Ubisoft is looking to break up the attack meta in Rainbow Six Siege in a big way. Currently, team composition feels hamstrung by the importance of hard breachers and electronic disabling operators such as Thermite, Hibana, and Thatcher. At certain target sites, attackers are at a huge disadvantage if they cannot break through critical reinforcement walls. To add more variety to the meta, Ubisoft plans to distribute these roles to more operators through new secondary gadgets.

The first one Ubisoft unveiled at Six Invitational 2020 is a small hard-breaking tool for attackers. According to lead game designer Jean-Baptiste Halle, it is clear that this secondary gadget can partially fulfill the role of a hard breacher. Halle wants a dedicated hard bleacher to be the best at its job, but a mini-bleaching tool would be hard to beat.

He explained that for the mini-bleach to be worth using, the hatch would need to be destroyed and a hole made large enough to navigate through. Based on this, the hole that the mini-breach would have to drill would likely be high enough for the vault to pass through, not high enough to run through while standing.

Game director Leroy Atanasov and lead game designer Jean-Baptiste Halle also told us of plans for a secondary attack gadget that would rival the roles of Thatcher and Twitch. According to Halle, this gadget is still in its early stages and he is not sure what form it will take.

Atanasov believes that by bringing more operators into the core intrusion meta, it will open up more "exotic picks" for viable attacks. He cited "Nøkk" as an example. While "Nøkk" is a fun operator to play, she usually doesn't fit into a rigid, breakthrough-heavy meta. If she had the option to bring an alternative hard breach or EMP tool, the meta would be more varied. Still, Halle recognizes that this could make certain attackers too useful. As for new secondary gadgets, he said, teams will have to choose carefully which loadout they belong to.

No one at Ubisoft told us when we would get these new secondary gadgets. The hard-breaking tools seem to be more in development than the Thatcher/Twitch equivalents, so we may see them sometime in 2020.