Update -- The campaign reached its $100k goal in just 15 minutes and broke both $300k and 2,000 backers in 80 minutes.
Initial Article -- A new way to play Siege is coming this summer, as 6 | Siege, the board game adaptation of the video game, officially launches its Kickstarter campaign today and allows fans to finally play the game as if it was chess.
This 2-4 player game was initially revealed back in February and is made by Mythic Games in partnership with Ubisoft. The game tasks players with attacking or defending a number of objectives with 20 operators across two maps, making it basically as close to the video game as a board game can get.
For full details on this game check out our summary below :
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How to Play
Setup
After deciding which map -- Consulate or Club House -- and which mission -- control, bomb, or hostage -- will be played, the map can be set up with the furniture, doors, and windows provided.
The setup instructions for Consulate's Control mission, the beginner option.
A fourth game mode is also being made, specially for 2v2 games, but no details on this are available yet.
Following this, each team picks their five starting operators. Each operator has its own player card with unique gadget abilities, health, speed, and gun range, differentiating the 10 options to chose from.
While the attackers start outside, the defending player places their operators down around the site, but the attackers do not know exactly where they are until they gain a visual of them. For each operator, two tokens are placed on the map, with only one being the real defender's position.
The defenders are also able to move five pieces of utility (barbed wire, cameras, mines, barricaded doors etc.) from their default spot to better fortify the area.
Following this, the attackers are placed down around the outside of the map to determine their entry point.
Should the game be played in a 2v2 mode, then each player picks two operators and the fifth character is automatically a recruit with no unique abilities, who is controlled by the team together.
Finally, the teams choose their "tactical inventory", which is in effect how many grenades, drones, claymores, or breaching charges a team has.
Actions
Each round is split up into four parts; the attacker's first turn, the defender's first turn, the attacker's second turn and the defender's second turn.
In each turn, only three operators can be "activated" and an operator can only be activated once per round (so not during both turns).
This means that the attackers always have the initiative, but there's always a chance that their first activated operators are left vulnerable after their turn.
Each of the attackers can move up to five squares and take two of the following actions:
- Shoot an agent
- Destroy (wall, camera, jammer, ...)
- Run
- Use a gadget from the team's tactical inventory
- Use a personal gadget
- Overwatch
Going down the list, shooting an enemy in your line of sight requires the player to roll a set amount of dice depending on how far away someone is, how much cover they have, and how accurate the operator is (basically a gun stat) to determine damage dealt.
One-shots are fairly common, meaning a single mistake can easily cost an entire game.
Next up is "Destroy", which allows you to take down walls and destroy certain gadgets if you're adjacent to them. You can also destroy cameras or drones, but being in the same room as these gives the opponents a line of sight on you, allowing them to shoot you even behind a solid wall.
"Run" simply allows you to move further depending on the mobility of the operator (up to another five spaces).
Using gadgets from the team's tactical inventory allows you to find other players (drones), obscure lines of sight (smokes), deal damage to people not in your line of sight (frags), or protects flanks (claymores), while each operator also has their own personal gadget they can use at this point also.
Finally, the Overwatch action allows you to shoot an enemy whenever they make an action within your line of sight. This is taken during the enemy's turn, effectively as a reaction.
Movement
As well as moving up to five spaces, operators also have the option to use one of these spaces to instead lean around cover. This increases your line of sight, while still giving you partial cover.
As well as this, in certain spots, players can go up or downstairs by effectively dropping a hatch or climbing up the stairs to remove themselves from the board. This needs to be taken into account with claymores or overwatch actions, as you never know who is ready to take a shot through the floor.
The App
6 | Siege comes with a free app that manages the in-game time. While this is not necessary to play the game, it adds an added factor to consider and can quicken up matches.
Before the game starts, both teams select a difficulty that can be used to balance uneven matches. The two teams don't need to select the same difficulty:
- Initiation Level -- 2 minutes
- Calm Level -- 1 minute, 30 seconds
- Standard Level -- 1 minute
- Extreme Level -- 45 seconds
The time selected is how long you have per operator to move your own operators and make reactions. So, at initiation level at the beginning of the game, you'd have 10 minutes, but when you're left with just one operator remaining, you're down to just two minutes to make your whole move.
This also allows players to contest rules and line of sights within the game. If your contest is correct, then you add 30 seconds to the timer, while a lost contest means you lose 30 seconds that round. This encourages fair play and adds yet another mechanic to work with.
Finally, the app works like a chess clock, which each player will start as soon as he starts playing and can be paused if there are interruptions in the game.
Win Condition
This largely depends on what mode is being played, but if all five operators on one team are killed, the round ends regardless of the objective progress.
For Hostage and Bomb, the objective is somewhat obvious; capture the hostage and plant/defend the defuser, but in Secure Area, each room is worth an increasing number of points as the game goes on.
Stand in the rooms to gain the points and after five rounds whoever has the most points wins.
The Kickstarter Campaign
Kickstarter is an online fundraising platform that Mythic Games is using to fund the production of the game.
Mythic has set a goal of $100k to reach -- of which it's already halfway completed within 10 minutes of its launch -- before the end of the campaign. Should the total pledges from supporters hit this goal then the campaign is a success, supporters will be charged and the game produced and shipped.
To encourage supporters to pledge money to the campaign, there are a number of tiers of support you can give for various exclusive in-game and out of game bonuses:
- $69 -- The base game, an in-game R6S weapon skin, & the additional operator of Zero
- $199 -- The prior bonuses plus all five-year expansions, two map packs, and six R6 video game skins
- $269 -- The prior bonuses plus an additional dice tray, dice set, and another in-game skin
The full range of expansions available with the $269 tier
The yearly expansion packs will come with the operators that released in that in-game year while the two map packs will come with Kafe and Bank followed by Oregon and Chalet
The first of the map packs available for the game.
Depending on how willing supporters are to pledge, this can end up being a pretty expensive game with the various add-ons, but only the base experience is needed to run a full game. A full look at the various addons can be seen on the kickstarter page here.
The Rainbow Six: Siege Universe
Due to the success of the base game of Siege, this year, Ubisoft has really gone all out in making it the centre of one of their main franchises.
6 | Siege: The Board Game is in fact the third addition to this universe, following the Amazon original movie Without Remorse starring Michael B. Jordan, which is based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name.
This film was confirmed to be a "prequel" to the game and, despite its lacklustre reviews, will see a sequel based on and named after the "Rainbow Six" novel in the coming years.
A Portuguese explanation of the R6: Siege timeline.
Now adding to the FPS multiplayer shooter and movie, the coming months will see the spin-off PvE game of R6: Extraction (which you can read about here) and the 6 | Siege tabletop board game adaptation.
Finally, R6 operators have also appeared in the Chinese tower-defense game of Arknights and the mobile strategy RPG of Elite Squad.
Altogether, this forms one of the most odd media franchises to date with effectively just a novel, comic, and TV show left to complete the set.
None of these seems too far-fetched as well, considering the game is already based on a book series, Ubisoft's recently signed a production deal with Netflix, and there's already an ongoing Far Cry comic series.
All in all, this shows that R6 has been elevated from just a single game to a significant part of Ubisoft's portfolio, meaning that whatever the future holds for the Rainbow Six: Siege game, the wider franchise is likely to continue for decades to come.
The game is live on Kickstarter here and will be available for the next few months. Be sure to keep an eye out here at SiegeGG for full coverage of the inevitable 6 | Siege esports scene.