Confirming a rumor that's been kicking around since late last year, Ubisoft announced today that Rainbow Six Siege Year 4 Season 1, Operation Burnt Horizon, will go to the land down under, where women glow and men plunder and a pair of old pals from the SASR will bring their practical Outback knowledge to bear on a standoff at a gas station about a half-mile up Anarchie Road. 

The new operators are members of the Special Air Service Regiment, a special forces unit of the Australian Army modeled after Britain's SAS. The attacker is strictly business while the defender has a taste for the spotlight, but despite their differences it sounds like they've got a lot of history behind them. 

"Two old mates from way back, they’ve signed up with Rainbow to bring a little Aussie know-how to the other side of the world," Ubisoft said. "This includes a new device that’ll keep roaming Defenders on their toes, and one that’ll leave Attackers at a bit of a loss." 

Burnt Horizon will also bring in a new map set in one of those service stations that exist on a long, flat stretch of road to nowhere, where a high-stakes chase has come to an ugly end, "resulting in a map that's packed with twists, turns, and Australiana." Hopefully we'll also get at least one opportunity for a "that's not a knife" joke. 

(I did notice one amusing Aussie Easter egg visible in the full-resolution image above: No spoilers, but it's nothing a year in the tropics wouldn't fix.)

Ubisoft didn't get into any further detail about the Aussie squad joining the team, but given how well what it announced matches up with the previous leaks, including the physical appearances of the operators, it's a good bet that the rest of that information is close to the mark too: The attacker, named Gridlock according to the leak, might lay "red web trackers" that damage mobile defenders and make noise when tripped, while Mozzie, the defender, employs a device that enables her to assume control of enemy drones. 

Ubisoft will unveil Rainbow Six Siege: Operation Burnt Horizon in full on February 17 during the Six Invitational in Montreal, which will be livestreamed on Twitch. 

Rainbow Six Siege’s new limited time “Road to Six Invitational” mode is winning the hearts of its players. In just a few days since the event kicked off, Siege’s subreddit has seen a nonstop barrage of positive feedback for the new pick/ban system usually reserved only for professional play, essentially operating as an informal test before the mode potentially rolls out sometime this year.

It might be hard to see how a few rule tweaks can change the game so drastically, but the star here is the pick/ban system, which was first introduced to the pros last year. At the beginning of the match, each team gets to ban one attacker and one defender. If you’re prepping a match on Coastline, nixing Blackbeard or Mira eliminates two operators who usually dominate. As a side effect, banning forces teams to adapt and try new team comps and not just roll with what’s popular or considered top of the meta. It’s a phase that allows teams to tamper with the existing power balance of any map.

Right now the most common bans seem to follow the same blueprint as the pros: target key information ops like Mira and Echo or breachers like Hibana and Thermite. I've also seen lots of Lion or Blitz removals—the former being an op permanently banned in Pro League for his overly-useful gadget and the latter a common companion of the “crouch/lean spam” exploit that Ubisoft is working to fix. But as players feel it out, I hope to see more diverse bans meant to compliment different styles of play.

The other big shakeup in the Road to S.I. mode is round rotation. Instead of rotating between attack and defense every round, the teams play three consecutive rounds before switching sides. If the game goes into overtime, rotation goes back to normal. This means by the time you play your first round on attack, you could already find yourself on match point. I have some mixed feelings about this one.

Playing consecutive rounds in the same role helps stay in the mindset of attack/defense better than constantly switching between the two. On defense, I can focus on minimizing unnecessary movement and holding angles. After the transition to attack, I can shift my focus to keeping a good attacking pace and listening for flanks. It’s a small thing, but I can already feel the benefits.

On the other hand, the new rotation has some disadvantages. If you lose all three of your attacks and go into defense one round away from defeat, you have less of a chance to prove your defense skills. Some map sites are widely considered better balanced for one role over another, so the random assignment of who plays what first can matter in a small way. The reason this rotation was first added to Pro League was more about viewership than the experience of players—Ubi rightly figured viewers can keep track of the players better when they aren’t constantly switching roles. Overall it’s worth having, but it might need some tweaks.

The S.I. playlist includes a few other parameters that mirror the Pro League model like a trimmed down map pool of seven, bomb mode only, and longer arming times for the defuser. These are a good fit for pro-level play, but I can take or leave them. I’m an advocate for almost every map being playable in Ranked despite some imbalance (not you, Favela and Plane), so dicing the map choice down even more just exacerbates existing map burnout.

Much of the community, myself included, are hopeful that Ubi is taking the positive feedback seriously and are planning to implement similar rules into the base Ranked mode. Comments from developers last year indicate that they’ve considered it before, but hopefully this event gives them the proof they need that these features make for a more interesting and competitive Siege. Since the playlist is only available during the four weekends leading up to the Six Invitational, I’m stuck playing vanilla Siege for now. It’s tough living in a post-pick/ban world, but I think I’ll survive.