Rainbow Six Siege X just hit its big birthday season, and Ubisoft celebrated by doing surgery on one of the most iconic operators in the game. Operation Tenfold Pursuit, the latest Rainbow Six Siege X season, is here with a full Thatcher rework, a new DMR, a Fortress rework, and a 10 year anniversary event that throws daily rewards at you while your Mute and Bandit mains quietly cry in the corner.
Let us talk about what actually changed, why everyone is screaming about the E.G.S. Disruptor, and whether this season is a genuine W or just more Siege X chaos. Fun fact: These fuckers still haven’t solved the login issues or the startup timing issues when you load into Siege. I wanna kms fr
Quick background on the new season
Operation Tenfold Pursuit is Year 10 Season 4 of Rainbow Six Siege X, kicking off the 10 year anniversary celebrations. The season release was for 2 December 2025, following its reveal around the BLAST R6 Major in Munich. (Did you gamble/predict the winners? I did and I fared well I think…11/24 guesses biatch)
The game itself is in the Siege X era now. That means upgraded visuals and audio, new systems like Dual Front mode, updated destruction, and a long term roadmap rather than a full blown sequel.
So yes, this Thatcher revamp is hitting basically every platform where Siege still lives.
Old Thatcher vs new Thatcher: from simple EMP boomer to scanner menace
If you have played Siege for more than five minutes, you know what Thatcher used to be. Classic EMP grenades, throw them at a wall, disable everything in range, watch your hard breacher stroll through. Easy to understand, easy to misuse, and permanently chained to a sky high ban rate in ranked for years.
In Rainbow Six Siege X: Operation Tenfold Pursuit, Ubisoft has completely remastered Thatcher. His signature EMP grenades are gone. In their place you get the E.G.S. Disruptor, a two handed wave launcher with a built in scanner.
Here is what the new gadget actually does, based on designer notes and early testing:
- Thatcher now fires EMP waves instead of throwing nades.
- The launcher has multiple charges, often described as a six shot setup on test builds.
- The scope scans for electronics through walls and floors and highlights them.
- Unknown gadgets show up as blue circles, while already scouted devices show their exact icon.
- When you fire, an EMP pulse radiates out and disables defender gadgets in a radius for a few seconds.
- According to community breakdowns, it is effectively uncounterable by defenders. Mute, Bandit, Kaid, Aruni, nobody can actually block the pulse once fired, as long as the device is in range.
Ubisoft’s own Y10S4 designer notes say the Thatcher remaster is built on two pillars: future proofing him so he can be tuned more easily, and raising his skill ceiling while keeping him accessible.
In simpler terms:
Old Thatcher was strong, boring and hard to balance.
New Thatcher is stronger, more complex and currently terrifying.
How this shifts Siege X gameplay and the attacking meta
From a pure gameplay perspective, the Thatcher rework changes how attacking rounds feel at a pretty fundamental level.
In the old days you would ping a wall, yell “Thatcher, EMP here”, wait for the boom, then breach. Defenders could at least play that mini game of tricking batteries, juggling Kaid claws, or using Mute and Bandit timing to keep some part of the wall alive.
With the E.G.S. Disruptor, attacking gets a mix of intel, denial and consistency:
- Thatcher can now pre scan sites and corridors to find gadgets before committing, which rewards smart positioning instead of blind tossing.
- The pulse hitting through surfaces means Bandit juggling becomes way harder to pull off, and hiding claws deep inside the floor is less useful.
- Because devices are revealed and then disabled, Thatcher now feeds info not only to hard breachers but to roam clear and execute setups as well.
No surprise then that analysts and content creators are already calling him S tier and a central piece of top level attacking lineups in Siege X.
The biggest loser in all of this right now is IQ. A widely shared Reddit thread flat out says the Thatcher rework has made IQ useless, since he now both detects and disables electronics, which used to be IQ’s niche. But who cares lol IQ was always fucking useless to me. I never use it (also because I suck heavily at the game so)
Is that a bit dramatic? Maybe. But you can feel the overlap. If your team already runs Iana, Lion and Thatcher, how badly do you really need an extra scanner who cannot even disable anything?
Tenfold Pursuit as a season: not just Thatcher
It would be easy to treat Operation Tenfold Pursuit as the Thatcher patch and ignore the rest, but the season is bigger than that.
According to Ubisoft, this Year 10 Season 4 update includes:
- The Thatcher remaster with the E.G.S. Disruptor gadget and the new PMR90A2 DMR, which gives him four primary weapon choices, a first for an operator.
- A Fortress rework for ranked, bringing it up to modern Siege X map standards and rolling it back into serious play.
- A 10 year anniversary event with daily free rewards and special cosmetics.
- Broader balancing updates for hard breachers and player protection improvements to address cheating and toxicity.
Combine this with the Siege X baseline changes from earlier in Year 10 such as Dual Front mode, advanced rappel options and destructible props, and Tenfold Pursuit feels like a capstone patch for a really wild anniversary year.
So, is this the right kind of chaos for Siege X
Here is where I land on Operation Tenfold Pursuit and the Thatcher remaster.
On paper, this is exactly the kind of move Rainbow Six Siege X needed for its ten year season. Taking a legacy operator who has defined attacking lineups for an entire decade and actually reworking him, instead of nudging numbers by five percent every year, is a bold call. And the new kit is genuinely interesting. It encourages teamwork, information sharing and better planning, which is what Siege is supposed to be about. It seldom is though… Just people yelling slurs at each other. But that’s what I love about the game. Saying the N-word is now my favorite hobby, as long as I don’t get banned or flagged by the new AI in-game flagging features xd
In practice, Thatcher is probably overtuned right now. When Reddit threads talk about entire roles becoming obsolete and analysts point out that the reworked gadget has no hard counters, that is not just whining, that is a design flag.
The good news is that this remaster finally gives Ubisoft the levers they kept saying they needed. They can change scan duration, pulse radius, number of charges, interaction with specific defender gadgets and more, without deleting Thatcher from pro play. The old EMP grenades were either strong or useless, with not much in between. And he honestly looks great too.
As a whole package, Siege X: Operation Tenfold Pursuit feels like a real anniversary season. Big operator rework, meaningful map update, flashy event, and a meta shift that actually makes you rethink your usual five stack lineups instead of autopiloting through another battle pass.
If you care about Rainbow Six Siege X, you should absolutely log in for this one, even if you are going to spend the first week malding about Thatcher while secretly instalocking him on attack.
Gamers Outlet Verdict:
Operation Tenfold Pursuit is loud, messy and very Siege. The Thatcher rework might be overtuned, but it is one of the most interesting remasters the game has seen, and it pushes Siege X toward a more readable, intel driven style of attack. Whether you play on PC, PlayStation or Xbox, this is the kind of season that gets people talking again, which is exactly what year ten should do. Also, just in case you didn’t know, there’s an Alpha pack being given out each day FOR FREE as a part of their 10 year anniversary. So just log in even if you’re not gonna play lmao and sell them skins on da marketplace 😉 Will definitely help you get a Battle Pass or two for free!
If you are thinking about jumping back into Rainbow Six Siege X or trying it for the first time, grab a cheap key over at Gamers-Outlet.net, install, and then tell me if Thatcher completely ruined your ranked games or secretly saved them.
