How to Teach Sky Team and Run a Great First Flight

Sky Team is easy to over-teach. The Control Panel has seven zones, and it is tempting to explain every one, plus the landing, before anyone rolls a die. Instead, teach the round and the two jobs that matter every round, then start flying and explain the rest when the plane needs it.

Print the Sky Team teach sheet and set it between you. Need the rules first? Start with how to play Sky Team. Our guide on how to teach a board game in five minutes pairs well with this one.

Before your co-pilot sits down

Assemble a new box first. The rulebook opens with a one-time step: remove the marked pieces from the Control Panel, add the 9 stickers, fit the Axis disc, and set the 10 Switches. Do it before your guest arrives, not during the teach.

Set up from the sheet, and sit side by side, as the rulebook suggests, so you both read the panel the same way.

Pick seats. The Pilot handles the Landing Gear and Brakes; the Co-Pilot handles the Flaps and has two Radio spaces. Neither seat is the junior one. Let the newer player choose, and swap for the rematch. If your co-pilot learns better by watching, the publisher’s Sky Team page links an official how-to-play video.

The five-minute teach

Minute 1: the goal. “We’re landing this plane together. Seven rounds, one per thousand feet. By the last round we need to be at the airport with the sky clear, wheels and flaps down, wings level, and enough brakes to stop.”

Minute 2: the round and the silence. “Each round, we plan out loud first, but we can’t talk about dice. Then we roll behind our screens and go silent until all 8 dice are placed. From then on, the dice we place are how we talk.”

Minute 3: the two must-dos. Point at the Axis and the Engines. “Every round, we each put one die here and one die here. If the Axis dice differ, the plane tilts toward the bigger one. Tilt too far and we spin. The Engines dice add up to our speed. These two markers decide whether we move 0, 1, or 2 spaces.”

Minute 4: the rest of the cockpit. Keep it to one line each.

• “Radio knocks a plane off the track. The number says how far ahead.”
• “Gear is the Pilot’s, any order. Flaps are the Co-Pilot’s, top to bottom. Both slow us down.”
• “Brakes are the Pilot’s, 2 then 4 then 6. They only matter on the landing.”
• “A spare die can go here for a coffee. Coffee bends a die up or down by 1.”

Minute 5: the landing. Point at the four landing lines on the sheet. “On the last round, our speed is checked against the brakes instead, and it has to be lower. Everything on this list has to be true at the end.” Then ask: “Questions?” Then start the strategy talk for round 1.

Teach these when they happen

• The first Reroll token. It sits at 6,000 feet, so it arrives in round 1. Move it to the panel and say: “Either of us can spend this. Then we both get to reroll.”
• The first coffee. When someone places on Concentration, show how a coffee changes a die and that it stays for later rounds.
• Arriving early. If the airport shows in your position screen before the last round, explain the holding pattern: keep your speed under the blue marker.
• The landing round. Before its strategy talk, remind each other that speed is now checked against the Brakes, at the moment the second Engines die goes down.

Keep the silence friendly

The rulebook asks for complete silence while dice are placed, with one exception: pointing out a rules mistake. “Flaps go in order” is fine. “Put your 5 there” is not.

Agree before the first roll on what else counts as talking: sighs, tapping a space, long looks. That shared restraint keeps one player from running the whole game, as our piece on co-op games without a quarterback problem explains.

Coach in the briefing, not the cockpit

The strategy talk is where an experienced player can help. The rulebook’s advice for the briefing comes down to three questions: Do we move 0, 1, or 2 spaces? What could make us lose this round? What is urgent, and what can wait? Ask them instead of answering them, so the plan belongs to both of you.

First-game slips to watch for

• Saving the Axis for last. If both players wait for their final die, the tilt is out of your hands.
• Flaps out of order. The 1/2 space first, then 2/3, and so on.
• Flaps too early. Each flap makes moving 2 spaces harder. If you need distance, wait.
• Late brakes. Brakes placed after the second Engines die in the final round do not count.
• Dice talk in the briefing. “Save any 1s for the Radio” is about dice, so it is out.
• Wrapping coffee. Adding 1 to a 6 does not make a 1.

After the flight

Crash or landing, take one minute to compare notes on a single die each: the one that helped most and the one that confused. Then fly again. When the Spiel des Jahres jury named Sky Team its 2024 winner, it said as much: miss the landing and you want to try again straight away. For couples, our guide to board games for couples has more picks in the same spirit.

Where to fly next

Once you land in Montreal, the Flight Log’s 21 scenarios are waiting, and the rest of this course follows you there. Lesson 3 finishes Level 0 with the mistakes that crash first flights. Level 1 walks through the first rounds, the approach, and the landing. Level 2 adds the dice odds, a whole-flight plan, and the Flight Log’s first modules. Level 3 takes you to the Heroic Landings, and the course ends with online play and finding other pilots.

The game is the reason. The person in the other seat is the point.