Well, you can add Team Fortress 2 to the growing list of entries into the Steamed Hams meme. A mapper called Whomobile has created a Steamed Hams map for TF2, in which players collect steamed hams and deliver them to Skinner's house, which intermittently catches fire. Players, upon dying, drop steamed hams. (That's what Skinner calls hamburgers. It's an Albany expression.)

If you're not familiar with the Steamed Hams meme, it stems from an episode of The Simpsons called "22 Short Films About Springfield," in which Principal Skinner invites Superintendent Chalmers over for dinner, accidentally burns his roast, and attempts to cover it up by passing off Krusty Burgers as his own cooking. The skit culminates with Skinner's house burning down with his mother trapped inside while he pretends the flames are the Aurora Borealis, in an attempt to avoid embarrassment in front of his boss. The episode has been the source of a number of video remixes posted to YouTube, including a surprisingly good "Steamed Hams but it's Metal Gear Solid."

The features list for the map, at least, is breathtakingly honest:

• Not Very Well Balanced!
• Gigantic Sightlines!
• Based off a meme that will die off in a month!

I didn't see anyone actually playing the map on any community servers, but I ran around it solo for a few minutes. There's an approximation of the Krusty Burger across the street from Skinner's house, and there's huge stack of newspapers in Skinner's garage area, presumably a nod to the episode where he got pinned underneath them and was presumed murdered.

Also, I sincerely doubt the meme will die off in a month, or ever. Memes are eternal. Plus, "Steamed Fortress 2" has a nice ring to it.

Rocket League's long-awaited tournament mode will finally arrive in either March or April, developer Psyonix has said. Players will be able to test out these bracketed, single elimination tournaments for the first time next month as part of a Steam public beta.

The spring road map for Rocket League also revealed that March will see the arrival of new licensed premium DLC (previous licensed DLC has included tie-ups with the Fast & Furious franchise) as well as a spring event that will last into April. 

Looking beyond April, the developer is still keen to introduce cross-platform parties before the end of the year so that you can play alongside your friends on consoles. It's also working on new arenas, a revamp of the progression system to "make XP relevant again", and—very vaguely—"new features" for the game.

You can read the full road map here, which includes plans for various quality-of-life improvements like item stacking (that will arrive in March or April, too). The next update, which will launch the next competitive season, is due on February 7.

Hollow Knight, the best platformer of 2017, is getting a third free expansion pack called Gods & Glory, which will add new characters, boss fights and an extra game mode. It'll arrive at some point in the next few months. Sadly, it sounds like this might be the last expansion for the game: developer Team Cherry says it's the "final chapter of the Knight’s journey".

The team is keeping the new game mode a secret for now, only saying that it's been "long requested and is a classic for the genre". To play the new mode you'll first have to finish the Gods & Glory story, which comes in the form of a quest from a new character, the Godseeker. "Track down this disturbing yet alluring being, break her chains and aid her in an ancient duty." 

That quest will involve multiple new boss fights, although again, Team Cherry is keeping its cards close to its chest on what those new bosses are. You'll be able to access the new quest at any point in a playthrough, so new players will get something out of it too. The expansion will also add new music and allow you to "glorify charms"—no specifics there either, but it will "uncover a whole new depth to your charm collection". 

"Of course, other surprises will be hiding about the place, but we can’t spoil all the fun," Team Cherry said.

Developers from the Final Fantasy XV team will join us to discuss the highly-anticipated Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition at the PC Gamer Weekender, which takes place on 17 and 18 February 2018 at the Olympia in London. Technical Director Takeshi Aramaki and Game Design Manager Kenichi Shida will take to the stage to talk about the creation of the PC edition of the game, including new features and the numerous improvements made to the game's visuals. Attendees will have the chance to see more of the game in action on PC ahead of its launch on 6 March. 

The developers will also be taking questions from PC Gamer's community, offering new insight into the development of the Windows Edition, which includes HDR and 8K support and all of the game's previously released DLC. Find out why now's the perfect time to discover this spiffy-looking RPG road trip on your PC. The Final Fantasy XV Development team will join us for both days of the PC Gamer Weekender—12.30 on the Saturday and 11.30 on the Sunday at the PC Gamer stage. Find out more about the event on the Weekender site, and save 20% on tickets with the code PC-GAMER20. 

