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Sky Team
A two-player cooperative game in which you become the pilot and the copilot and place dice without talking, landing the plane safely at the airport. It won the 2024 Spiel des Jahres (the German Game of the Year award) and became very popular for its short running time and high tension.
Rules
A cooperative game for exactly two players. The Pilot and the Co-Pilot each roll four dice behind a screen, and from the moment they roll until the round ends, neither may say a word. You have seven rounds to put the airliner on the runway.
You are not allowed to talk — that is the rule
Half of this game's rules are about what you may not do. The moment the dice are rolled the two of you fall silent, and the only channel left is which space you put a die on, at what value, and in what order.
| When | May you speak? |
|---|---|
| Start of the round, before rolling | Yes. Strategy talk such as "we really need to get rid of that plane" or "let's advance 2 spaces" |
| After rolling, until all 8 dice are placed | Not a word. The only exception is correcting a misapplied rule |
| After all 8 dice are placed (end of round) | You may speak again |
Even before the roll, talking about the dice is banned
"If you get a 6, put it here" or "use your weakest die for this" are dice instructions, not strategy, and the rulebook bans them by name. You may discuss the goal, never the means.
So placing a die is always two things at once: one action in the cockpit and one signal to your crewmate. The rulebook itself asks you to think first about what your partner can deduce from this value going on this space at this moment.
Components
| Component | Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Control Panel | 1 | Sits between the players. The blue side is the Pilot's, the orange side the Co-Pilot's |
| Blue dice / orange dice | 4 each | Blue for the Pilot, orange for the Co-Pilot. All 8 are placed every round |
| Screens | 2 | Hide your rolled dice. Reminders are printed on the inside |
| Switches | 10 | 3 Landing Gear + 4 Flaps + 3 Brakes. They start covering the green lights |
| Aerodynamics markers | 2 | Blue and orange. On the Speed Gauge they decide how far your speed moves you |
| Brake marker | 1 | Red. It only matters in the final round |
| Airplane Axis disc | 1 | Assembled with a sticker |
| Airplane tokens | 12 | Other aircraft on your approach path. Leave any of them and you lose |
| Coffee tokens | 3 | Shift the value of a die you are placing by 1 |
| Reroll tokens | 2 | They start on the Reroll icons of the Altitude Track |
| Approach Tracks and Altitude Tracks | per airport | They slide into slots so only one space shows in the Current Position and Current Altitude screens |
| Advanced module parts | - | Kerosene Track, Intern Board and tokens, Wind Ring, Ice Brakes board, Traffic die, Special Ability cards. Leave them in the box for your first game |
There is a one-time setup when you first open the box
Remove and throw away the Control Panel parts marked with ✗, stick the 9 double-sided stickers on the indicated spaces, and put the airplane sticker on the Airplane Axis disc. Then place the 10 Switches on the green lights.
Setup — the Montréal (YUL) game
- 1Put the Control Panel between you. Ideally sit next to each other on the same side. The arrow on the Airplane Axis disc must point at the black triangle at the top, and all 10 Switches must cover the green lights.
- 2On the Speed Gauge put the blue Aerodynamics marker between the 4 and the 5 and the orange marker between the 8 and the 9.
- 3Put the Brake marker to the left of the 2 on the Brake track.
- 4Whoever sits on the blue side is the Pilot (4 blue dice); the orange side is the Co-Pilot (4 orange dice).
- 5Slide the Altitude Track (green/yellow side) into the top-right slot until 6,000 shows in the screen. That number is your Current Altitude, in feet.
- 6Slide the YUL Montréal-Trudeau Approach Track into the top-left slot. The space in the screen is your Current Position.
- 7Put a Reroll token on each Reroll icon of the Altitude Track.
- 8Put as many Airplane tokens as there are Traffic icons on each space of the Approach Track.
- 9Keep the Coffee tokens as a reserve beside the board — not on it.
- 10Give each player a screen and read the reminders inside.
The airport sets the difficulty
Montréal is the practice run. The Flight Log booklet is printed with a warning not to open it before you have landed in Montréal.
The three phases of a round
- 1Strategy discussion and dice rolls — the only time you may speak. When you are done, each of you rolls 4 dice behind your screen and falls silent from that moment.
- 2Dice placement — take turns placing one die at a time. The arrow in the Current Altitude screen says who goes first (the Pilot in round one).
- 3End of round — once all 8 dice are placed you may speak again. Advance the Altitude Track one space (1,000 feet) and take back your dice.
