedestal they get to take a monument chit and place it on the pedestal. These chits provide powerful in game bonuses.
The Ministry Dock lets players place a banner on a lower council seat on the main board, or move a banner already placed to a different Lower or Upper Council Member. Banners placed on the lower council give you in game bonuses like using one colour of dice or professor as wild, or giving you discounts on actions, and more.
In Guild Academies of Valeria the Upper Council Members are all end game scoring opportunities. In addition to moving or placing a banner you also get to take a favour chit, which can be spent at any time for an in game bonus. Placing banners on upper council members determines what each player will score at the end of the game.
The Fountain Dock lets you draft a new professor as well as gain two Knowledge. Professors are required to activate your various classroom tiles. Whenever you gain Knowledge you get to roll up your dice. Any die that rolls past a six is considered to “graduate” and will get be used to go on a quest.
Finally, there’s the Benefactor Dock that lets you draft a purple Guild Classroom Tile and add it to your growing academy. Just like the Town Classroom tiles, if you complete a pedestal when placing one of these tiles you get to take a bonus chit.
With each Steward placement you must take some action. You either have to take the associated Dock Action or take gold. In addition to this, each time you draft a die you can take one extra action, these include swapping gold for mana or mana for gold, moving one of your banner tokens, or drafting a favor chit.
Once all players have placed all three of their stewards and taken the associated actions or gold, everyone gets to run their engine in the Education Phase. Students and professors report to class through the players placing their drafted dice and professors onto the classroom tiles in their academy. Each classroom has different requirements and offers different rewards, in the form of money, mana and knowledge. Some also offer the ability to manipulate the dice.
Knowledge is the resource that lets the players improve their students rolling their dice up by one for each Knowledge gained. Knowledge has to be spent when gained and any extra Knowledge is lost. During this phase players can also spend mana to generate additional Knowledge. This will be key to upgrading enough students to complete multiple quests.
When a die is rolled up from a six, that student has graduated. Congratulations! The die is placed onto the Graduate Stage on your player board and will be ready to be using during the following Questing Phase.
At the end of the Education Phase players earn gold for professors not placed on classroom tiles (they are considered to be doing valuable research) and also receive bonus resources for getting as many students into classrooms as they can.
Next comes the Questing Phase where players use their graduated students to complete quests. There are a number of quests placed on the main board in a stack. Each has different die type requirements and rewards that always include victory points.
Players can only complete face up quests and once a quest is completed the next in the stack is revealed. Later quests are more difficult to complete, requiring multiple colours of dice, but offer bigger rewards.
When completing quests players also move up a questing track, one spot for each different quest completed that round. Going up this track provides various rewards like getting to draft and place Prestige Buildings which are worth end game points, swapping the position of two of your already placed Classroom Tiles, and getting to move or place banners on council members.
At the end of each game round in Guild Academies of Valeria there is a Restoration Phase where you rotate all of the in game markets, players take back their stewards, and new dice are placed at the dock. At the end of the fourth round, this restoration phase is skipped and everyone calculates their final score.
While some points are earned in game, for things like completing quests and activating some classrooms, the majority of players’ points in Guild Academies of Valeria comes from end game scoring. Those end game points comes from any purple Prestige Buildings that players have built and from the upper council members that they have placed banners on.
What is noteworthy is that the majority of what each player will be scoring is determined by the player’s own actions and that different players could be scoring vastly different things at the game’s end.
Final Exam, Is Guild Academies of Valeria Right for Your Game Group?
What first caught my attention with Guild Academies of Valeria is it’s theme. The theme fits in great with the other games in the Valeria series. This feels like the game that comes after all of their other games. It’s what you play after you’ve completed quests and battled monsters in Valeria Card Kingdoms, after you survive the Siege of Valeria, once you’ve taken the monsters’ side in Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria, etc. Plus I just really dig the idea of building a fantasy school recruiting and churning out heroes to complete future quests.
Mechanically I like how straightforward Guild Academies is. Each turn you are going to take at most three out of four different actions ( as well as maybe a few bonus actions), and you do that over four rounds, which only gives you twelve actions each game (including just taking gold when you are broke, which will happen at least once).
None of the individual actions are complicated but trying to figure out what to do when, in which order, and at what cost, is where the fun comes in. I found Guild Academies of Valeria to feel like a big action optimization puzzle and I love that.
This is one of those games where you are trying to do just one more thing, graduate just one more student, draft that one perfect tile that lets you complete a pedestal to get a much needed bonus that lets you get that thing you’ve saved up for for two turns, etc.
There is also a spatial puzzle aspect to Guild Academies with how you lay out your tiles. In addition to trying to complete those pedestals you also have to be aware of the various end game scoring opportunities both from the Prestige Buildings and the Council. Every player only gets one chance to rearrange things and they only earn that when they complete a set number of quests.
Like many of the games in the Valeria series, part of what makes Guild Academies of Valeria sing, is how the mechanics tie into the theme. Each turn as Headmaster your are sending your three stewards down to the docks to recruit the best students coming off the boats. While in town you will be hiring contractors to improve your academy and/or recruiting new professors. Once the school semester starts you will send those students and professors to class making use of your various classrooms to graduate as many students as you can, and then finally sending those students out to complete Quests and thereby raising your reputation as an academy.