The granddaddy of all space-empire sims, Twilight Imperium retails for over $100 and is delivered to your house in a cardboard coffin. It is huge, meticulous, stocked to the gills with itty bitty rules, and it takes a solid eight hours to finish a single game. Twilight Imperium sessions begin when you invite your friends over for breakfast, and end when you've ordered pizza for the second time. Nothing in the tabletop games industry is more unreasonable, and nothing is more fun. If you think board games are boring, you've never watched in horror as a former mate gleefully goes back on their word then conquers and colonizes your home planet. This happens in hour number six, and you react by swearing vengeance til the day you die.

Shattered Ascension was originally a set of house rules invented by a Twilight Imperium fan named PsiComa. He loved the game, but identified some nagging imbalances in the design, and started work on a remix. Soon enough, PsiComa's pet project emerged as a full-time hobby: he Photoshopped new cards, theorycrafted new mechanics, and dreamed up a brand new rulebook. His variant (originally called Ascendency) proved popular, and he found a small contingency of adherents who were similarly disillusioned with the base game. Together they continued to work out the kinks of PsiComa's design, and by 2011 they had a fully working module.

The problem with Shattered Ascension is that it was difficult to play. Sure, it used a ton of the components packed in with the Twilight Imperium box, but as a homebrew variant you also had to print out reams of PsiComa's updated components on cardstock. Tabletop Simulator was a godsend. The moddable board game physics sandbox meant that the Shattered Ascension playset could be available to anyone with a PC.

"How cool would it to be play the game seamlessly with friends, and perhaps more importantly with the online community that had discussed and theorycrafted the game for so many years?" PsiComa says over Discord. "How cool would it be to have a definitive, fully updated digital version anybody could play, without spending dozens of hours cutting and gluing new replacement Shattered Ascension components?"

PsiComa and the rest of the Shattered Ascension community had to import literally hundreds of assets into the Tabletop Simulator infrastructure. Some of that was fairly straightforward—he already had high-quality jpegs of the custom cards, which scanned into the game with ease—but the other stuff, like the plastic miniature ships, required a defter touch. That didn't matter, because PsiComa was dedicated. He learned the 3D modeling application Blender, and spent endless weekends prototyping his spaceships. The results were beautiful. He managed to render a suite of miniatures that were even crisper than what you find in the physical game. 

PsiComa ran into a similar issue with the planetary tiles that make up the Twilight Imperium board. Originally, he planned on importing them with a high-quality scanner, but he couldn't quite get it to work without annoying pixel interference patterns. So PsiComa resolved to build his own tiles from scratch. Decisions like that are what he thrives on: rather than recreating the art from the base game faithfully, he took inspiration from the flavor text associated with each of the planets and created in his own take on the existing fiction.

"I wanted to make each of the planets unique and distinct, with enough details to capture the concept described on each planet card," says PsiComa. "The redux tile project felt like a task with no end to it—working night after night making a few more tiles, and looking back at it now, I can hardly believe I managed to find the time and energy to pull it off."

This also helps with any potential questions of copyright infringement. Shattered Ascension has its own unique look to go with its updated rules, which PsiComa believes distinguishes his product as its own unique entity. 

Shattered Ascension will always be PsiComa's baby, but there have been plenty of quality-of-life improvements thanks to the community at large. One of the programmers, who calls himself Cyrusa, tells me that the project comes equipped with 1,100 lines of custom code, including DNA for automatic dice rollers, pre-set map generators, and a specialized script that cuts through Twilight Imperium's set-up phase with ease. 

"The hardest part about developing the scripts, besides the technical aspects, is that due to the way it is designed, Tabletop Simulator itself knows essentially nothing about what happens from the point of view of the game," he explains. "For example, it knows that object number 123456 was moved to position one, two, or three, while what really happened is that the Sol player activated his Home System. This makes it challenging to design scripts to assist the players."

One of the key perks to playing Shattered Ascension on a PC is the fact that you don't have to dedicate an entire day to playing a single game. Tabletop Simulator allows players to effectively freeze their board states in carbonite, which means you and a group of friends could play for two hours a night over the course of a month without being forced to leave the game unpacked on some kitchen table. 

Honestly, even the most dedicated Twilight Imperium fans usually only get in one or two plays a year, because it's difficult to conquer a galaxy while remaining gainfully employed. That's different now. The Shattered Ascension Discord is home to multiple sessions every week, with newcomers stopping by all the time. In 2018, you can play the world's heaviest board game casually, and that's a genuine revolution for this hobby.

You can learn more about Twilight Imperium by watching SU&SD's great documentary on it.

