GAME REVIEWS: SKYTEAM

Mimicking the explosion of board game manufacturing and designs, the expansion of the content creator space has done its own Big Bang in the last decade.

- Naomi Laeuchli

Each round, both players roll their four dice behind their screens and then take turns assigning dice to the board one at a time. While dice are placed, players may not talk — they must make their own decisions. When placing dice, most spaces indicate whether the pilot or the co-pilot may place a die there and any number requirement for the die placed. There are several aspects of flight and the plane’s controls that must be balanced to avoid losing the game and to make a successful landing in the final round.

Dice must be placed on both the engines and the axis during each round. The difference between the two dice played to the axis determines how far the plane tilts to either side. If it tilts too far, players lose. The combined value of the two dice played to the engines compared to the speedometer tokens determines how many spaces the plane moves on the approach track. These tokens are manipulated by the landing gear and flaps, which players turn on by adding dice to them.

Playing dice to the radios removes planes from the approach track (they must be removed before running into them). The concentration spaces earn coffee tokens, which can be spent to add to or subtract from the value of dice. Finally, there is the action to move the brakes higher on their track.

At the end of each round, the altitude track is decreased by one. The final round occurs when the altitude track reaches the final space. To land the plane, players must be at the airport on the approach track with no planes ahead, the plane’s axis must be level, all landing gear and flaps must be turned on, and the plane’s speed must be lower than the brakes track. If all the requirements for a successful landing are met after placing all the dice, you win! Once you have won the standard game, there are many different scenarios to play through, which introduce new mechanics and challenges.