The flow is intuitive and works very well. It also plays very quickly once players have the basics down. This is one of the few games in my collection where, with experienced players, we can actually complete games in a shorter time than what’s printed on the box.
One thing I love about Daily Magic Games is the consistency in their iconography. They use the same iconography in all of their games which helps make it easier to learn them. Fans of their games will recognize the guild symbols, the coin and mana icons, etc. Some mechanics carry over as well, like Magic being a resource you can spend to get other resources.
One thing to watch out for in Guild Academies of Valeria is randomness. This is a dice driven worker placement game and added to the randomness of the dice, all of the bonus tokens, favour tiles. and most importantly, Classroom Tiles, that you draft come from randomly generated market stacks with a huge variety of tiles in them.
While strategy is important in Guild Academies, the randomness will often mean that you don’t get exactly what you need to do exactly what you want to do. Either the die colour you want won’t come up, or the buildings up for grabs don’t fit very well in your academy, or the bonus tokens currently available are of no use to you. There’s also the fact you are playing with other people who, if they are paying attention, may take something they know you need, just because you need it.
While I love the tactical aspect this adds to the game, I understand that not everyone will feel the same. You need to constantly adapt your play and work with the flow of the game. You can’t just pick a plan at the beginning and lock it in, that’s not going to work.
Another potential issue with Guild Academies is that experienced players have a significant advantage over new players, just by knowing what can come up during the game. System mastery has an impact here, and knowing what Classrooms exist can really affect the way you play the game. As is knowing what council member bonuses work with different strategies and knowing the various ways you can score points during end game.
Note that the game is simple enough that it doesn’t REQUIRE multiple plays to understand what’s going on. After your first play you are on pretty good footing. However, knowing what tiles can possibly come up definitely affects how you play and plan.
What I haven’t mentioned yet is probably my favourite part of Guild Academies of Valeria and that’s the player driven scoring system. This ties in well with the tactical play and the games randomness. In this game it’s pretty much up to the players themselves to decide what they want to score at the end of the game and there are multiple opportunities to adjust what you are aiming for. This scoring system works great for when that perfect plan you had falls apart, as it allows for you to shift your focus without punishing you for doing so.
One of my favourite moments in Guild Academies of Valeria is when I can pull off a long turn. When I get to draft exactly that die I need to complete a quest I want to complete, and I take a bonus action to move my banner so the right colour of die is wild for me. Then I place the building in a spot that gives me a monument tile that lets me flip that new die from a one to a six, which I use right away, then I spend mana to graduate that die without ever having to send them to class, freeing up room for another die, which I get by using a favour tile to pull a die from the bag and set it to four. Then the quest I complete moves me up the track to a point where I get a purple building that scores exactly the guild mix I have in my academy. I live for turns like that.
As you can probably tell already, I really enjoy Guild Academies of Valeria. It’s a very tight and rewarding experience and feels like a bigger game than it is. I love the feeling of accomplishment I get from building my academy tile by tile and I love watching what the other players are doing with theirs. I enjoy the feeling of creating an engine out of my classrooms and I have fun trying to figure out the puzzle of optimizing my moves. Only getting twelve actions means you have to make those actions count.
If you dig engine building games you really should pick up Guild Academies of Valeria. It’s a really solid addition to the genre and I think people are going to dig the rather unique theme. It also features a lot of different Euro game aspects, like dice based worker placement, set collection with the different guilds, dice manipulation, resource management, and contract fulfilment in the form of quests.
I think fans of other games in the Valeria series should pick this up as well. Guild Academies of Valeria, despite not being the last game in the series feels like an end cap to all of the previous games. Now that you’ve experienced everything Valeria has to offer it’s time to retire in style, by building an academy and passing on what you have learned.
There’s a lot to like in Guild Academies of Valeria and I recommend anyone who is into somewhat longer strategy games give it a shot. There’s a fun decision space here and the game flows smoothly due to strong thematic tie ins. However, do be aware of the randomness and the tactical play it encourages, and while the game doesn’t features direct player conflict, actions can and will impact the other players and the game can get a bit nasty.
FAQs
Is Guild Academies of Valeria an Expansion?
Guild Academies of Valeria is a completely stand alone game set in the Valeria universe. It is part of a series of games from Daily Magic Games that all share the same setting.
Do I need to have played other Valeria games to enjoy Guild Academies of Valeria?
No, there is no need to play any of the other Valeria games to enjoy Guild Academies of Valeria. That said, if you do know other games in the series learning this one may be easier as it uses familiar terms and iconography.
How Heavy is Guild Academies of Valeria?
While Guild Academies of Valeria is one of the heaviest, and longest games in the Valeria series I still wouldn’t call it a heavy game. It’s currently rated at 2.93 for Weight on BGG and I found that most of that weight comes from the size of the decision space and not the complexity of the mechanics. The thematic tie ins actually make Guild Academies pretty easy to learn.
It’s time to retire this review of Guild Academies of Valeria. Now that you’ve graduated it’s time for your final test: Leave a comment on this review and tell us what your favourite Valeria game is!
- Great for seasoned board gamers!
- Recruitment – There are 4 docks and you have only 3 stewards to influence the council and gain students, teachers & classrooms.
- Education – Only a careful mix of students and professors can earn the knowledge to graduate.
- Questing – Graduates are useless if they’re not what the King needs to fill the available quests.