"This mod has definitely given legs to the community by attracting newcomers to the scene and allowing members to play the game with old and new contenders with no hassle to it." says PsiComa. "It made the game easy and accessible. Because of this it has indeed made the Twilight Imperium scene flourish, and we hope for it to become even bigger in time."  

Last year, Fantasy Flight released the fourth edition of Twilight Imperium, which introduced some smart refinements to their 20-year-old design. PsiComa tells me that right now, the community doesn't have any plans to adapt the company's new concepts to Tabletop Simulator, though he won't rule it out. "Any worthwhile aspect of fourth edition will be considered and potentially incorporated into Shattered Ascension in some way, shape or form," he says.

After all, the work is never finished. Shattered Ascension was amorphous and modular back in 2007 when it was a series of verbose PDFs on a lonely homespun website, and as a mod it's evolving faster than ever thanks to the steady pulse of the Discord channel. The obsession necessary to get knee-deep in a homemade rule-set for a classic board game is being rewarded by technology, and the creation of a cult of print 'n play fanatics has found a second life.

The titular protagonist of 2D Metroidvania platformer Dandara is glued to the floor. Admittedly, I don't know if it's actually glue, but I'll be damned if it doesn't look like it. That might sound like a pretty big problem for the protagonist of a platformer, but two-man Brazil-based developer Long Hat House has worked out a clever solution: bouncing.

In lieu of traditional jumps, Dandara bounces between specific surfaces using a billiards-like shot system. "Defy gravity as you jump across floors, walls and ceilings alike," its Steam page reads. Judging from an impressive thread of GIFs publisher Raw Fury shared on Twitter, Dandara can also string bounces together to get around the game's world—the "directionless" world of Salt, that is—more quickly. 

Dandara will release on Tuesday, February 6, 2018. In the meantime, have a gander at a few of the best GIFs from that Twitter thread:

The crooked cop sim This Is the Police was, to my mind, a really interesting idea that didn't quite come together in execution: "Looks and sounds gorgeous," we said in our review, "but becomes dull and repetitive after the first couple of hours." Later this year developer Weappy will take another run at it with This Is the Police 2, a tale about another chief in another town, with some big problems of her own. 

Lilly Reed is the new sheriff of Sharpwood, a small, remote northern town plagued by smugglers, gangs, and worse. Corruption is rampant, and the officers under her command are a dodgy bunch at best. And now there's a new stranger in town named Warren Nash, who may or may not end up making things even worse. 

It's interesting that, while the game is ostensibly about Reed, the announcement trailer is focused entirely on Nash. It's also obvious that Warren Nash is in fact Jack Boyd, the lead character from the original game: He doesn't speak much but he sure sounds a lot like Duke Nukem when he does (that'd be voice actor Jon St. John, who portrayed Boyd in This Is the Police), and in case that doesn't sell it for you, he also pretty clearly says "Boyd" before throwing out the fake name. 

It sounds like the setup for a fairly conventional Hollywood action-redemption tale—broken tough guy retreats to a cabin in the woods to live out his days in solitude but gets caught up in a local power struggle and discovers that the real heroes are the friends he makes along the way—but the studio says it will offer the same sort of morally ambiguous "adventure and management" gameplay as This Is the Police, with new mechanics that will put a greater emphasis on strategy. 

"It won’t be enough just managing the equipment of your policemen and keeping in mind their individual skills. Every challenge requires the player’s direct participation, and the outcomes will depend on every decision you make," the announcement says. "Now your subordinates aren’t just some resource; they are living people with their own strengths, weaknesses, fears and prejudices, and you'll have to reckon with all these things in order to survive." 

The debut trailer seems to be aiming for some Tarantino-style tension—"What does Marcellus Wallace look like?" and all that—but I think it falls well short of the mark. It's too long, too slow, too static, and doesn't say anything about the game except that the members of the local constabulary are Bad Guys. It's not a disastrous introduction by any stretch, but I hope the final game shows more restraint and refinement.   

This Is the Police 2 is listed on Steam and expected to be out later this year. The original This Is the Police is on sale until February 6 for $5/£5/€5. 

Ubisoft has shared a sneak peek into the upcoming Rainbow Six Siege Year 3 Season 1 expansion Operation Chimera, which will add a pair of new operators to the game and the co-op Outbreak mode, set on a new map based in a small town in New Mexico that's struggling with some unusual problems. 

