How many people have you taught Academy to and what games were they comparing it to?
I've taught Academy to 4 players and Arena-Apprentice Mode to 40 players since August of last year. When teaching Arena I always talk about the available expansions including Academy and discuss the differences with Academy and Battlegrounds: Domination. I only have feedback from about a handful of players, but it always is along the lines that Academy is too similar (or familiar) to other games. However, they don't specify which games they are comparing against. The other players have not commented either way. When I do hear from new players, the distinguishing point always includes the unique movement around a board and the element that range adds to casting spells and making attacks across a board that they find fun about Arena. Perhaps it is just the visual appeal of a physical environment that has creatures and spells moving and interacting within it.
So you've only taught four Academy players, but you've taught forty Arena. Did you already have this opinion of Academy before you taught it to anyone? Because it's pretty hard to teach a game to people if you don't actually like it. And if those four people were already Arena players, then they're even more likely to get entirely the wrong impression of Academy.
When I first got into Academy, I thought that the decks autobuild and that coming up with deck ideas is like a word search. However, whenever I used those autobuilt decks on OCTGN I was clobbered by people who had built better decks.
I strongly suspect that the reason that my decks were autobuilding at first was because I knew enough about Mage Wars cards in general to build a deck, but I did not know enough about Academy gameplay to build a
good deck in Academy. I had no experience in Academy and I didn't know what worked and what didn't. So I built my first couple decks like any experienced Arena player who was new to Academy would. I thought I knew what I was doing. I didn't.
My advice to Arena players who find themselves turned off by Academy after one or two games: give it another chance. Practice a bit more with the preconstructed decks to get a better grasp of the gameplay before you start building custom decks. And then once you start building custom decks, test them against more experienced Academy players.
Speaking as both an Arena player and an a Academy player, I consider Academy to be just as good as Arena. They both have their merits and I love both of them. To be honest, I am actually starting to prefer Academy slightly more than Arena, although Arena isn't that far behind.
I wish that the official advertisement for Academy didn't make it sound like moving from Academy to Arena was an "upgrade". Because it's no more of an upgrade than moving from Arena to Academy, and it only perpetuates the myth that Academy is watered-down Arena.
