I have played a lot of Sky Team over the last few weeks. Games of Sky Team mostly happen when my co-pilot (and actual game owner) asks me if I want to play, and I respond with a half-hearted “Sure.”
Outside of our first flight, I have never deliberately visited my friend in order to play Sky Team. We find our way into the cockpit every time we run out of things to do or talk about, and don’t particularly feel like playing a competitive game.
The game’s general simplicity and short playtime mean that despite my general lack of enthusiasm for taking to the air, I’m never really opposed to it.
Let’s start with that simplicity. Every round, you and your teammate each roll 4 dice, and then you take turns placing them onto a semi-split board. EYour dice pool is secret, and you cannot talk to your partner during the round.
Slots are color coded, specific to each player. Speed and axis must be filled each round by each player, leaving your other two dice to be used for a variety of other problems, such as other planes in your path, flipping the variety of switches that will allow the plane to land, and dealing with an untrained intern.
The actual game is a fine dance of probability and signaling. Can my teammate deal with the plane we are about to crash into? Can I slot a six into our axis freeing up my 3 to signal traffic out of the way? Or will doing so throw us directly into a tailspin?
All of this stands against the ever ticking clock: you have a limited amount of fuel, and must reach your destination before the final turn with all flaps down, and at a slow enough speed that we don’t run ourselves directly into the airport Cinnabon.
As the difficulty levels crank up, additional challenges have been thrust upon us. We must dodge mountains must by manipulating the axis meter within a specific range. A greedy kerosene gauge loses fuel if it isn’t plugged with a dice to minimize the loss. There is an intern. I’m not sure why we’re letting them fly the plane, or why failing to train them is as catastrophic to our success as doing a 360 no-scope directly into Kathmandu, but I don’t make the rules here.
Despite all of the additions and add-ons, I’ve never found myself excited by Skyteam with the level of either enthusiasm I had for Clank: Acquisitions Incorporated, or in retrospect, the curiosity I had for Lost Ruins of Arnak.
Instead, Skyteam is just kind of there.
It feels odd to be so ambivalent about a game that I’ve played so much of, and also is the winner of the Spiel, but here I am. I’ll play it. I’ll do my best to enjoy it. I’ll be impressed by its thoughtful mechanics, and absolutely brilliant box and component design. But I’ll never feel inspired or enthused by it.
Post Script: It’s not entirely true that Sky Team elicits zero emotional reaction from me, but the sole example of a time when it did is neither flattering to me or the game.
During one session, I came up with the idea of a 9/11 themed expansion for Sky Team. Obviously, this hard to justify for a variety of reasons.
But the one that made me laugh, and laugh and laugh, was the thought that it would be a very easy expansion, as landing would no longer be required.