The nationalities of the new operators—one from Russia, the other from France—were revealed in November of last year, but today's tease gives the first details about what they bring to the party. The French operator, with an astounding service record and a long list of regrets (I have no idea how that impacts TTK), uses a drone to maintain the perimeter in quarantined areas, while the Russian specialist (who may not actually be Russian, the announcement says they moved to the country to pursue their studies) employs "self-dissolving nanobots" that can apparently be put to use in a number of different ways. Maybe these nanobots provide a temporary buff to him, or teammates?

They've been drafted into Rainbow Six as part of a newly formed CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear) Threat Unit. They'll be part of the standard multiplayer roster and also playable in the time-limited Outbreak mode, in which teams of three operators try to contain an epidemic in the Biblically-named town of "Truth or Consequences." Ubisoft hasn't come hard with the details but my impression is that this medical intervention will be less about years of theoretical research that slowly evolves into practical applications, and more about shooting everything that looks like it's about to express a sudden craving for brains. 

The Outbreak event will be open to all Rainbow Six Siege owners, and will feature exclusive headgear, uniforms, weapon skins, and charms available in Outbreak Packs. The packs will be available for 300 R6 Credits each ($2.50), and Ubisoft guarantees that no duplicates will drop. Some items will also be available via gameplay. 

A solid go date for Rainbow Six Siege: Operation Chimera has not been announced, but Ubisoft said that more information—the announcement promises "all the intel your heart desires," so it will presumably be the full and final lowdown on what's happening and when—will be revealed during the Six Invitational, which will run February 13-18 and be broadcast on Twitch.

It feels like it was only yesterday that the last expansion for The Elder Scrolls: Legends launched. In fact it was November 30th that Return to Clockwork City was released, but as it's fair to say that the set whiffed in terms of making a big impact on the meta, perhaps it's no surprise that Dire Wolf Digital is about to push out another.

Due on 1 February—that's next Thursday!—the new set is called the Forgotten Hero Collection, and it's one of those smaller affairs, much like the Madhouse Collection. That means you get 12 new cards to collect, three of which will be unique legendaries. Forgotten Heroes will cost $10 or 1,500 in-game gold, for which you get full playsets of all the cards, with no need to buy packs.

What I like about this sort of set, aside from the fixed price, is that it enables the developer to push particular archetypes, or inject a spike of power into classes that are lacking. Or in other words, despite the smaller size, based on the cards spoiled so far I already expect Forgotten Heroes to shake up the game more than the disappointing Return to Clockwork City.

The immediate eye-catcher is a new legendary called Morokei, the Deathless (see gallery above). This card asks you to build your deck with no duplicates, in exchange for which he triggers a healing effect that also restores a rune when he enters play. If that sounds familiar, congratulations, you're a Hearthstone player who hasn't blanked out Reno Jackson due to PTSD.

In seriousness though, it's hardly like Blizzard was the first card game developer to do singleton decks, (also known as 'Highlander', because "there can only be one"). It is a bit weird that Dire Wolf would also make the signature card with that effect be a healing one, but hey, genius steals and all that.

Morokei isn't the only new card to care about duplicates, either. Siege of Stros M'Kai (am I the only one that hears this as Mr Mackey's "M'kay"?) will summon a random creature, support and action from your deck, which unless you build very carefully should make for quite the 10-Magicka RNG fest. 

Talking about powerful cards, this morning IGN also revealed an 11-Magicka action which summons one of every creature in your deck that costs 2 or less. That's quite the board refill. Oh and check out this Endurance action that will Banish a card and all copies of it remaining in your opponent's deck. Nasty.

As someone who barely touched Return to Clockwork City, partly because I just couldn't get on board with the fantasy robot theme, Forgotten Heroes excites me a lot more. I'll certainly be jamming three copies of Bleakcoast Troll into my midrange Sorcerer deck. Before that I'll be amending my card back to something a little more magical. 

Bethesda also announced today that it has implemented one of the longest-running fan requests: the ability to change the appearance of your card back. This can now be done via a tab in the collection manager. Depending on which expansions you own, you should already have some new looks to try out. 

Additional card backs will be available from various forms of transaction, because hey it's 2018.    

Update: We've added Maverick and Clash, and juggled a few other operators based on balancing tweaks and how they sit in the current meta. 

There is no true 'best' Rainbow Six Siege operator. Which character is best depends on the map, the objective location, your playstyle, and your opponent.

We can, however, outline recommendations for which operators we think are best for most players, in most situations. Rook has simple, essentially guaranteed utility. Thermite is useful on Consulate, and a bunch of other maps that require hard breaching. Here, then, are the operators we value most in the meta right now.

