Sky Team Review | The Best Two Player Co-op Game You Can Land

Sky Team is a cooperative board game for exactly 2 players, one pilot and one co-pilot, and a round takes about 20 minutes. You place 8 dice onto a cockpit panel to keep the plane level, slow it down, drop the gear and the flaps, then stop before the brake marker. It is the 2024 Spiel des Jahres winner, and it is worth buying for a couple or two friends who like a tense 20 minute game with a very small learning curve.

I am Spector, a dad to Alex, 7, and Emma, 10. Sky Team is the one game on our shelf that my wife and I finish in the time it takes to make coffee, and then immediately want to play again. It is also the game I have had to buy twice for other people, because the first thing everyone does is look for the little plastic aeroplane in the box and there is not one. The plane is a clear plastic disc and a stack of flat cardboard tokens. Knowing that before you buy saves you a very awkward return.

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Which Sky Team Should You Buy?

Only one expansion exists, so this is a short decision. Sky Team is a two player game and nothing in the range changes that.

Your situation	What to buy	Why
You want a 20 minute game for you and one other person	Sky Team	The base box has 11 airports and 21 scenarios. That is months of landings before you need anything else.
You have landed in Montréal a few times and want more	Sky Team: Turbulence	20 new scenarios at new airports, plus modules for weather, low visibility and alarms. It is a big difficulty jump, so wait until Montréal is easy for you.
You want to play alone	Nothing official	There is no solo product. Solo rules you find online are fan made, and we would not build a game night around them.
You are shopping for a group of 4 or more	Forbidden Island	It plays 2 to 4, teaches cooperatively, and takes about 60 minutes. Our roundup of the best cooperative family games starts here too.

How to Play Sky Team

You are a pilot and a co-pilot trying to land a passenger jet. Each round you secretly roll 4 dice each, then take turns placing them on a shared cockpit panel. The dice you can place are restricted by the printed numbers on each space, so the tension is in your hand, not in the rules.

Here is the structure, taken from the official rulebook. Everything below is a rule. Our own thinking is clearly marked later on as house strategy.

Each round has three phases

1. Discuss and roll. Talk through your plan for the round. You may not discuss the dice themselves, so saying “someone put the six on the engines” breaks the rules. Then both players roll 4 dice behind their screens, where the other player cannot see.
2. Place dice. The Current Altitude screen shows which side goes first. On your turn, place one die on a space that matches your colour and that has a number your die can satisfy. Spaces with both colours on them are open to either player.
3. End of round. Slide the Altitude track down one space, which drops you 1,000 feet, and take your dice back.

The whole game is 7 rounds. You win or lose on the last one.

The two actions you cannot skip

Axis and Engines are mandatory for both players every round. If either player fails to place a die in both areas, you lose on the spot. There is no partial credit and no going back.

Axis is resolved by the difference between the two dice. The higher die tilts the Airplane Axis disc that many marks toward that player. If the two dice match, nothing moves. The disc has to end level, pointing straight up, or you have not landed. Touch a red X at either end and the plane spins, which is an instant loss.

Engines is resolved by the sum of your two dice, compared against two markers on the Speed Gauge:

• Below the blue marker means you do not move forward at all this round.
• Between the two markers means you advance the Approach track 1 space.
• Above the orange marker means you advance 2 spaces.

Landing gear and flaps are what move those markers, and that is the whole game in one sentence. Every switch you flip on the landing gear drags the blue marker right, every flap drags the orange marker right, and both make the engines easier to beat so you can keep creeping toward the runway.

The five checks you must pass to land

To win Sky Team you must pass five checks on the final round: no Airplane tokens left on the Approach track, every landing gear switch showing green, every flaps switch showing green, the Airplane Axis disc pointing straight up, and your final speed lower than the Brake marker.

• No Airplane tokens remain on the Approach track.
• Every landing gear switch shows green.
• Every flaps switch shows green.
• The Airplane Axis disc points straight up.
• Your final engine speed is lower than the Brake marker.

