Before rolling in Sky Team, you can both see the approaching trouble. What you cannot see is how your partner will be equipped to handle it. A useful briefing gives you something to protect when the dice arrive: a movement target, a danger and the order in which that danger must be addressed.
Sky Team is a cooperative game for two. The pilot and co-pilot each roll four dice behind a screen, then alternate placing them on cockpit actions. Together they must reach the airport at the right time, clear the traffic, deploy their landing equipment and touch down level at a safe speed. Every round, both players must put one die on the axis, which controls tilt, and one on the engines, which control movement.
The official Landing Procedure rulebook permits a strategy discussion before rolling but prohibits discussing dice, including conditional instructions about particular results. After rolling, players must remain silent until the round ends, apart from correcting rule errors. Here is an invented base-game exercise showing what an objective can accomplish within that restriction.
Agree on the danger and its deadline
Imagine the second round of the introductory Montréal approach, at 5,000 feet. Your plane is level. One traffic token occupies your current position, and another occupies the next space. No landing gear or flaps have been deployed. The blue speed marker sits between 4 and 5; the orange marker sits between 8 and 9. You have two coffee tokens, and the first brake has been deployed.
This position is reachable from the normal setup: in the opening round, matching axis dice keep the plane level and engine dice totalling 10 advance it two spaces. The other four placements can deploy the first brake, make two coffees and remove one of the two traffic tokens in the following space. Arriving at a space containing traffic is allowed. Advancing again while traffic occupies your current position causes a collision.
For this exercise, agree: “Let's advance one space. The traffic at our current position has to go before we move.” That describes a shared objective and its obstacle without assigning dice to either player.
The deadline comes from the engines. Movement resolves immediately when the second engine die is placed. Clearing traffic later in the round cannot undo a collision. A radio die removes one traffic token from the space its value identifies, counting the current position as 1.
Eight placements, with only half the dice visible
Give the pilot 1, 2, 3 and 4, and the co-pilot 2, 3, 4 and 6. Those are our reader-visible results. Each player actually knows only their own roll until dice appear on the board. The co-pilot starts this round.
The following is one legal sequence, not an instruction the players could have agreed before rolling.
- 1. Co-pilot: engine 4. A single engine die does not move the plane. The pilot can now see one contribution to the eventual speed.
- 2. Pilot: radio 1. Remove the traffic token from the current position. The immediate obstacle to movement is gone.
- 3. Co-pilot: axis 3. The second axis space remains empty, so tilt has not yet resolved.
- 4. Pilot: axis 3. Matching values leave the plane level. Both mandatory axis placements are complete.
- 5. Co-pilot: first flaps space, using 2. This space accepts 1 or 2. Deploying it immediately moves the orange marker to between 9 and 10.
- 6. Pilot: engine 4. The engine total is 8, between the blue marker at 4/5 and the orange marker at 9/10. Advance one space. Traffic enters the current position, but this arrival does not itself cause a collision.
- 7. Co-pilot: concentration 6. This action accepts any value and adds a coffee token, bringing the shared supply to three.
- 8. Pilot: landing gear 1/2 space, using 2. Deploying it moves the blue marker to between 5 and 6. Movement has already resolved, so this change does not alter the advance just made.
The same dice can lose before the radio gets a turn
Now exchange the pilot's second and sixth placements. The co-pilot still opens with engine 4, but the pilot immediately adds engine 4 instead of clearing traffic.
The sum is still 8. At this moment the markers are still at 4/5 and 8/9, so that total requires a one-space advance. Traffic still occupies the current position: the players lose immediately. The radio placement planned for later never gets to repair it.
This is why the briefing needed an ordering dependency. “Clear the traffic this round” leaves out the deadline. “Clear it before we move” gives the player completing the engines a visible condition to check. It also leaves either player free to solve the problem.
Keep the objective when the roll changes
Return to the starting position and change only the pilot's roll to 2, 3, 4 and 4. The co-pilot has the same dice and again opens with engine 4. The pilot has lost the natural 1 used in our first sequence.
The two coffee tokens were already visible before rolling. When placing a die, a player may spend coffee to change its value by one per token, within the range 1 to 6. The pilot can spend one coffee to turn the 2 into a 1 and clear the current traffic by radio. No new conversation is needed.
The remaining placements can follow the same order: co-pilot axis 3, pilot axis 3, co-pilot first flaps with 2, pilot engine 4, co-pilot concentration 6, then pilot landing gear with the remaining 4. That last die uses the 3/4 gear space instead of 1/2; landing gear can be deployed in any order. The plane still advances one space safely. Coffee falls to one when spent, then returns to two through concentration.
The briefing did not guarantee a particular roll or promise that someone would supply a radio 1. It identified the condition any successful movement had to satisfy. Here, a shared resource bridges the changed roll. Other rolls may require different placements or a reroll; an objective cannot guarantee that the dice will cooperate.
Before your next round, put the visible problem into a sentence both players can use: where you want to move, what threatens that movement and what must happen first. Once the screens hide the dice, keep checking the public board against that sentence. In this round, the decisive question is simple: has the traffic gone before the engines send us forward?