New operators

Rainbow Six Siege's final season of 2018 will take us to Morocco for Operation Wind Bastion, where we'll be introduced to two new operators from that nation's special operations unit: one attacker, one defender. We'll meet them, along with a new map, on November 18. Expect an update to this guide around then.

ATTACKERS

The two most useful attackers

Hibana or ThermiteThere are three characters who can breach reinforced surfaces in Siege. Though Maverick can poke tactical holes with his blowtorch, Thermite and Hibana specialize in opening up fortified walls and hatches, their gadgets setting the table for a successful attack.

If you don't have one of these operators, you're probably going to make things easier on the defending team, who will have to hold fewer angles. Hibana in particular is a valuable counter to defenders like Mira, knocking out her one-way mirrors from safety.

Look, you can make a rock band without guitarists, but having at least one of these dudes is probably a good idea.

Very useful

FinkaGood guns and a fantastic gadget make Finka a useful operator on nearly any team. Her gadget gives a teamwide buff, steadying aim, increasing health and picking up any operators who have been downed. This can be used to great effect just before a push, tipping the scales of a firefight into your team's favor. A recent nerf decreased how long each Adrenal Surge lasts and slowed down the ADS speed increase, but well-timed uses can still make a big difference in a fight.

Her Spear .308 assault rifle is still underwhelming in terms of damage and fire rate, but her SASG shotgun and 6P41 LMG are interesting choices for more aggressive playstyles (rushing with a shotgun can be extremely effective in the right hands). Finka technically has the easiest gun handling in the game, considering you’ll almost never be in a fireright without her buffs applied. Because of this and her simplistic gadget, she’s very friendly to new players. Her recent addition of frag grenades doesn’t compliment her flow as much as their previous owner, IQ, but they’ll get the job done either way.  

MaverickMaverick’s kit is interesting because he disrupts aspects of Siege’s meta that have been set in stone since launch, and there isn't really a hard counter to his quiet blowtorch, which can dislodge defenders from entrenched positions even if it doesn't directly lead to kills. 

The risk for Mav comes with how close he has to be to a surface to perform his handiwork. Working the blow torch takes a lot of practice and finesse to cut maneuverable holes (and not get headshot by a vigilant defender), so he’s not going to be the perfect replacement for Hibana or Thermite. What he does best is assist in destroying mute jammers/batteries, opening sightlines for teammates to use, and utilize his light step and quiet torch to flank the enemy from an angle they’re not watching.

The rest of his loadout places him somewhere similar to Ash’s fragging potential, depending on your style. His M4 assault rifle is a powerful but jumpy weapon that’s easy to recommend for most, but his AR-15.50 is also a great DMR that hits like a truck. Consider a suppressor on either weapon to enhance his stealth capabilities.

ThatcherThatcher is the no-brainer sidekick to a Hibana or Thermite. If a defending team has deployed Mute's jammers or Bandit's batteries, they've countered your hard breacher. Thatcher is the counter to that counter: his EMP grenades can kill at least 10 different gadgets, including static surveillance cameras.

For months now, Ubisoft has been planning a rework of Thatcher that makes him less of a powerhouse over electronics. The first step of this process was recently implemented, meaning his EMP grenades will no longer destroy any sort of camera, just disable them for 10 seconds. Ubi has bigger plans for his playstyle, but for now he still remains dominant over Bandit and Mute’s denying efforts. He also has three different primaries to pick from (including a shotgun), and can can carry a claymore. A downside is that he can't carry a SMG as a secondary.

IQUndervalued; she's Pulse, but as an attacker. Lurk under the objective and pop traps and gadgets at will. Her main drawback is that she requires coordination and communication between teammates to get full value from her kit. A recent nerf to her kit took away frag grenades and lowered the range on her scanner. She now sits in a similar place as Capitão: an operator without the destructive tools that help them use their gadget better. IQ is still great for tracking down Valk cameras and spotting jammers, but her kit limits what she can do to get rid of them. 

YingHer candelas are uber flash grenades that spit out charges in multiple directions. Though they can be untrustworthy, combining them with smoke grenades, which Ying can carry, usually means you're able to create a visual wall in a doorway or window, allowing your teammates to gain a foothold on a bombsite. Ying's especially useful in 'perimeter' bombsites, where attackers can immediately enter the objective room from the exterior of the map. Just keep in mind that all characters have a natural defense against flash grenades in Siege: turning away. A recent buff to LMG damage has also made Ying a stronger pick for firefights. 

