Sky Team Review

The Sky's The Limit

Sky Team, by designer Luc Remond and from publisher Scorpion Masque, is a 2 player only limited communication co-operative game about landing an aeroplane using dice placement and it plays in about 15 minutes. This is about the drama of hitting the runway without crashing and the tension of not knowing what the other person you’re playing with is going to do.

Now this may seem like an odd choice of game theme, and let us suspend our disbelief for a second here as to why the pilot and the co-pilot can’t actually effectively communicate each action and let’s dive and see if this is a game that lands well or if it misses the runway.

Heathrow, We Have A Problem

In this game, you begin by choosing who will be the pilot and co-pilot, choosing a scenario with varying degrees of difficulty and setting up the plane control panel in front of the two players. Set up is so quick and easy, and although you have to stick together the boards yourself when you first pick up the game, they are nice and chunky and provide a fantastic visualisation of what you will be doing each round. You win if your plane reaches its destination at the correct height, speed, without hitting another plane, by staying level and by deploying all the landing gear and flaps required.

Now this might sound complicated but in practice this is so quick to learn with clear markers as to which dice can be placed where and sliders to allow you to mark where previous dice have been placed. Basically there are an awful lot of ways you can lose in this game and only one way in which you can win. In front of you is a shared player board with various sliders, and a great plastic disc to indicate if the plane is level, as well as two pieces of card that move towards you to indicate your distance to the airport and how close to the ground you are.

Before each round begins you are able to discuss broad strategy, like ‘I think I’ll try and clear these planes in our path ahead’ or ‘I’ll probably try and go for a high engine speed here’ but once you have rolled the dice that communication stops and you have to hope that you are in sync enough to work out what the other is thinking. Well the communication doesn’t quite stop, and this is the real beauty of Sky Team, if I place a low dice somewhere problematic to start off with I am effectively communicating to my other player that I have terrible dice and I need help, perhaps a cup of coffee to allow me to change the value of one of my dice.

Then you roll your four dice and hope for the best, not knowing what the person sitting next to you has hidden behind their board. There are two mandatory spaces both of you will need to fill, one for the level of the plane and the other for the engine speed and everything else on a given round is optional leaving you agonising over lowering a piece of landing gear or ‘wasting’ an action to bank a coffee for a later round. As you lower the landing gear and deploy the flaps the resistance means you need to go faster to move forward meaning higher dice for the engine are required, something that can like many things in this game lead you to crash.

Have We Landed Yet

This game simulates the drama of landing a plane so well, creating moments of tension, fear and hi-fives in equal measures. Once you’ve mastered the initial setup, this game box has a whole treasure trove full of additional airports, modules and content for you to work through meaning that you’ve got an awful lot more flying, crashing and hopefully landing ahead of you before you’ve seen everything including having to ensure the intern is fully trained or you guessed it, you crash.

Sky Team is almost unequivocally an instant recommendation from me, it’s fast, fun and the first set up can be taught to almost anyone but delve deeper and there are a host of complex and tough puzzles for you and another player to solve. I would recommend them all apart from the real time mode which just felt unnecessary and if that’s my only criticism of the game then I think we have a future classic on our hands here that everyone should try landing.

That moment where all the passengers clap? That is the feeling you’ll get from Sky Team. The art and the components are fantastic, the amount you’re getting in the box for the price is equally brilliant and I really hope Sky Team lands with you as much as it has landed with me.

Editors note: This post was originally published on 23rd November 2023. Updated on 10th April 2024 to improve the information available.