That is the whole win condition. Miss any one and you crashed, no matter how gracefully the rest went.

Who can use what

Action	Who can play it	What it does
Axis	Both, mandatory	Difference of the two dice tilts the disc
Engines	Both, mandatory	Sum of the two dice sets your speed and moves the track
Landing Gear	Pilot only	Flip a switch, drag the blue Aerodynamics marker right, one space per switch
Flaps	Co-pilot only	Flip a switch in order, 1/2 then 2/3 then 4/5 then 5/6, and drag the orange marker right
Radio	Pilot 1 space, Co-pilot 2 spaces	The die’s number says which space to count up the Approach track from, and you remove an Airplane token from it
Concentration	Either player	Park a spare die here, any value, and take a Coffee marker. Three at a time, and they carry between rounds
Brakes	Pilot only	Push the red Brake marker right, 2 then 4 then 6. In the final round your speed must come in under it

A Coffee marker changes a die you are placing by plus or minus 1. There is no wraparound, so a 6 becomes a 5 but never a 1. The two Reroll markers that sit on the Altitude track are the tokens that let either player reroll any number of their own unplaced dice, and each marker is a one time use.

The silence rule is a convention, not a lock

The rulebook asks you not to talk once the dice are rolled, and it allows one exception: pointing out that your partner broke a rule. Nothing in the box physically stops you speaking. That makes silence an honour system, and in our house it is the single most important rule in the game.

Two things make the silence work in practice. First, agree your priorities out loud during the discussion phase, because that phase is for talking. Second, play your dice in a consistent order every round, so your partner can read your turn from the shape of it rather than from a guess.

What the modules add

The base box contains 8 modules beyond the core loop. Each airport scenario tells you which ones to set up, and you leave the rest in the box. This is the part competitors mostly skip, and it is where the difficulty actually lives.

• Traffic Die. Black dice icons on the Approach track. At the start of a round, roll once per icon in your current position and drop that many Airplane tokens on the track. Stay on a traffic space for more than one round and you roll again next round. Fly past one and you do not roll.
• Turns. Triangles and X marks printed on the track. If the Axis is not aligned with a permitted triangle when you advance, you crash. Advancing 2 spaces means you must satisfy both spaces you fly through.
• Kerosene. A fuel track starting at 20. Either player can spend a die of any value to move the marker down by that number. If you end a round without playing there, you lose 6. Hit zero and the game is over.
• Intern. A board of 6 tokens, one per colour. You train your intern by spending dice, then place the tokens as if they were dice. The catch is that all tokens must be trained before you land or you lose. An intern token cannot be changed by a Coffee marker and cannot go on Concentration.
• Wind. A blue aeroplane token in a wind ring adds a wind value to your engine total every round, including the last one.
• Real Time. Start a 60 second timer the instant the dice are rolled. Nothing can be placed after it beeps, and if Axis or Engines are still empty you lose.
• Kerosene Leak. No kerosene action. Instead you lose the difference between your two engine dice, plus 1. A 6 and a 3 costs 4.
• Ice Brakes. A replacement brake track where the two dice on either side of the track must match in value, or the die is lost and the Brake marker does not move.

What Is Actually in the Box

There is no aeroplane miniature, and there is no wood. The base box is cardboard, card, and 8 dice, and the components are the list below.

Component	What it is
1 Control Panel	The cockpit board, the centre of the game
1 Airplane Axis disc	The clear disc showing how level the plane is
8 dice	4 blue for the pilot, 4 orange for the co-pilot
2 Player Aid screens	Privacy screens so you can hide your dice
1 Altitude track	Double sided, 6,000 feet down
10 Approach tracks	One per airport, and they are not all the same length
12 Airplane tokens	Traffic you have to clear off the track
2 Aerodynamics markers	Blue and orange, these set your speed
1 Brake marker	Red, your target speed at touchdown
3 Coffee markers	Change a die by plus or minus 1
2 Reroll markers	Reroll any of your own unplaced dice
10 Switches	For the flaps, landing gear, and brakes
1 Traffic die	Black, for the Traffic Die module
1 Kerosene marker	For the Kerosene module
1 Intern module	With 6 Intern tokens
1 Ice Brakes module	The frozen runway track
6 Special Ability cards	Chosen at the start of a scenario
2 Booklets	Landing Procedure and Flight Log