TwitchHer shock drone is usually less effective than Thatcher's EMP, but at the moment it's one of the only ways of safely dealing with Mute, Mira, Kapkan, and a host of other electronic traps. Experienced players will gun down her weaponized drones quickly, but Twitch still carries one of the better ARs in Siege in the F2 (aka FAMAS), with the option of a semi-auto marksman rifle instead. 

Viable, but not essential

BlackbeardThink of him as the only operator in Siege with a helmet. A helmet that can quickly break. With his disposable shield up, he's the slowest operator in the game, moving at 62.5% the baseline speed, making peeking more difficult. He pairs well with Montagne or Blitz, as they combine to create layers of protection for peeking.

LionHis gadget, the EE-ONE-D sonar drone, can reveal the location of any moving defenders for a few seconds—with full body outlines. Popping a scan at the right time can give roaming defenders a difficult choice-stay still and be unable to flank, or move and reveal their position to the attacking team. 

When it works, it’s incredible, and can lead to some early picks. But more often than not the scan doesn’t tend to hit anything, merely inconveniencing enemies for a few seconds rather than revealing them. Lion’s guns, while good, don’t quite make up his usually counterable gadget. Fantastic in certain situations, but far from a must-pick.

SledgeOn objectives with a soft ceiling, he's your guy. Knocking out the roof over defenders' heads will send them scattering for safe positions, and is a great way of priming an objective for an attack. There’s really nothing bad to say about good ‘ol Sledge. He’s just fantastically balanced. 

ZofiaWith Sledge, she's the only soft breacher who can make a big hole without warning. Then again, her utility (concussing and breaching) is something almost every attacker can carry in weaker forms. Her M762 assault rifle is great for mid-to-long range, and despite her slower speed, Zofia is a great way to bring the destruction of Ash while having more concussion that’s safer to use. 

MontagneA unique tank who can fully protect himself from one direction with an extendable shield, Montagne's presence can make defenders uncomfortable. But if his teammates don't support him, he can equally find himself in awkward situations, unable to lower his guard without getting killed. 

BlitzUnlike Montagne, he's got gaps in his armor: small segments of Blitz's hitboxes are exposed, even when he's crouching. In close, though, his ability to blind enemies without dropping his guard is paralyzing. But with a recent buff that increased his speed and allowed him keep his shield up while sprinting, he has become a defender’s worst nightmare if you find yourselves alone together. 

AshSmall hitboxes, highly mobile, and the ability to breach ceilings. For players that favor aggression, Ash is still a reasonable pick in the current meta. 

CapitãoIn January 2018, his Para-308 AR got a buff from 43 to 48 base damage, along with slightly reduced recoil, changes that made it a much better primary weapon. His gadget, however, remains situational. 

Capitão's flame crossbow bolt can kill or flush out defenders who are camping around a corner, but you'd often rather just shoot someone than fling a gadget arrow at them. Though, with Clash now in the picture on the defender side, Cap’s crossbow has emerged as an excellent counter when fired at her feet. 

BuckVersatility. Buck's combo shotgun/AR or shotgun/marksman rifle mean he can adapt for different situations more quickly than other characters. His shotgun is a great tool for ambushing anchors through soft walls. He's also one of the only attackers who carries frag grenades, an excellent piece of kit.

DokkaebiAfter months of players trying to figure out Dokkaebi’s position in the meta, it has become clear that she excels as a supportive attacker. Her two Logic Bombs are useful when timed with attack pushes or for rooting out roamers. Her camera hacking has seen a buff with all of the new types of cameras that have joined the fray, like Evil Eyes, bulletproof cameras, and both Yokai drones.

She’s also one of the few attackers with access to smoke grenades, making her great for planting the defuser or pursuing the hostage. With the new recoil system introduced with Operation Grim Sky, SMGs have taken a big hit to their viability. The recoil of Dokk’s SMG-12 is now a bucking bull. Fire it in bursts or let loose at extremely close range. Her MK14 rifle picks up the slack in long-range engagements with particularly controllable recoil and potential for high damage output.

JackalAnother supportive attacker, Jackal excels at making life harder for roamers, and easier for his allies. His ability to track footprints can not only help allies engaged in firefights across the map, but also make for the occasional wallbang kill. His secondary shotgun is almost like having a small version of Sledge’s hammer. It’s a handy tool for opening doors, windows, and quick murder holes in ceilings/floors.He’s also equipped with smoke grenades, making him excellent for targeted assaults onto positions where you’ve tracked an enemy. His C7 is one of the most controllable and accurate assault rifles in the game. 

