Sky Team

Designer: Luc Remond
Artist: Eric Hibbeler, Adrien Rives
Published: 2023
Players: 2
Playing Time: 15 Mins
BGG Rating: 8.2
BGG Ranking: 55
Publisher: Scorpion Masque
Mechanisms: Communication Limits, Cooperative Game, Dice Rolling, Scenario Game, Worker Placement with Dice Workers
Sleeves: 57,5x89mm

Game Description:

Sky Team is a co-operative game, exclusively for two players, in which you play a pilot and co-pilot at the controls of an airliner. Your goal is to work together as a team to land your airplane in different airports around the world.

To land your plane, you need to silently assign your dice to the correct spaces in your cockpit to balance the axis of your plane, control its speed, deploy the flaps, extend the landing gear, contact the control tower to clear your path, and even have a little coffee to improve your concentration enough to change the value of your dice.

Quick play overview:

Players will roll their 4 dice behind their own shields and then play them one by one to the different locations on the airplane trying to match the required numbers.

Each turn both players will have to play 1 die to the speed (trying to hit the needed speed for that turn) and to the direction (2 similar numbers are preferred to not tilt the plane too much to one or the other side) slots.

So, there are only 2 remaining dice per turn/player that can be spent on stuff like lowering the wheels, flaps and what else can be lowered on a plane. Ah and there is also air traffic that should be removed from your way by calling the tower (or shooting them down with a rocket, for the military type of players).

If you are doing really good and have time to relax, you can spend a die for a coffee or two which will let you manipulate the dice in the future turns.

Final thoughts:

The game starts easy and you get a feeling that you made a mistake by buying the game. This is all there is to it?

Do not get lulled by the easy start... as later scenario brings a lot of extra stuff that you have to take care off.

More planes in the air? Of course.

Crazy pilots that just wonder into your course? Why not!

Planes run on kerosene. So, you better take care of that as well…

etc. etc. etc. etc.

FINAL SCORE:

Gameplay & How often I want to play it: 9/10

Rules and gameplay are simple. Roll and place the right dice. The heroes show up when the dice are not falling right. How will you deal with the bad rolls? Just restart the scenario or save the plane and all the passengers on it?
I love how the difficulty of the game is increasing with each scenario. We planned to finish all the scenarios in 3-4 sittings… we had to revise the plan.

Art & Graphic Design:

The Graphic design is clean and nothing gets in the way of gameplay. There really is no art in the game.

Rules & Complexity:

Base set of rules is as easy as it can get.

Once you start adding the additional modules to the game, the complexity starts to show up.

Theme & Mechanism fit:

I’m not a pilot but I’m guessing that lowering all the appendages of the plane at high altitude isn’t what you are supposed to do just because lady luck told you that you have the right dice now. The mechanism isn’t really a good fit but the theme is great.

Fun & Replayability:

We are enjoying our plays, very much and with the combination of harder destinations, modules etc. there is plenty of game in such a small box.