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Rainbow Six Siege is one of my personal favorite up and coming esports. The game had a slow start as an esport, but it’s coming on strong after some tweaks by the developers, which has fostered renewed support from the fans. Now, Siege is consistently one of the most popular esports games in the world, pulling sizable crowds and viewership along with growing prize pools.
If you’d like to learn about one of the most exciting esports around, you’ve come to the right place.
The Game
Siege is one of the most complex esports out there. The sheer amount of factors that impact any given match, from bomb placement to operator choice to map, all create high variance. This complexity is reminiscent of DotA 2, if you’re familiar with that. Half the battle in Siege betting is knowing the map pool, the operators, each one’s place in the meta, things like that.
If you’re unfamiliar with how the game is played, at its most basic level it’s pretty simple. Two teams of five, one attacking and one defending, do battle over two bomb sites. In concept it’s similar to CS:GO, in that the objective is a backdrop for complex strategy and interplay between teammates.
The biggest differences between Siege and CS:GO are the destructible environments and the operators. The destructible environments are easy to describe in concept, but more difficult in execution. Every defender spawns with two “reinforces”, which they place on walls to make them more difficult to breach. Most attacker operators have some form of “soft breach”, which allows them to breach through normal walls, and some operators have what’s called “hard breach”, which allow them to use their special skill to breach through reinforces.
Now looks like a good idea to talk about the operators. Unlike CS:GO, where players can buy any weapon they like upon spawning (assuming they can afford it), Siege operators are locked into a primary and secondary weapon. What makes these operators such an interesting component in an already interesting game is their special ability. Each operator has a special skill that only they can use, which is often what determines their viability in the game. These abilities range from a sledgehammer to burst through walls, dispensing armor to teammates, setting up an emplacement with a turret, and the ability to see heartbeats through walls.
These operators form the bedrock of the Sige meta. It’s hard to get a real idea of what a tier list might look like, as all the operators fill very different roles, but the meta tends to distribute playing time pretty evenly between the top 2/3rds or so of the operators.
Tournaments
Siege has a very active tournament scene. There is an Invitational, two Pro League Finals, and a Major every year, all of which are premier level events. In addition to those big events, there are several smaller Dreamhack events, Minors, Nationals, and miscellaneous extra events for interested bettors.
Pro League
The R6 Siege Pro League runs twice per year, in two seasons of equivalent length. Pro League runs in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. The game doesn’t have a particularly large Eastern following, so the first three regions comprise the majority of tier one in Siege. Each region sends the two best teams to a LAN finals at the end of the season.
Pro League Finals
These events feature a single elimination bracket, all Bo3. The last Pro League Finals was won by Empire, a CIS team, who seem to be nigh unstoppable at this point. These events are the culmination of a long season for these teams, which make the events fertile ground for any Siege bettor who has been keeping a close eye on the regular season.
Invitational
The Six Invitational is one of the most exciting events in Siege esports. With the biggest prize pool by far, this event brings the hype in a way that the other tournaments can’t always manage. A bigger field of teams, a real group stage, Bo5 Grand Finals, they have it all.
This format can lend itself to more upsets, due to its disconnect with a regular season and more volatile group stages, which makes it the perfect place to sniff out upset wins and cash out.
Majors
The Siege Major is used to denote the halfway point of the current season of Pro League. It’s the ideal way to learn about how international teams will stack up against each other when they meet at the Pro League finals at the end of the year, and as such, they’re an excellent resource for Siege bettors to scoop some info.
How Will the Meta Change?
Siege, like a lot of games, involves a dynamic meta. That’s due to balance changes, and the evolving skill of the players, but more importantly, its due to Ubisoft adding operators that consistently shake up the game. Keeping an eye on new operators coming out, and which teams show a predilection and a talent with said operators is absolutely crucial.
This can make tracking operators hard and soft counters complicated. The game can begin to look like Pokemon, with each operator having a dozen other operators that are directly impacted by them being in the game. Being able to sort through this mental web while live betting will make you an exponentially more effective bettor. Remember though, all it takes is one well-placed headshot to render a hard counter useless.
Pick Ban
This game is unusual for the FPS genre in that there is a pick ban phase with the operators in the game. This means that up and coming upset teams, who like to play a particular operator, or combination of operators, can be forced off and onto something different, assuming their opponent is smart in the pick ban.
This means that a diverse operator pool is even more important than operator by operator excellence. Good teams will have several compositions that they like and know how to play.
An interesting wrinkle here is the repick, which doesn’t exist anywhere else in esports. After the pick ban phase is over, the teams have their compositions revealed to each other. One player from each side can flex their pick onto a different operator. This helps relax the whole “hard counter” thing, and stops games from being instant losses from the pick ban phase.
Siege will continue to get coverage on this site, as we give you the best bets, picks and parlays moving throughout the Siege competitive season. Make sure to check back often for all the betting information you need to make the best R6 Siege bets.