Not recommended

FuzeOne of Siege's longest-enduring memes, Fuze is famously a bad idea in hostage situations. His indiscriminate grenade launchers spit bombs through any soft surface over a radius of a few meters, hurling in semi-random arcs that are usually easy to avoid. These explosive pucks can help take out enemy gadgets, but they also won't spare the lives of any valuable drones your teammates have snuck onto an objective. Useful and fun for newcomers looking for easy kills and destruction.

GlazSiege's sole true sniper, Glaz's high-penetration bullets are lethal on a few bombsites, like the garage on House, but his lack of utility and versatility is too frequently a liability. He's not who I'd want in a 1v3 with 60 seconds on the clock. Tunnel vision is also a problem, leaving him open to counter-peeking outside his field of view.

DEFENDERS

Safe bets

Mute or BanditOn many maps and in most objective rooms, you're gonna want to deny breaching of a couple critical surfaces. Mute and Bandit's gadgets provide an extra layer of defense to reinforced walls—either will block Hibana or Thermite's breaching charges. And both of these operators have the added benefit of being a nuisance to drones.

If your opponent is dumb enough to not bring a Thatcher, Mute or Bandit will make life a lot harder for them. Mute's utility has only gone up in Operation Chimera, with his jammers acting as a hard counter to Lion's scan.

Rook or DocFor inexperienced players, Rook and Doc are safe bets. Having a durable anchor on your team who plays on or near the objective is a good idea. Rook improves the survivability on everyone on the team with his bag of armor plates (known colloquially as t-shirts or sweaters), and Doc, if he stays alive, can erase damage. Both of these defenders can attach ACOG scopes, too, allowing them to guard chokepoints from a safer distance.

SmokeAn excellent anchor, Smoke can literally cover chokepoints with his asphyxiating gas grenades. The gadget allows him to 'eat' the clock better than any other operator: he can block entry to single-room objectives (hostage, secure area) with the poison cloud, daring enemies to run through it and risk death. His kit is also pretty strong: an SMG primary or secondary, and the option of barbed wire or impact nades. Though, with the recent nerf to SMG recoil, his SMG-11 is no longer the unofficial primary weapon it used to be. 

JägerThough his ACOG scope was taken away in a 2017 nerf, Jäger's mobility and 416-C Carbine make him an effective defender for players who like to play fast and peek aggressively. His gadget shuts down attackers like Thatcher, Ash, Fuse, and even Hibana in some situations, in addition to eating up the stun, frag, or smoke grenades that most operators can carry.

Very useful

ElaSpeedy and versatile, with thin hitboxes and one of the best traps in the game right now. Lurk around the corner from one of your concussion mines and peek after it triggers to catch dazed attackers. 

MiraSeen often in high-level play, her one-way mirrors are powerful deterrents, and practically obligatory on a few objective rooms. One common strategy is to pop a small hole just outside the edge of her gadget's window, then lean out to shoot through it after you've watched someone through the one-way mirror. I'm less keen on Mira's fast-firing SMG, which is a little too hot to handle. 

ValkyrieKnowledge is power, and Valkyrie's sticky, throwable cameras can potentially feed your team with information. Half the battle, though, is knowing where to put them—Siege has 19 maps, and each map has a handful of objective rooms, so you might have to memorize 40 or 50 camera positions to truly maximize her ability. Here's an easy one: remove a barricade and toss one of her cameras outside at the start of a round to give your team another external view. 

Viable, but not essential

Alibi Dubbed the “ultimate roamer” by Ubi before her release, Alibi’s kit excels at roaming around the map and wasting the enemy’s time. Her Prisma decoys are great for playing mind games with the attackers when used either outside or inside the objective. At worst, they’ll slow the attackers down. And at best, they’ll shoot the decoys and broadcast their position to your entire team. Her Storm SMG is amazing at close range, so capitalizing on those fooled by the Prisma is a deadly combo. 

After months in the meta, most players are accustomed to Alibi's tricks. Ubi may have to shake up her kit in 2019.

ClashOne of the most radically unique operators in Siege, Clash is the very first defending shield operator. Her electro shield is functionally similar to Montagne’s extending shield, except Clash’s shield is always extended and she can’t melee or shoot while it’s equipped. What she can do is electrify enemies to slow down and damage them for a few seconds. This ability is simply a nuisance when she’s working alone, but powerful when backed up by teammates capitalizing on disadvantaged enemies.

