Sky Team

Sky Team is a two-player game of landing a plane. You and your co-pilot are guiding a passenger jet towards the runway and must control axis, engines, brakes and flaps… all without speaking. – Maybe the radio’s down?

The pilot and co-pilot sit beside each other with four dice each and a shield behind which to roll them at the start of each round. Then you both take turns placing dice on the board, following both colour and number rules – dice must match both.

The board represents the airplane controls. Four of the dice spaces must be occupied in each round: that’s the axis and engines. Here both players place one die each, and in each instance apply affects after the second one is placed. With the plane’s axis, the difference between the two dice will tilt the plane over in the larger die’s direction: the goal here is to keep the plane horizontal, or as close to it as you can. With engines, the combined value of the two dice are compared to the current airplane speed, and will move you closer to the airport by one or two spaces (or not at all if both die values are low).

Around that there are other tasks to do. Both players can communicate with air traffic control to clear the route of planes. The co-pilot must prepare the flaps in ascending order, and the pilot must prepare the four landing gear (in any order). The pilot also has to apply the brakes and all these tasks are completed using the dice and the small cardboard switches inset in the board. At the end of each round, the plane automatically loses altitude, so the goal is to arrive at the airport when the altitude is at its lowest point, with the plane level and flaps, brakes and landing gear fully prepared. And the considerable catch is that although players can discuss strategy, you’re not allowed to communicate what number dice you’ve rolled!

There’s several ways to lose – not being ready for landing being the most obvious one. But you can also tilt the plane too far over, or go too fast and crash into another plane. Assuming you avoid these pitfalls, landing the plane in Sky Team takes about 15 minutes once you know the game, and the box comes with further challenges to explore – and generate even more difficulty!