Sky Team Review

boardgamequest.com:

I remember wanting to be a pilot when I was a kid. It’s a pretty popular childhood dream—the image of flying through the air is inherently thrilling, plus you get as many of those little metal wings as you want. Imagine my dismay, then, when a friend of mine (who was training to be a pilot) let me in on a secret: flying is actually really hard.

Well, that pretty much ended that dream then and there. Luckily, now I have a way to live out my dreams through the medium of board games! Sky Team has it all–engines? Check. Wings? Check. Capricious randomness and limited communication between co-pilots? Check!

…Okay, so it’s not exactly like flying a real plane, but I’ll just have to make do.

Sky Team is a cooperative dice game for exactly 2 players. It plays in about 15 minutes.

One player in Sky Team controls the pilot (in blue), and the other controls the co-pilot (in orange). Each round, both players roll their dice behind their player screens and alternate turns placing one die on spaces on the Control Panel until all dice have been placed.

Each player must contribute a die to the Engines and Axis each round, which determines the plane’s speed and tilt; other spaces in the Control Panel are optional, but still need to be activated at some point to successfully reach your destination. The Landing Gear and Flaps, for example, must be activated in a specific order with specific dice in order to deploy, and must be deployed before the plane lands. Similarly, the Radio must be activated at some points to clear away upcoming traffic, and the Brakes can be activated to make the landing process easier.

Every space is locked to a specific player; for example, only the pilot can activate the Landing Gear, and only the co-pilot can activate the Flaps. The only exception is the Concentration spaces, which can be activated by either player to earn dice mitigation for future rounds.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong. If the plane over- or under-shoots the airport, or comes