Clash can be a great help with backup, but becomes a mediocre anchor with a good machine pistol when alone. Because of this, the chips have to fall in place for her to be utilized completely, and that takes coordination that isn’t always easy to come by in Siege. If “professional Monty” is already your specialty, then Clash is a fun and refreshing take on that role. But make sure you trust your squad to back you up when needed.

LesionThe most dangerous thing in cargo shorts since Lara Croft, Lesion carries a great SMG and a gadget that hurts the enemy while providing some passive info—enemies yelp in pain when they step on the trap, can't can't sprint until they pull it out. The key is staying alive long enough to maximize the distribution of his Gu mines. Pair his gadget with Frost's bear trap to create a potential insta-kill.

CaveiraA genetically-engineered superlurker, Cav can sprint silently in bursts of about 10 seconds by activating Silent Step. Players who excel at using cameras (or simply their ears) to locate enemies can use this quiet movement to stage crushing ambushes. And if Cav can isolate an enemy, she can perform a melee takedown 'interrogation' to temporarily reveal the position of all remaining enemies—pulling this off usually guarantees a win.

KapkanLast year, Kapkan received a rework to his kit that completely altered his play style. He’s now a two-speed and has five traps that no longer have laser tripwires, making them much easier to walk into. He can also take impact grenades, opening him up to be an effective roamer with traps scattered across the map. Clever placement of his traps can make a big difference in firefights when the attackers have already lost most of their health to them. Kapkan also has access to the excellent VSN SMG and SASG shotguns, each one of the best in their classes.  

EchoAn insane annoyance, in the right hands. His drones are the only ones in the game that can stick to ceilings, where it perches invisibly as an elevated camera, ready to smack attackers with disorienting ultrasonic bursts (another form of concussion, basically). After a recent buff that gave him an extra Yokai drone, he feels much more viable as an anchor who can watch multiple points of entry and still protect his own body.  But still, he’s an operator who takes tight team coordination and timing to truly maximize, and talented players can shoot accurately while concussed, negating much of the impact of his unique ability.  

Pulse Pulse sniffs out enemy movement with his heartbeat monitor. The option of a nitro charge allows him to play below a bombsite, using his handheld wallhack in combination with the C4 to blow up attackers from safety. He's a strong lurker who can feed info to his teammates, but his gadget takes more finesse to operate than it seems.

Maestro Maestro performs great on many maps, but an adjustment to the recoil behavior of his LMG in October 2018 pushes him a bit down our list. His gadget, the Evil Eye, remains a multi-purpose bulletproof spotting tool and harassment turret—one of the best gadgets in the game in some objective rooms. Place these strategically in or around the objective to make effective call-outs, destroy attacking gadgets with the laser, and even take down enemies with annoying zaps of five health at a time.  

Not recommended 

VigilA tough one to grade. In the hands of a crack shot, his slug-firing shotgun is devastating, and one of the few guns in the game that can quickly break a Blackbeard. His K1A SMG is an excellent weapon at close-to-mid range, making him a generally good roamer. I go back and forth on the usefulness of his ability, which cloaks him from drones and cameras, but signals his general presence in the process. For me, knowing that Vigil's somewhere in a room is usually about the same thing as knowing exactly where he is, and he can't cloak forever.

FrostShe's fun, but nine out of ten experienced players will dispatch Frost's ankle-biting 'welcome mats' before stepping into them. Her SMG is also one of the slower-firing guns of its type in Siege, a game where any headshot is a one-hit kill. 

CastleCastle's walls can often be as much of an obstacle for defenders as they are for attackers, denying flank routes and preventing barricade wallbangs. They make the room you're trying to guard more rigid, but often that inflexibility can make your defense more predictable. With a well-organized defense, his barricades can come in handy on some maps, but he’s hard to recommend to players without a tight gameplan.

Avoid completely

TachankaNo amount of buffs can fix the Spetznaz soldier affectionately known as "Our Lord and Savior." If it's your first time playing Siege, Tachanka's shielded, static turret might seem powerful: it's a big gun fed by a big, 61-round frisbee that can cover a hallway or chokepoint. Unfortunately, it's countered by the most mundane gadget in the game: a drone. Revealing Tachanka's position almost instantly undoes his effectiveness, and the small rotation radius of the turret limits the positions he can place it. Otherwise, his mag-fed shotgun is a disaster. May he live on in memes. Amen.