The Altitude Track is your clock
Whatever you did, the plane descends every round. There are 7 spaces on the Altitude Track, so the game is exactly 7 rounds. There is no way to buy another one.
A Reroll token belongs to both of you
If there is a Reroll token in the Current Altitude space, take it to the top left of the Control Panel. Any player may spend it at any time during the round, and when they do both players reroll as many of the dice behind their screen as they like, once.
Placing a die — colour, number, space
- Colour constraint — the Pilot may only use blue spaces, the Co-Pilot only orange ones. Spaces printed in both colours are open to either player.
- Number constraint — only the values printed on the space. The first Flaps space (1/2), for instance, takes only a 1 or a 2.
- Space constraint — you cannot place on a space that already holds a die.
- Radio spaces have a colour constraint but no number constraint. The Pilot has 1, the Co-Pilot has 2.
- Concentration spaces have no colour and no number constraint at all.
⚠ Axis and Engines are mandatory every round
If at the end of a round there is not one die of each colour on the Axis and one of each colour on the Engines, you lose immediately. Mandatory does not mean first, though — you may fill other spaces before them.
Axis — the gap between the two dice is the tilt
As soon as the second die is placed on the Axis, compare the two values.
- If they are the same, nothing moves.
- If they differ, turn the disc as many marks as the difference, toward the player who played the higher die.
- The arrow stays there. It is not reset at the end of the round.
Reach or pass the ✗ and the plane spins — you lose at once
The bigger the gap, the harder the tilt, and two dice can differ by as much as 5. Once you are two marks over, a difference of just 1 more hits the ✗. The Axis is less a space you tune than one where you have to match your partner's number.
Victory condition C
At the end of the last round the plane must be completely horizontal, meaning the arrow is back at 0. If you tilted earlier, you have to undo it within the rounds you have left.
Engines — your speed decides how far you advance
As soon as the second die is placed on the Engines, add the two values. That sum is your speed, and you compare it with the two Aerodynamics markers on the Speed Gauge to see how far the Approach Track advances.
| Speed | Result |
|---|---|
| Less than the blue marker | the Approach Track does not move |
| Between the two markers | advance the Approach Track 1 space |
| Greater than the orange marker | advance the Approach Track 2 spaces |
Being too slow fails as surely as being too fast
Too fast and you overshoot the airport; too slow and your altitude runs out before you reach it. Speed is not a number to minimise — it is a number to match to your altitude.
The Approach Track — traffic ahead, and the airport behind you
The Approach Track is the distance left to the airport. The space in the screen is your Current Position and the last space of the track is the airport. Airplane tokens on a space are other aircraft blocking your path.
| Situation | Result |
|---|---|
| An Airplane token moves into your Current Position space | You are still alive |
| There are Airplanes in your Current Position space and you have to advance | Collision — you lose |
| The airport is in your Current Position space and you have to advance | Overshoot — you lose |
Radio
Count spaces from your Current Position equal to the die you placed and immediately remove one Airplane token from that space (a 1 means the Current Position space). If there is no Airplane there, nothing happens and the die is simply spent. The Pilot has 1 Radio space, the Co-Pilot 2.
Victory condition A
At the end there must be no Airplane tokens left on the Approach Track — not ahead of you and not on the spaces you have already flown through.
Landing Gear, Flaps and Brakes
| Area | Who | Spaces | On placing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landing Gear | Pilot only | 1/2 · 3/4 · 5/6 — any order | slide the Switch to green and advance the blue Aerodynamics marker one space |
| Flaps | Co-Pilot only | 1/2 · 2/3 · 4/5 · 5/6 — in order, top to bottom | slide the Switch to green and advance the orange Aerodynamics marker one space |
| Brakes | Pilot only | 2 · 4 · 6 — in order, exact values | advance the red Brake marker one space |
Deploy everything and 2 spaces stops existing
Once the orange marker is past the 12 you can no longer beat it, because two dice sum to 12 at most. If you still need to advance 2 spaces, do not deploy your Flaps yet.
| Brakes deployed | Marker position | Speed allowed in the final round |
|---|---|---|
| none | left of the 2 | none — you cannot win |
| 2 | between 2 and 3 | 2 or less |
| 2 · 4 | between 4 and 5 | 4 or less |
| 2 · 4 · 6 | past the 6 | 6 or less |
Gear and Flaps all of them, Brakes as many as you choose
Victory condition B asks for every Landing Gear and Flaps Switch showing green. You do not have to deploy every Brake, but you cannot deploy none — two Engine dice sum to at least 2, so with the marker left of the 2 no speed can ever satisfy the condition.
