The Rainbow Six Siege Beta came to an end, and there are quite a few first-person shooters to play between now and the December 1, 2015 release of Siege. Before you drift off into the worlds of Halo, Call of Duty, Fallout and Star Wars, we want to remind you of some of the advanced tactics present in Rainbow Six Siege. You’ll need these when trying to adjust to the game again after playing so many other and very different first-person shooters.
If you don’t know the basics of Rainbow Six Siege, you’re playing in a five-on-five team battle with one team trying to protect the objective and the other team trying to rescue or destroy the objective (depending on the game mode). Sometimes you’ll have to rescue or prevent the rescue of a hostage, other times you may have to defuse a bomb. The key here is teamwork. You have to communicate at all times so you know where your teammates are, and where the enemy is located if they happen to be spotted. You don’t want to be alone against a team of five players, and that’s exactly what will happen if you aren’t communicating well.
Use Cameras Frequently
There are a good number of cameras setup around the various maps. There are also cameras on the drones that can be used in some situations. If you’re defending, your first course of action should be to secure the location, then spot the enemy team using the cameras. Cycle between the cameras frequently until you spot the enemy team, then continue to use the spot ability for as long as you can. Once you’ve spotted an enemy, the red marker that indicates their location will not move. That means you want to continuously mark them for as long as it’s safe to do so. This gives the rest of your team the most accurate location so they can hunt down and finish off the opposing team.
Don’t be Afraid to go Outside
If you’re on the defensive team, as soon as you head outside of the location you’re defending, you’re abruptly warned that if you remain outside too long the enemy team will detect you. First off, it takes a decent amount of time for the detection to occur, so you have a little bit of time to explore. Secondly, if you can locate the opposing team (or you used the cameras to determine their exact location) you can move around and take them out before they detect you. Even if they do detect you, if you’re quick you will still have time to take them out before they can react to your presence. This isn’t something that works all the time, but you can experiment with it and use this tactic once you get a feel for the enemy team.
Flank Riot Shield Players
One of the most aggravating aspects of the Beta was dealing with a player using a riot shield. Most people have been calling for the riot shield to be nerfed, and while it’s quite possible that will happen before the game becomes available in December, for the time being we’re going to assume that isn’t the case. To work around a player using a riot shield, your best course of action is to flank them. If you can get behind them, they’ll have to turn around to use the shield. It’s best if you have teammates who can circle around while you keep their attention forward, but depending on the layout of the area, you may be able to sneak around behind them yourself. If that’s just not an option, you can shoot their feet, but that’s not quite as reliable as simply flanking the opponent.
Anticipate Opposing Team Positions
There are a lot of walls in most of the Rainbow Six Siege maps. Luckily you can shoot through many of these walls. The best course of action is to make a small hole in a wall and watch for enemy activity. Once you know an enemy is on the other side of a wall, anticipate their movement and shoot through the wall to take them down. Keep in mind players may drop to the ground to avoid your fire, so aim low if you’re not hitting anything. Likewise, pay close attention to the walls around you so you know which walls enemies can shoot through and which walls you’re safe to hide behind.
Don’t forget to check out more tips to stay alive in Rainbow Six that we gathered from the Alpha, or see how Siege compares to Counter-Strike and what kind of eSports plans Ubisoft has for the future!
