The Academy

• Designer: Manny Dominguez
• Publisher: Amigo
• Players: 3-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The Academy is no ordinary place. Here you have to prove yourself in mysterious disciplines, above all: in role reversal! In each round of The Academy, players take on a different role, and your goal is to win tricks, complete round goals, and thereby collect awards. In the end, whoever has three awards and “The Ace in the Sleeve” wins. Distribute role cards at random. The roles “Mastermind” and “Team Player” then determine a trump suit and a round rule for the current round. With eight cards in hand, players then start to play. Each role has a special task, the fulfillment of which earns an award at the end of the round. For example, “Captain” and “Team Player” must win more tricks together than “Mastermind”, whereas “Mastermind” wants to win at least as many tricks as “Captain” and “Team Player” combined. (“Rebel” has nothing to do with any of that and pursues their own goals.) The Captain leads to the first trick, and other players must follow suit, if possible; otherwise they can play any card, including trump. The winner leads to the next trick, and once all tricks have been played, players receive an award if they have met their role’s goal. If no one has won, pass the roles clockwise and start a new round.

There are 4 role cards in the game: Captain (I), Mastermind (II), Team Player (III), Rebel (IV).  The start player gets the Captain card and the other roles are distributed in order clockwise around the table.  The game has a deck of 36 cards, 1-9 in 4 suits. 

To start each round, the Captain takes out the purple 7 – the Ace up the Sleeve –  and then shuffles the rest and deals 4 cards to the Mastermind – these cards are the “exam cards” and are kept separate during the hand.  The Purple 7 is then added back in, the deck is shuffled and dealt out so that each player has an 8 card hand.  Place the exam notice tile on the table – there are two slots here – one for the trump this round and the other for the special rule for the round – 

The rules are the same for each card of the same rank and are written at the bottom of the card.

The Mastermind looks at the exam cards and chooses one card to be either the Trump Suit of the special rule for the round (based on the text at the bottom of the card) – placing the selected card on the appropriate slot of the exam notice tile.  The remaining exam cards are then passed to the Team Player who chooses from those remaining three cards to determine whichever thing wasn’t chosen by the Mastermind. 

Once the trump and the rule are set, the hand is played out as mostly a regular trick taking hand. The Captain leads the first trick, and play is must follow.  The trick is won by the highest trump, and if none, the highest card of the led suit.  The winner collects the trick and then leads the next.  Pay attention to the special rule for the round as this could affect how the hand is played out.

After the 8 tricks are resolved, each player counts up the number of tricks they have collected and then awards are handed out.  You may not collect more than three awards (and you’ll never need more than 3).

• Award to Captain and Team Player is they combined have more tricks than the Mastermind
• Award to Mastermind if he has same or more tricks that Captain and Team Player combined
• Award to Rebel is they have won cards of at least 3 different colors
• Check to see if additional awards are to be given out based on the special rule for the round

Now, players look to see if they have three awards AND the purple 7 collected in one of their tricks. If so, they win and the game is over. Otherwise, play another round.  All the roles rotate one position clockwise for the next round.

My thoughts on the game

The Academy takes a fairly pedestrian trick taking game and elevates it with changing special rules. The combination of the changing roles and the different possible rules for each round make this continually interesting.  Additionally, the unique win condition helps keep the game suspenseful until the end.

The game seems to be the most interesting when you are the Mastermind as you have the most control over the hand – but the roles rotate each round, so everyone will get their turn over the course of the game. 

The roles want the Captain and the Team Player to cooperate with each other; but of course, they’re not allowed to communicate with each other – so they just have to hope their play makes it obvious what they’re trying to do.  The Mastermind is trying to at least tie those two, and while they play on their own, they have the advantage of being able to make the first choice of rule or trump.  The Rebel is sort of a wild card.  They are motivated to win at least one trick (as they need to capture 3 different colored cards); and depending on the game state, they might be able to give/steal a trick from one of the two competing sides based on their card choice.

We’ve had some interesting moments near the end of the game when a player might intentionally throw the purple 7 into a losing trick just to make sure that a different player, who already has 3 awards, cannot win the game this hand – regardless of what else happens.  Watching the hands play out at the end of the game is usually exciting, especially when multiple people are hunting the purple 7 in their quest to win.

The components are good, especially if you read German. There is no international version of the game (as far as I know), so all the cards here have German text on them.  The amount of text isn’t too bad, and we’ve done just fine with a single cheat sheet of what the possible actions are.  Only one person needs it at a time, and then once the rule is set, it doesn’t change for the whole round.   One or two of the rules could use some clarification, and even translating the German rules with Google  Lens didn’t seem to help.  

I also wish that the little cardboard piece that helps show you what the trump color is and what the rule is was differently shaped. I had a number of times when I got confused from looking at it (and then made exceptionally bad card passes).  If it were bigger and had some better cut-outs, you could have isolated just the color and/or just the rule to avoid this.

The box says 3-4 players, and in a 3p game, you just take out the Rebel role.  Everything seemed to work OK, but man, this really feels like it wants to be a specific 4p game.  I’m happy to save it for that player count myself as I think the game really plays better with the unintentional interference of the Rebel in the battle between the Mastermind and the Captain/Team Player.

The game moves quickly, and it feels like the right length – four to seven hands seems to be the average number around here.  Each hand always feels a little different due to the different possible rules added each round, and this is one little Amigo card game that will join its similarly shaped brethren on the permanent card game shelf.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Jonathan F. – I enjoy trick-taking games that don’t have cards worth points and are not based on trick prediction. The downside of them is that the better hand will generally do better, which is just not fun. The ability of the Mastermind to have some control over the hand conditions is a nice twist when it is 2 v. 1. It has the same problem as Mu, if you are the Captain and the Team Member has three awards, you have to stop your teammate from getting the Purple 7 to not lose the game, but in doing so, you might have to give up scoring an award and help the Mastermind to keep the game alive. Unlike Dale, it feels like a 3p game to me with the Rebel role tacked on as a pointless chaos agent. It would be an easy game to add English rule paste-ups to for the cards.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Jonathan F.
• Neutral. Mark Jackson
• Not for me…