How to Play Sky Team

Sky Team puts two people in the cockpit of an airliner and asks them to land it. One of you is the Pilot, the other the Co-Pilot. Each round you roll dice in secret and take turns placing them on a shared Control Panel: keep the wings level, set your speed, talk to the tower, lower the gear and flaps, and brake. The twist is that once the dice are rolled, nobody speaks.

Designed by Luc Rémond and published by Le Scorpion Masqué, Sky Team won the Spiel des Jahres in 2024. It plays in about 20 minutes, for exactly two. This lesson follows the current English rules for your first flight, into Montreal. Everything below also fits on the one-page Sky Team teach sheet.

What is in the box?

The Control Panel, 4 blue dice for the Pilot, 4 orange dice for the Co-Pilot, two screens, the tracks and tokens, and two booklets. The Landing Procedure teaches the base game. The Flight Log holds 21 scenarios and the modules that make them harder, and it asks you not to open it until you have landed in Montreal. Leave the closed compartment of the box shut for now too.

How do you set up?

1. Sit side by side with the Control Panel in front of you. The player on the blue side is the Pilot and takes the 4 blue dice. The player on the orange side is the Co-Pilot and takes the 4 orange dice.
2. Level the plane. The Axis arrow points at the black triangle at the top, and all 10 Switches cover their green lights.
3. Set the speed gauge. Blue Aerodynamics marker between the 4 and the 5, orange between the 8 and the 9.
4. Set the brakes. The red Brake marker goes just left of the 2 on the Brake track.
5. Set the altitude. Slide in the Altitude Track, green and yellow side, until 6000 shows in the screen. Put a Reroll token on each Reroll icon: one at 6,000 feet, one at 2,000.
6. Set the approach. Slide in the YUL Montréal-Trudeau Approach Track until the cloud shows in its screen, your Current Position. Put an Airplane token on every Traffic icon.
7. Coffee and screens. Coffee tokens go in a pile beside the board, not on it. Each player takes a screen.

How does a round work?

The game lasts 7 rounds, one per space on the Altitude Track. Each round has three phases.

1. Strategy and dice. Talk about the plan: “We need to clear that plane,” or “Let’s move 2 spaces.” What you cannot discuss is dice. “If you roll a 6, put it here” is out. Then both players roll their 4 dice behind their screens, and from now until the end of the round you both stay silent. The only exception is pointing out a rules mistake.

If a Reroll token sits on the current altitude, move it to the Reroll space at the top left of the panel. Either player may spend it at any time in a round. When one is spent, both players may reroll any of the dice still behind their screens, once.

2. Dice placement. Take turns placing one die at a time on a free space. The arrow in the altitude screen shows who starts; in round 1 it is the Pilot. The Pilot uses blue spaces, the Co-Pilot orange ones, and a few spaces take either. Many spaces also demand a number, printed on the space.

Two jobs are mandatory every round: each player places one die on the Axis and one on the Engines. They need not be your first dice, but if any of those four dice is missing at the end of a round, you lose.

3. End of round. Once all 8 dice are down, talk again. Advance the Altitude Track one space, 1,000 feet lower, and take back your dice.

What does each part of the cockpit do?

Axis. When the second Axis die lands, compare the two. A match changes nothing. Otherwise the plane tilts toward whoever played the higher die, one mark per point of difference, and it stays tilted into the next round.

Engines. When the second Engines die lands, add them: that is your speed. Below the blue marker, the plane stays put. Between the markers, slide the Approach Track forward one space. Above the orange marker, two. Planes arriving in your Current Position are fine; moving forward while they are there is not.

Radio. Count along the Approach Track, your Current Position being 1, up to the number on your die, and remove one Airplane token from that space. A 1 clears your own space. An empty space means the die does nothing.

Landing Gear and Flaps. Each one flips its Switch to green and moves an Aerodynamics marker forward a space, so the same total moves you less. With all three gear down, a total of 7 or less keeps you in place. With all four flaps out, the orange marker sits past 12, so you can no longer move 2 spaces.

Brakes. They only count in the final round. Build them in earlier rounds, or early in the last one, before the second Engines die goes down.

Concentration. Any die from either player earns a Coffee token right away, up to 3 on the board. Whenever anyone places a die, they may spend Coffee to raise or lower it by 1 per token, never below 1 or above 6. Unspent Coffee carries over.

How do you lose?

Right away, if:

• the Axis arrow reaches or passes an X, a spin,
• the Axis or the Engines is missing a die of either color at the end of a round,
• you have to move forward with planes in your Current Position, a collision, or
• you have to move forward from the airport space, an overshoot.

How does the landing work?

Reach the airport before you run out of altitude. Arrive early and you are in a holding pattern: keep playing rounds without moving forward. If the airplane picture shows in the altitude screen and the airport is not in your Current Position, you crash short of the runway.

When the airport and the airplane picture show at the same time, play the final round. One rule changes: when the second Engines die goes down, compare your speed with the Brake marker instead of the Aerodynamics markers. Brakes placed after that come too late.

At the end of the final round, you land if all four are true:

1. No Airplane tokens are left on the Approach Track.
2. Every Landing Gear and Flaps Switch shows green.
3. The Axis is perfectly level.
4. Your speed was lower than the Brake marker. You need at least the first brake, since the lowest possible speed is 2.

That is the whole game. For more games built for two, our list of two-player cooperative board games starts with this one.