Sky Team takes cooperative board games to new heights
The two-player cooperative game is simple and elegant.
There’s nothing like a great cooperative board game. The experience of learning a system together, figuring out how to solve a problem together, thriving together: That’s the stuff that keeps me coming back, week after week.
I wrote about it a few weeks ago, but Pandemic reeled me in like no other game had to that point; I wanted to keep coming back to board games. The Crew provided some of the keenest, most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had, and it did so during a difficult time in the world. Spirit Island has tested my group’s ability to execute a plan.
And now, Sky Team is providing cooperative experiences that feel fresh and, crucially, simple and elegant. In the two-player cooperative game Sky Team, you and a partner play as a pilot and copilot pair, navigating obstacles and managing difficult scenarios while preparing for a landing that gets closer and closer every round.
Both players have four dice, which they roll in secret. Those dice are placed without discussion on various positions on the board, which roughly reflect the mechanics of landing a plane. (I’ve never flown a plane, much less landed one. I don’t know, maybe they do roll dice to land the plane?) Players will have time to communicate between rounds, but in-round, you can’t communicate a thing.
Sky Team revolves around a series of modular components laid out as the cockpit controls of an airplane. In the first mission, which the game advises as a first play, the pilot is responsible for lowering the landing gear and readying the brakes, while the copilot is responsible for raising the flaps. Both players will adjust the axial tilt of the plane — if that goes too far in either direction, you’ll crash the plane.
Both players, too, are responsible for playing to engines, with the sum of the die compared to markers that move with the flaps and the brakes. If the sum is lower than the lowest mark, no movement will be made. If the sum is higher than the highest mark, the plane will move two spaces. Both are valuable tools in addressing the obstacles present, which are largely other airplanes. Those airplanes must be cleared from your path by playing to the communications spaces, which the copilot can do twice each round, where the pilot can do it just the once.
If you can manage the board well enough, you’ll make it to the airport at just the right time, landing with every appropriate process followed.
Sky Team’s modular design
I’ve been largely dismissive of board games designed with modules, as I find they’re often a gimmick that tacks on variety unnecessarily. I’ve seen plenty of games wherein the modules were an excuse to add something extra to the box, thus increasing the price tag or adding a “replayable!” tag to the marketing.
So many games I’ve played that feature modules often see me leave everything for every module in the box, preferring the base game to anything else. While pitched as a method to make the game more fun to replay, they often miss the mark of what made the original experience exciting or otherwise worthwhile.
Sky Team is modular, but the modules feel like an essential part of the game, not something extra with which to concern yourself, should you get bored.
You’ll start with no additional modules when you first play the game, focusing on engines, axis, landing gear, flaps, brakes and communication. As you progress, you’ll use different modules atop those existing ones — ice brakes, for example, change the dynamic of the last turn of the game. An intern might be around to help you, but they’ll require training. That sort of thing.
When I think about Sky Team, I see a game where modules work because the entire game is designed with modules in mind with the very basic building blocks. Each part of your plane is a module with which you’re interacting; you could, theoretically, swap out the basic engine module for another one that does something a bit differently. Every game you play after your first will have you using modules.
What makes Sky Team work?
First and foremost, Sky Team is a cooperative challenge, and communication is only allowed between rounds. Unless you’ve played particularly well, there’s always something meaningful to do on a turn inside a round, and it’s fairly easy to set out a hierarchy of concerns. That’s only true if players have coordinated and communicated between turns, which will sometimes be crucial. If there’s a glut of planes ahead of you, you’ll need a plan to deal with it, and nobody can do it on their own.
How does the cooperative play contribute to the modular design working, though? When you set out to play, you have an opportunity to push forward into a more difficult mission, to try a mission you’ve failed, or to simply explore the game’s systems. Unless you retreat to the very first mission — which will feel far too easy after playing for any amount of time — every play necessarily involves the modular design. This isn’t a game that uses modules to extend the game; the game itself is modular.
Being cooperative isn’t the only factor making Sky Team’s design work. Importantly, the game is a quick play. A round consists of rolling one’s dice and placing those dice across the board, and a turn consists of placing a single die on a single space.
It’s generally quite clear how the different areas of the board impact the flight of the plane — raising landing gear and moving flaps — both of which are required to land successfully at the airport — both increase resistance and require increased engine power to move forward at the same rate. You might use this to your advantage if you’ve travelled too quickly on previous turns, or it might be something that, while necessary, requires you to make adjustments to your plans.
Despite the game being fast and relatively straightforward at times, it rewards considered thinking. Being able to properly sequence events will serve you as you work toward landing the plane — playing to engines, moving, then playing to radio communication requires different dice values than doing the same in reverse order.
It also rewards tactical thinking: You only know the dice your partner has when they’ve been played, so you can’t go into a round thinking that you know exactly how you’ll be able to play. Finding a mode of communication that doesn’t involve speaking might be key (so long as you’re not missing the point of the game!) — for example, if you’re stuck with high-value dice, you might play to the axis or engines first, both spots that require a correlating die on your partner’s side. It’s great if you can make a plan — but can you pivot from the plan if necessary?
Improvisation is key in Sky Team, particularly because the game centers around rolling dice in secret. It’s more about mitigating rolls of the dice than it is anything else. It’s that nice “input randomness” idea coming out perfectly here: You’re always trying to make the dice do what you need them to. There’s no output randomness: A die face does the same thing every time.
A few other great cooperative two-player board games
The number of games that truly excel as two-player cooperative efforts is a bit on the small side. A game like Pandemic becomes considerably easier with fewer players, while one of my favorites, The Crew, changes pretty radically as a game to feature a straw man player when you’re playing as a duo. (It works, and it’s fun, but some deals might prove overly difficult or impossible as a result.)
Spirit Island works well with two players, and it does solve the game’s getting a bit too long with a full table. It’s a lovely game, but it falls toward the complicated side more often than not, so consider your audience if you’re pulling it off the shelf.
I’ve yet to play Daybreak with two players, but having played with four and solo, I suspect two players would work just fine. It’ll get that “multiplayer solitaire” tag from some, a criticism I understand but don’t completely agree with — but it’s the factors that lead to that argument that also make it a good option.
Sail is a two-player-only trick-taking game, so it’s really baked with two-player play. I like it a lot.
Exit games are perfect cooperative games for two players — certainly, it can work with four or more if you have the right group, but I’d wager that it’s a more reliable two-player experience.
Burgle Bros scales down to two players quite well, and be a bit easier than at four-player counts — those guards moving around are quite disruptive, after all.
There are plenty more to consider — let this be a starting point, not your destination.
Thanks for reading Don’t Eat the Meeples! I’ve really been enjoying playing Sky Team both in person and on Board Game Arena, where I’ve played a bunch of games. Thanks to those readers who have reached out to play a game on BGA — I’ve really enjoyed it, and I hope you have, too. I’ll play Sky Team with you, too. Find me. (My username is moonty.)
Next week: Great games to play on Board Game Arena.