Luc Rémond designed it, Adrien Rives drew it, and Le Scorpion Masqué published it in 2023. Kosmos and Hachette distribute it in Germany and North America, so the age indication is usually printed as 12 and up, while the Spiel des Jahres jury lists it from 10. A few listings print 14. We would call 12 the safe number for your own shelf.

The 21 Scenarios and the Flight Log

The old version of this page described a campaign where you tick airports off a list and earn permanent perks. That does not exist. What exists is much better and simpler: a Flight Log booklet listing 21 scenarios across 11 airports, and you tick a circle when you succeed at one.

The booklet sorts the scenarios by difficulty using colour, not by a number.

• Green, Routine Landing. Straightforward conditions, good for a first landing away from Montréal.
• Yellow, Exceptional Conditions. Something is in the way, such as traffic, wind, or a kerosene leak.
• Red, Elite Pilots Only. Tighter runways, harsher weather, tighter windows.
• Black, Heroic Landing. The hardest scenarios in the box, and the booklet says success puts you in the history books.

Some scenarios show a star with a number in it. That tells you how many of the 6 Special Ability cards to draw for the flight. The cards are Working Together, Synchronisation, Mastery, Control, Anticipation, and Adaptation. You choose them fresh each scenario, and nothing carries over between games. They are a scenario wide permission slip, not a permanent upgrade, and that is the single most common thing I see players misread.

The booklet also warns you not to try anything beyond Montréal until you have landed there successfully. That is good advice, because the first scenarios teach the coupling between the markers and the switches without adding a module on top of it.

Expansions and Free Official Extras

There is one retail expansion and a pile of free official material.

Sky Team: Turbulence (2024) is the only expansion you can buy in a shop. It adds 20 new scenarios at 10 new airports including Beijing, Sydney, Cape Town, Kyiv, and Saint Martin, plus new modules for Turbulence, Low Visibility, and Alarms. Our honest take: it is a steep jump. Buy it after Montréal is boring for you, not before.

Sky Team: TER Lajes, Açores (2023) is a promo scenario with two extra landings, available as print and play material and also folded into Turbulence.

Print and play scenarios and a Ready To Play pack are published free on the publisher’s own site. They are genuinely good and cost nothing, so they are the right first purchase after the box.

That is the complete list. If a site tells you there are weather expansions, campaign expansions, or a big box, it is guessing. Our 20 best cooperative family games roundup has the fuller picture if you want to compare.

Is Sky Team Right for Your Group?

It is right for exactly two people who enjoy being on the same side. It is wrong for most groups, wrong for a first cooperative game with children, and wrong for anyone who finds enforced silence frustrating.

Two players is a hard limit. The game is designed for a pilot and a co-pilot, with a Pilot-only set of actions and a Co-pilot-only set. It does not scale, and the publisher has never sold a solo or three player version. Unofficial solo rules circulate, and they work fine, but they are fan rules and the game was not designed around them.

Kids. The publisher says 12 and up, and we agree. The rules are simple, but the game punishes a player who cannot hold a plan in their head for seven rounds, and a child who cannot do that will talk, and then the silence is gone. Alex at 7 can play it and loses most flights. Emma at 10 is now the pilot and rarely crashes. For a cooperative game that genuinely works with a child and a grown-up, our team building co-op list is the better shelf.

Table space. It is one board, two screens, and two dice sets, so it fits on a coffee table and travels in a tote bag. This is the most portable cooperative game we own.