Concentration and Coffee
The three Concentration spaces have no colour and no number constraint. Placing a die there immediately creates one Coffee token (you may never hold more than 3).
- Spend Coffee as you place a die to add 1 to or subtract 1 from its value. You may spend several at once.
- Any player may spend them, whoever made them.
- Unspent tokens stay on the board for the next round.
- Values only move between 1 and 6. Subtracting 1 from a 1 does not make it a 6, and adding 1 to a 6 does not make it a 1.
Every Coffee token costs you a die
A die on a Concentration space performs no cockpit action. It is the place for a die you had no use for this round, not a place to dump a good one.
The final round, and how you win or lose
The final round is the one where the airport image shows in the Current Position screen and the airplane image shows in the Current Altitude screen. When the two do not line up, that itself is the result.
| Current Position | Current Altitude | Result |
|---|---|---|
| airport | still descending | You are in a holding pattern over the airport. Keep your speed low enough not to advance and play another round |
| not the airport | airplane image | You came down short of the airport — crash landing, you lose |
| airport | airplane image | This is the landing round |
In the final round you compare speed with your Brakes
When you place the second Engine die, compare your speed with the red Brake marker instead of the Aerodynamics markers. This round's speed must be less than the Brake marker.
| Victory condition | What it asks |
|---|---|
| A | No Airplane tokens remain on the Approach Track |
| B | Every Flaps and Landing Gear Switch shows the green light |
| C | The Axis is completely horizontal (0) |
| D | Your speed is less than your Brakes when the Engine dice were placed |
| Instant loss | When |
|---|---|
| Spin | The Axis arrow reaches or passes a ✗ |
| Collision | There are Airplane tokens in your Current Position space and you have to advance |
| Overshoot | The airport is in your Current Position space and you have to advance |
| Missing mandatory die | A round ends without one die of each colour on the Axis and the Engines |
| Coming down short | Your altitude runs out before you reach the airport |
| Failed landing | You miss any one of A to D in the final round |
Strategy that falls straight out of the rules
- Settle on how far you want to move during the briefing. Until you agree on 0, 1 or 2 spaces, neither of you can read what the other's Engine die means.
- The order you place in is information. The Axis and the Engines are the two spaces you fill together, so whoever goes first is announcing their value. If your roll came up with a lot of the same number, hold back and let your partner lead.
- Deploy Flaps late, and only as many as you need. If you still owe 2 spaces of approach and the Flaps are all out, there is no way back.
- With no traffic ahead of you, speed matters less. That is when you can afford to spend your first die somewhere else.
- Do not hoard Coffee for the last round. Make it in the round where a die had nowhere useful to go, and your partner can spend it on their next placement.
- Undoing a tilt is expensive. Coming back from two marks means hitting exactly the opposite difference of 2 next round, and you are only one mark from the ✗ while you try.
Scenarios, modules and the expansion
Once Montréal is behind you, open the Flight Log. It holds 21 scenarios graded by colour, and each one tells you which airport's Approach Track to use, which modules to add, and how many Special Ability cards to take.
| Grade | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Routine Landing | An uneventful flight |
| Exceptional Conditions | Awkward weather or traffic |
| Elite Pilots Only | For experienced crews |
| Heroic Landing | Succeed and it goes in the history books |
| Module | What changes |
|---|---|
| Traffic die | If there is a Traffic icon in the Current Position screen at the start of a round, roll it and new Airplane tokens appear |
| Turns | When you advance the Approach Track, an Axis outside the permitted positions loses the game. Advancing 2 spaces checks both spaces you fly through |
| Kerosene | A fuel track starting at 20. In any round you do not place a die on the Kerosene space you lose 6 |
| Kerosene Leak | The Kerosene action is gone; instead you lose fuel equal to the difference between your two Engine dice, plus 1 |
| Intern | Place a die on the Intern Board to take a token you can use as an extra action. Fail to finish the training before you land and you lose |
| Wind | The Wind Ring turns as far as the Axis is off centre, and that value is added to your Engine total |
| Real-Time | Start a 60-second timer immediately after rolling. Dice left over when it runs out are simply ignored |
| Ice Brakes | A different Brake track. You must place two dice of the same value, above and below, in the same round, and you lose if the marker does not reach the end |
| Special Ability cards | Take as many as the scenario says; meet their condition for an extra action |
The base game covers 11 airports: Montréal-Trudeau (YUL), Heathrow (LHR), Haneda (HND), Gardermoen (OSL), Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL), Václav Havel (PRG), Toncontín (TGU), Galeão (GIG), Keflavík (KEF), Kuala Lumpur (KUL) and Paro (PBH).
