Rainbow Six Siege’s Operation Steel Wave premieres tomorrow

Rainbow Six Siege‘s next operation is already on the horizon. Ubisoft revealed that Operation Steel Wave is coming to the servers tomorrow, June 16, and it’s packed with new additions.

Fans expected the operation to premiere this Tuesday following several “coming soon” teasers on Siege‘s official Twitter. Steel Wave also spent longer on the Test Server (TS) than its predecessors, with a week-long delay due to the coronavirus pandemic and Ubisoft’s series of bug fixes.

Operation Steel Wave will bring two new characters, Ace and Melusi, as well as a reworked version of House and a new secondary gadget called the Proximity Alarm. The update will also make significant balancing changes to some operators and the ACS12.

Ace, the attacker, is another hard breacher joining the ranks of Siege. His unique gadget, the S.E.L.M.A. charges, deploys a sequential explosion that can take down reinforced walls in three mini-blasts, gradually creating lines of sight to the other side of the wall. Defenders can shoot the Selma before it fully detonates, however, and will leave behind a half-destroyed wall.

Among the hard breachers, Ace likely feels more similar to Thermite than to Hibana. He’s a two-speed, two-armor operator who needs to throw his unique gadget and doesn’t have Hibana’s range with her X-KAIROS or movement speed.

Melusi is an interesting defender. Her Banshee gadget is a sonic defense system that will send out a loud noise when an enemy enters its range, which will slow attackers down and draw the attention of the defending team. Players can destroy the Banshee with a well-placed melee attack but need to slog through the slow effect to reach the device.

As a three-speed, one-armor operator, Melusi is versatile and can be played either as a roamer or an anchor. She can fortify objective sites and adjacent areas with the Banshee, creating a hostile territory for attackers, or she can place her gadgets in key spots of the map to alert her team of any infiltrators.

Her original gadget contained a deployable shield, which gave her even more potential for anchoring. Ubisoft exchanged the shield for a C4 shortly after Melusi entered the Test Server, one of several changes that should go live with the Y5S2.1 update, the first patch in the season.

Steel Wave is scheduled to go live between 7 to 9am CT, depending on the platform. Xbox One players get the first crack at the update, followed by PlayStation 4 users and, lastly, PC players.