Tachanka has been Rainbow Six Siege’s worst operator for as long as Siege has existed. His badness is so notorious that he has transcended hate and become Siege’s most beloved meme. The meme has been fun, but five years later, Ubisoft is committing to reworking Tachanka into a viable defender. Step one? Give the man a flame grenade launcher.
Worry not, his machine gun is still there, but it’s now his primary weapon detached from its tripod. He looks a bit like Maestro lugging around the huge gun. The LMG hits hard against enemies, but it’s also an overwhelming breaching tool. Making that power mobile sounds like a ton of fun.
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Tachanka’s new gadget is a grenade launcher that creates pockets of fire on the ground. Speaking to lead game designer Jean-Baptiste Halle at the Six Invitational 2020, Ubisoft sees him as an area denier that could be a solid alternative to Smoke or Goyo.
“Right now if you play him right, learn the angles, and know the best places to set on fire, you can deny a pretty big amount of space for a pretty long time,” he said. Halle also said the grenade launcher is meant to be “spammier” than other projectile gadgets in Siege, likely meaning that he’ll carry a lot of ammo.
That sounds overwhelming, but the fire created by each grenade is much smaller than Goyo or Capitão. To deny the same area Volcán shield, you might need to use two or three fire grenades. Like all great explosive launchers of video games, Tachanka’s grenades can also bounce. Halle said this mechanic makes his launcher “really fun to play with, but hard to master.” Despite all the changes, Tachanka will still be a 3-armor operator.
Tachanka is the first of what Ubisoft now considers a true operator rework. In Year 5 and beyond, reworks will make bigger changes to operators’ roles. Smaller changes to an op’s existing role, like the recent nerf to Jackal, Ubi now considers a “tweak”. Halle didn’t share specifics of when we’ll get our hands on the new Tachanka, but he will be coming to the test server sometime in 2020.
If you’re getting caught up on all the big Siege announcements from the Six Invitational 2020, read our hands-on with Operation Void Edge.
