Sky Team

If you’re a child of the 1980’s and enjoyed video games, you may be familiar with an incredibly frustrating NES game called “Top Gun”. At the end of your mission, you had to land your plane onto a carrier by following a set of on-screen prompts. Nine year old me could never get passed this landing sequence. Thankfully “Sky Team”, a cooperative game for two players, has a similar theme but is MUCH more enjoyable! Special thanks to the folks at Hachette Boardgames USA for sending me a copy for review purposes.

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Overview

“Sky Team” is a cooperative two player experience to where players will work together as pilot and co-pilot to land a plane. The game comes with components necessary for a basic playthrough, but includes a number of scenarios and extra modules for advanced play sessions. Both the pilot and co-pilot will be rolling dice in secret and assigning them in turn to the main board, affecting things like flaps, landing gear, air speed, and more. To make matters more challenging, communication is also limited, and even forbidden, during certain parts of a round.

If you take a look at the right side of the image above, you’ll see a number of different areas of the control panel. Blue dice (assigned by the pilot) go on blue spaces and the orange dice (assigned by the co-pilot) go on the orange spaces. The altitude track will constantly drop every round, so it’s up to you and your teammate to move up the approach track in a balanced way while keeping the axis level. There are also planes on the approach track, so both players will need to use their dice on radio spaces to hopefully get them clear of your plane.

While I’m not going to go over all of the rules here, suffice it to say that every round, players roll dice behind their screens and begin assigning one die at a time (alternating), starting with the indicated color on the altitude track. Some spaces like the axis and speed spaces are mandatory for dice placement EVERY round or it’s game over. Other, like the flaps and landing gear spaces, can be skipped here or there but MUST be completed by the end of the game. Players can discuss strategy before dice are rolled but must remain silent during a round.

To win, players must have all the following be true:

1. There are no airplane tokens on the reverse track. (Hitting any plane during the game is game over)

2. All flaps and landing gear switches are green / completed.

3. The axis is centered / horizontal.

4. The speed rolled during the final round is less than the shown brakes value.

Note: The above doesn’t cover all of the rules found in the rulebook, but should clue you in as to how the game is played.

Rules: https://www.scorpionmasque.com/sites/scorpionmasque.com/files/st_rules01_en_06jun2023.pdf

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Review

It’s crazy how much game is packed into this box. When I first opened the box I saw the core components sitting there on one half of the insert…but then I flipped the other half of the insert up to discover all the extra stuff available for the advanced modules. The Flight Log / Rulebook #2 gives players all new challenges and scenarios to attempt. Special ability cards are available to players as well, helping them face some of these tougher scenarios. While not in the rulebook, you could utilize one or two of them in your regular basic game to help you get over the initial learning curve. We did. To be fair, there exists reroll tokens you get on occasion as well as coffee spaces (+/- 1 to a die) to help with dice mitigation.

The Intern Module, an example of the above, can be both a blessing and a curse. With this module, you’ll have to complete the intern’s training before you land, but can be helpful along the way. A Wind Module can make it extra challenging to keep your axis on a completely horizontal position. If you want to get really crazy, try the Real Time Module where players only have 60 seconds to place all of their dice after rolling them. There’s much more, so you’ll be entertained for quite a while.

My only complaint, and it’s incredibly minor, were the double-sided stickers you had to place after first opening the box. These stickers keep the control board snug as a double-layered board when folded. I had no trouble sticking them on initially, but had trouble peeling off the paper thin material on the reverse side. I am a man with no nails, so the process was frustrating. Why couldn’t the board just come as a double sided board with no assembly required? My guess is packaging.

At its heart, “Sky Team” is a worker / dice placement game and a puzzle game combined all into one entertaining package. Games can be played very quickly, with play times reaching 20-30 minutes once players know what they’re doing. It’s cooperative as well, something Aidalee and I look for in the games we play. It does lack an inherent solo mode and while I have no doubt that BGG either has or will have variants posted by now, I consider this a missed opportunity as a major selling point.

While the two-player only requirement might dissuade some solo gamers or larger groups from picking this up, I still highly recommend this title. It’s easily modifiable difficulty wise if you’re willing to be creative and has a ton of replayability. Don’t be like Steve McCroskey in Airplane…check this game out if you can!

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