Sky Team Scenarios, Modules, and the Turbulence Expansion

The Landing Procedure booklet ends with a nudge: now that you have landed in Montreal, open the Flight Log. That second booklet holds the rest of the game. Sky Team has exactly one player count, two, so its variety comes from somewhere else: new airports, new modules, and harder conditions.

The Flight Log

The Flight Log holds 21 scenarios across 11 airports, from Montreal and Tokyo Haneda to Paro in Bhutan, an airport its own scenario text calls the most dangerous in the world. Each scenario names:

• an Approach Track, the airport you fly to. Some are longer or shorter than Montreal, and the traffic is placed differently.
• the modules to add, and which to leave in the box.
• the number of Special Ability cards, when the scenario offers them.
• a color for its difficulty, in four steps: Routine Landing, Exceptional Conditions, Elite Pilots Only, and Heroic Landing.

The airports in the box are Montreal (YUL), Tokyo Haneda (HND), Atlanta (ATL), London Heathrow (LHR), Oslo (OSL), Prague (PRG), Rio de Janeiro Galeão (GIG), Tegucigalpa Toncontín (TGU), Keflavík (KEF), Kuala Lumpur (KUL), and Paro (PBH). Several appear twice, once gentle and once brutal.

The modules in the box

Each module is a single rule, explained on its own half page of the Flight Log. Learn them as they come up.

Traffic die. When your Current Position shows a Traffic icon at the start of a round, roll the die once per icon and add a plane to the space it names. The sky fills up ahead of you.

Turns. Some Approach Track spaces show which Axis positions are allowed there. If you move into or through one with the plane tilted the wrong way, you lose. Rounds where you stay put are exempt.

Kerosene. A fuel track starts at 20. Either player may place any die on the Kerosene space and lose that many fuel. Skip it, and you lose 6 at the end of the round. Run dry, even on the last round, and you lose. A low die here is cheap; no die is expensive.

Kerosene Leak. A harder version: the Kerosene space is closed, and each round you lose fuel equal to the difference between your two Engines dice, plus 1.

Intern. An Intern board holds random number tokens. Place a die on your color’s Intern space, as long as it differs from the next token’s number, and take that token. Then place it like a die of that number elsewhere, though not on Concentration, and coffee cannot change it. Every token must be off the Intern board by the landing, or you lose.

Wind. A wind dial adds its number to your speed every round, even the last. After each Axis check, the dial turns by as many steps as the plane is tilted. A level plane keeps the wind steady.

Ice Brakes. A new brake track covers the old one. Each step needs two dice of the same value, one above and one below the track, in the same round, and you must reach the end of it to land.

Real-Time. Start a 60-second timer right after you roll. When it runs out, the round ends; unplaced dice are ignored, and a missing Axis or Engines die still loses the game.

Special Abilities. Cards that bend one rule in your favor, such as gaining a Reroll when your Engines dice match. Scenarios tell you how many to choose.

How to climb the Flight Log

The difficulty colors are a ladder, so use them that way. Fly every Routine Landing before moving up. When a scenario adds a module you have not seen, read just that section, then fly. The Flight Log has a circle on each scenario to check off when you land it, which turns the booklet into a quiet campaign. The module strategy lesson covers the first modules in depth, and the final lesson has more on flying the booklet as a campaign.

Free scenarios from the publisher

Le Scorpion Masqué’s Sky Team downloads page offers Ready to Play scenarios that revisit airports in the box with new mixes, such as a winter return to Montreal with an Intern and icy brakes, and a London approach that starts at 5,000 feet. The same page has a Print and Play file. The publisher’s Sky Team page also lists a rebalancing for the Haneda track.

The Turbulence expansion

The first expansion, sold as Sky Team: Turbulence (the publisher’s page also calls it Alarms and Turbulences), adds 20 harder scenarios and new modules including Turbulence, Low Visibility, and Alarms. Its destinations include Beijing, Madrid, Warsaw, Sydney, Cape Town, Kyiv, and Saint Martin. The box has 10 new Approach Tracks, 2 Altitude Tracks, an Alarm board, and a handful of new tokens. It needs the base game, and its contents fit in the base box.

Wait to buy it until the Flight Log’s harder colors feel within reach. Its scenarios assume you know the base modules well.

If you are choosing a first copy

The base game is the only product you need for months of play: Sky Team from Le Scorpion Masqué, for exactly two players, about 20 minutes a flight.

It also makes a fine gift for a pair who play together; it appears in our guide to board game gifts for couples. For a broader way to decide whether any expansion is worth it, see are expansions worth it.