Replay value. High, and honestly so. 21 scenarios across 4 difficulty tiers is a lot of landings, and the dice mean no two are the same. The honest limit, and the one reviewers rarely mention, is that the core gimmick gets tiring if you play four flights back to back. Two or three in an evening is the sweet spot for us. If you are building a date night rotation rather than a single game, our couples games after the kids go to bed list is where Sky Team sits alongside the rest.

• Similarities: Two player puzzle, shared board, a single decision per turn, and pressure that climbs every round.
• Differences: You never talk, you never build anything, and there is no campaign to grind.
• Why this game fans will enjoy it: Patchwork fans who want the same two person negotiation without a single word of it will find the silence more interesting than the quilt.

House Strategy That Is Not in the Rulebook

Everything above is the official game. This part is our own thinking after a lot of crashed flights.

• Flip the brakes early. The Brake marker only matters in the final round, but the die you spend on it is a die you do not spend on gear or flaps. Most of our early losses came from hoarding brake dice and then having nothing left to slow down with. Commit to the brakes by round 3.
• Treat the Aerodynamics markers as your real scoreboard. The track position is not your progress, the gap between the two markers is. When they are far apart, you are in trouble, and the fix is always flaps or gear, never more engines.
• Talk in the discussion phase, then stop. The best pairs I have played with use the first thirty seconds to agree a single shared priority for the round. One priority. Not a list.
• Practise the difference, not the rules. The Axis is the only action where reading a die against a printed number is not enough. A pair that keeps turning the disc by the wrong amount is usually miscounting marks, so count them out loud once at the start and you are done.
• If you are on a Black scenario and losing, stop. Nobody has ever enjoyed their fourth failed heroic landing. Go back to Green.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you play Sky Team solo?

No. Sky Team is officially a 2 player game and there is no solo product. The base box is designed for a pilot and a co-pilot, and BoardGameGeek classifies it as two player only. Unofficial solo rules exist online and are fun, but they are fan made, not a published product.

How long does a game of Sky Team take?

About 20 minutes. The Spiel des Jahres jury lists it as approximately 20 minutes, and the distributors print 20 minutes on the box. Longer scenarios take a little more because of the module setup.

What age is Sky Team suitable for?

The publisher’s indication is 12 and up, and that is the number we would use. The Spiel des Jahres jury lists it from age 10, and some retail listings print 14 or older, so check your own box.

How do you win in Sky Team?

You pass five checks on the final round: no Airplane tokens left on the Approach track, every landing gear switch green, every flaps switch green, the Airplane Axis disc pointing straight up, and your final speed lower than the Brake marker.

Do you have to stay silent in Sky Team?

The rulebook asks you not to talk once the dice are rolled, with one exception for pointing out a rules violation. Nothing enforces it, so it is a convention rather than a locked rule, and both players have to honour it.

How many airports and scenarios are in the base game?

The base box covers 11 airports and 21 scenarios, spread across 10 Approach tracks. Difficulty is shown with four colours: Green for routine landings, Yellow for exceptional conditions, Red for elite pilots, and Black for heroic landings.

What expansions exist for Sky Team?

There is one retail expansion, Sky Team: Turbulence (2024), with 20 new scenarios, 10 new airports, and new weather and alarm modules. There is also a promo scenario, TER Lajes, Açores (2023), and a set of free print and play scenarios published free by the designer.

Is Sky Team a good gift for a family?

Only as a couples or two friends gift. It cannot seat more than two, and the publisher indicates 12 and up. For a family group, a game that plays 2 to 4 is the better buy.

Do you need the Turbulence expansion?

Not for a long time. The base box has 21 scenarios and the whole core game, and Turbulence is a real difficulty jump rather than extra variety of the same thing. We would play Montréal until it is easy first.

Where Sky Team Fits Next

If you like Sky Team for the two person negotiation rather than the theme, our Patchwork review is the closest thing on our shelf, and it is louder, warmer, and slower. If you want the same tense two player decision making with more going on, our 7 Wonders Duel strategy guide covers the other half of the two player shelf. And for the wider picture on planning a date night, our date night board games picks put Sky Team next to games that are not tense at all.