The expansion: Sky Team Turbulence (2024)
Its new modules are Alarms, Total Trust, Altitudes, Turbulence and Bad Visibility — Total Trust even takes away the Strategy Discussion at the start of the round. It holds 20 scenarios across 9 airports: Warsaw Chopin (WAW), Cape Town (CPT), Sydney Kingsford Smith (SYD), Beijing Capital (PEK), Madrid–Barajas (MAD), Kyiv Boryspil (KBP), Princess Juliana (SXM), Düsseldorf (DUS) and Lajes, Azores (TER). In the box: 10 Approach Tracks, 2 Altitude Tracks, an Alarm board with 6 Alarm tokens, 6 Penguin tokens and 2 Switches. The expansion rulebook is marked 12+.
Free scenarios
The publisher gives away a Lajes (TER) and a Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) scenario, plus an updated Haneda (HND), from the product page.
Rules people get wrong
Q. Is it really two players only? Can three of us play?
It is strictly a two-player game. The Control Panel has a Pilot side and a Co-Pilot side and nothing else, and there are only 4 blue and 4 orange dice. The rulebook gives no other player count.
Q. After we roll, may we use gestures or facial expressions?
The rulebook asks for complete silence from the roll until the end of the round, and the one exception it allows is correcting a misapplied rule. The intended channel is which space you place on, at what value, in what order. If you want to signal, signal with a placement.
Q. Does the Axis reset to 0 each round?
No. The arrow stays where you left it, so you begin the next round still tilted, and if it is not back at 0 at the end of the last round you miss condition C.
Q. Can a big Engine total move us 3 spaces?
Two is the maximum. The real trap is the opposite: deploy all your Flaps and the orange marker goes past the 12, which makes 2 spaces impossible, because two dice sum to 12 at most.
Q. Can Coffee turn a 6 into a 1?
Values only move within 1 to 6. Adding 1 to a 6 does not wrap to 1, and subtracting 1 from a 1 does not wrap to 6. Turning a 6 into a 1 would take 5 Coffee tokens, and you can only hold 3.
Q. What happens if we deploy no Brakes at all?
The marker stays left of the 2, so no speed can ever satisfy condition D — two Engine dice sum to at least 2. You have to deploy at least the 2.
Q. If we reach the airport early, have we overshot?
No. Sitting on the airport space with altitude to spare means you are in a holding pattern. Keep your speed in the zone that advances 0 spaces and play on. You only overshoot if you are on that space and have to advance.
Q. Does a Reroll token only reroll the dice of the player who spent it?
No. When one player spends it both players reroll as many of the dice behind their screen as they wish, once. The Pilot might reroll 2 of their 3 remaining dice while the Co-Pilot rerolls all 4.
History and editions
- Designed by Luc Rémond, illustrated by Eric Hibbeler and Adrien Rives, published in 2023 by Le Scorpion Masqué of Québec.
- The rulebook credits three real aviation people as "the game's 3 co-pilots": Olivier Penaud for his aeronautical knowledge, First Officer Jean-Claude Penaud, and Michel Dôme for hundreds of landings together.
- It won the 2024 Spiel des Jahres, the German Game of the Year.
- It began life as a solo design during the COVID lockdowns; the two-player communication mechanism came out of testing (cross-checked against Wikipedia).
- The Korean edition is distributed by Asmodee Korea. Retail listings there give 14+, 2 players, 20 minutes.
Unverified — Korean edition wording
We could not obtain the Korean rulebook, so the Korean version of this guide uses common Korean terms with the English original alongside. It will be aligned to the published wording once the Korean manual is checked.
Sources
Official Le Scorpion Masqué rulebook, Landing Procedure (Sky Team)Official Le Scorpion Masqué rulebook, Flight Log — scenarios and modulesOfficial Le Scorpion Masqué expansion rulebook, Sky Team TurbulenceCross-checked against Wikipedia: Sky Team (board game)Cross-checked against Namuwiki: Spiel des Jahres, 2024 winner (Korean)Korean edition product listing — Asmodee Korea edition at Popcone (Korean)Rule summaries are reference content written by us, not quotations from the official rulebook. Always check the official rulebook for exact rules. Diagrams are original schematics, not rulebook illustrations.
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Last updated 2026-09-14
💡 Master tip
You cannot speak, but where and in what order you place a die is how you signal your partner, so make full use of the legal hint rules in the manual for that silent communication. Practicing the timing of bringing speed and altitude down together right up to touchdown raises your win rate a great deal.
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