The Sky Team Dice Budget: Plan the Whole Flight

At Level 1 you learned to ask three questions in each briefing: how far do we move, what could kill us, and what is urgent? Those questions look at one round. This lesson looks at all seven at once. Strong crews do the arithmetic for the whole flight in the first briefing, then spend each later briefing checking the plan instead of making a new one.

It is simple counting, and it fits on a scrap of paper.

The whole budget

The game lasts 7 rounds. Each round, each player rolls 4 dice. That is 56 dice per flight, 28 for each of you.

Every round, each player must put one die on the Axis and one on the Engines. That is 4 dice a round, 28 for the flight, gone before you choose anything. The other 28, 14 per player, are your free budget.

Here is what they must cover:

So the Pilot spends about 5 or 6 of 14 free dice on systems, and the Co-Pilot spends 4. Most of the rest go to the Radio and to coffee. The Landing Procedure’s own example lands with two brakes built, and more brakes make the landing round easier, so plan for at least two.

Count the planes

In round 1, count the Airplane tokens on the Approach Track. That is the minimum number of Radio dice the flight needs. The Radio has only three spaces, one Pilot and two Co-Pilot, so it can clear at most 3 planes a round, and only if the numbers line up with where the planes sit.

The Co-Pilot owns two of those three spaces, so traffic leans on the Co-Pilot’s budget. If the track is crowded, the Pilot should expect to take more of the coffee duty and some of the planes, so the Co-Pilot can afford the Flaps.

Count the distance

The plane never moves in the final round, because the Engines are checked against the Brakes. So all your distance happens in rounds 1 to 6. Count the spaces between the Current Position and the airport and spread them over six rounds.

A round moves you 0, 1, or 2 spaces, so six rounds cover at most 12. If the track needs close to that, you need several 2-space rounds, and that is the case where the Flaps must wait. If it needs fewer, you have rounds to spare for standing still while the Radio clears traffic.

Set deadlines

The budget becomes a plan once each job gets a deadline. A shape that works on most tracks:

• Rounds 1 and 2: build slack. Coffee, any cheap gear, and the planes close to your position. A Reroll token arrives in round 1.
• Rounds 3 to 5: build systems. Most of the gear and flaps, and the first brake whenever the Pilot rolls a 2 with nothing urgent for it. The second Reroll token arrives in round 5, at 2,000 feet.
• Round 6: finish. Arrive at the final round with every plane gone, at most one Switch still red, two brakes built, and the Axis level or one mark off.
• Round 7: land. Two free dice each, and nothing left to do but the last Switch and the last brake.

Why so strict about round 6? In the final round, each of you has only two dice beyond the Axis and the Engines. The landing lesson walks through that squeeze.

Find the slack

Dice that fit no job are not wasted if they become coffee, but the board holds only 3 Coffee tokens. The table in the dice odds lesson shows each coffee turns an exact-number job from about 52% into about 94%, so a full coffee board before round 6 is real insurance.

The other slack is time. Every round the plane stands still, the systems keep building. If you are ahead on distance, a 0-space round with the gear doing the work is the cheapest round in the game.

Check the plan each round

The later briefings get shorter. Look at the scrap of paper and ask:

1. Which jobs are behind their deadline?
2. Did the track change, with new planes or a holding pattern?
3. Is anyone carrying more than their share?

Then talk about the plane, never the dice, and roll. For more on keeping a shared plan fair to both people, see our piece on the quarterback problem in cooperative games.