Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy Rainbow Six Siege is an online tactical first-person shooter that was released on the 26th of November 2015. The game has three modes that are a quick match that include Hostage, Secure the area, and bomb, while unranked and ranked only have an option to play bomb.
The game is heavily based on utility and map knowledge, with operator bans at the start of the match, as the utility some operators bring to the game either ruin a team’s strategy or the operators are simply overpowered.
In 2021, Rainbow Six Siege has sixty operators split into two groups, Attackers and Defenders but at the time of its release, Rainbow Six Siege had only 20 operators that came from real-life CTU’s and special units such as the United States of America’s FBI SWAT, France’s GIGN, Germany’s GSG9, Russia’s SPETSNAZ, and a default recruit for new players to grind in-game money called Renown.
One of the main elements that make Rainbow Six Siege so unique to the FPS genre is the destructible environment, which means floors, walls, and even doors are breachable for players to attack vertically and take control of the site. Today we will cover the lore of Sledge, the ultimate soft-breacher.
Seamus ‘Sledge’ Cowden Background:
Seamus Cowden was born in 1982 in the northern region of Scotland, later at the age of five moved to Inverness. His father worked in the military while his mother was a nurse, he had three siblings and grew fond of playing football. In school, Seamus stood tall becoming the captain of the 1998 Scotland National under-20 Rugby Union Team.
Following his family’s tradition of joining the military, at the age of eighteen Seamus was recruited into the 3rd Mechanised Division of the British Army. His first assignment was in the Armoured Division where he studied engineering and specialized in upgrading the infantry combat vehicles.
After lending his services to his country for five years, he was recruited into the SAS where he broke many records of speed and strength. Overall, Seamus Cowden is an efficient operator with expertise in mechanical, ballistic, explosive, and thermal breaching strategies.
Psychological Evaluation:
Every operator goes through a psychological Evaluation before joining team Rainbow, the evaluations are conducted by Harry Pandey, whose backstory we have covered in our previous operator lore series.
Harry describes Seamus as a strong person with leadership qualities and all the other operators like working with him. In the field report, he is described by his colleagues as confident and has extensive operational experience but shows as much unpredictability with his actions due to his short-temper.
During his evaluation, Seamus told Harry about his childhood that Harry thought was rowdy as Seamus described, at the age of twelve he built a hand-glider and wanted to test if it would work unfortunately, his experiment failed him and he broke both his ankles. Many more of these occurred during his life like when he destroyed his sleeping barrack during his military training as he was testing a new breaching charge he had built.
In conclusion, Harry wrote, he is easy-going and isn’t there to impress anyone a simple English-man who loves his daily pub visits. He has a deep taste in politics and likes to add his own input but knows that in Rainbow you can’t take part in the politics. His anger has not yet caused any mishaps in any mission that means Six believes in Sledge.
Loadout:
Until recently, Sledge carried an assault rifle, a shotgun, a pistol, and a SMG 11 but recently he got nerfed by removing his SMG 11. His ability is a huge sledgehammer that can breach through any soft walls, barricaded doors, and windows, while floors are an option as Sledge can be used to be played vertically which forces the opponents out of the site.
Primary:
Image via: rainbowsix.fandom.com
M590A1 – Shotgun: Carried by all SAS operators like Mute, Thacher, Sledge, and Smoke. It’s a short-range kill house that helps make rotates, line-of -sites and with the right combination of Shotgun-SMG, this gun can turn the tables around very quickly.
Image via rainbowsix.fandom.com
L85A2 – Assult Rifle: Carried only by SAS attacking operators like Sledge and Thacher. The gun has a slight verticle kick to its recoil but is quite easy to control, with it arange of scopes are available on Sledge with all 1x scopes, 1.5x, 2x and even the 2.5x (previously known as the A-cog)
Secondary:
Image via: rainbowsix.fandom.com
P226 – Handgun: Cariried by all SAS opperators like Mute, Thacher, Sledge, and Smoke. Pistols aren’t used in too much in Rainbow Six Siege but does make the operator run faster when equipped instead of the assult rifle. Sledge did own an SMG-11 before operation Crystal Guard but seemed over-powered due to it and developers in Ubisoft nerfed him by taking away his SMG.
Gadget:
Players can only choose to carry any one of these throwables which help in either breaching or burning an ADS (Jager’s Device that catches projectiles).
Frag Grenade: Sledge gets two frag grenades which he can either use to kill someone holding an angle on him or help remove utility making it easier for the team to breach.
Stun Grenade: Sledge gets 3 stun grenades that help him burn ADS, Aruni gates (laser gates that if you go through take 30 HP), and much more while also mentioning the stun buff which blinds anyone in the radius of the stun with no counter available.
Special Ability (Gadget):
Image via: rainbowsix.fandom.com
Tactical Breaching Hammer: Also known as the Caber, can be used to breach any soft doors, windows, walls, and even floors for vertical play. You can also use his hammer to breach a reinforced wall if your maverick has gotten rid of the reinforcement on the wall.
Sledge is one of the 20 original operators since the launch of the game, he is well-balanced and easy to use with over a hundred different strats for you to try and experiment with him. We will soon be covering his close friend/colleague Thacher who’s lore is quite interesting.
