6: Siege – The Board Game: Origins

As is well known by those here, the next Mythic Games project that will soon launch on Kickstarter is a big one! 6: Siege – The Board Game is an adaptation of a video game phenomenon, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, a blockbuster released in 2015 that has since won over some 70 million players, published by Ubisoft. As usual, we are going to offer you a game that is very different from anything we have done so far, one could even say, very different from anything else currently on the market. Let’s have a look at the genesis of the project, its evolution, and its preparation… while waiting for other articles that will deal more specifically with the gameplay.

Passion

As per usual with Mythic Games, passion is at the origin of this project. But this time, it started with the passion (or possibly the cult-like following) of a Spanish game designer, Carlos Gomez Quintana, for Rainbow Six: Siege. Carlos is a board game designer and very quickly, he started working on a board game adaptation of his favorite video game. Almost 2 years later, he arrived at a version that achieved the challenge of translating the feeling of the video game and the gameplay of each operator, as faithfully as possible into a board game. Carlos contacted Ubisoft, who was dreaming that a good Rainbow Six board game adaptation would come along. The chemistry between passionate game designer and passionate video game company worked very well, and Ubisoft was convinced by Carlos’ approach. The only thing left to do was to find the best way to publish the game. Carlos wanted to go through Kickstarter and knew some members of the Mythic Games team based in England and approached us that way. He himself had backed some of our games, and a lot of people at Ubisoft had, too! An appointment was made, in our offices in Newcastle, for a first test, and then a second test in our Paris office. Each time, the tests went very well, because we realized that we had a smart and extremely tactical game, very different from what we usually play.

Then came the negotiation phase with Ubisoft, which went remarkably well. It must be said that with Ubisoft, too, we were dealing with people who are not only passionate about their own video game, but also passionate about board games. Once the agreement was signed, it was time to move on to the second step of polishing and testing the original design! And we gave ourselves the time and the means, by gathering the whole office team of Mythic Games South! Several of our employees are actually located in the South of France, and we like to create groups of people who can easily meet. Thus, two game developers, Marc Lagroy and JB Gaillet, who had already worked very well together on SteamWatchers, were assigned to this project full time.

For 18 months, they worked hard to make the game as fluid as possible, to speed it up, to simplify it without taking away its strong features and originality, and to playtest every day the different maps and operators. They were able to benefit from a team entirely devoted to this game, namely Stéphanie Berri (project manager), Stéphane Gantiez (art director), Mathieu Rivero (editor, translator) located a little further north, in Lyon. Our in-house sculptor, Olivier Thill, is not located in the South (he lives in Luxembourg, close to the head office), but he also devoted himself entirely to this project right after the Kickstarter of HEL: The Last Saga. When the development was finished, the rest of the Mythic Games team, the graphic designers, and the communication and marketing team, especially as we begin gearing up for the Kickstarter.

As you can probably tell, the gestation of this project has been long, even longer than for our previous games. But we hope that this will be obvious when you read the rulebook, see the materials, and watch the playthrough videos shot with our great-looking prototypes.

Did you know?

Without Remorse, available on Amazon Prime since April 30, tells the story of John Kelly/John Clark, the founder of the Rainbow Six anti-terrorist organization! This movie, adapted from the eponymous novel by Tom Clancy, features the excellent Michael B. Jordan. It was originally supposed to release in theaters in 2020, but the pandemic pushed the producers to sell it to Amazon, who put it online quite recently. Even if the story has been adapted and notably modernized, you’ll find in this movie some very specific features of Tom Clancy’s novels: action, espionage, betrayal, and modern cold war. It’s also interesting to discover the background and reasons that pushed the hero to create the Rainbow 6. Fans of the video game will enjoy the little winks such as shots through walls, collapsing floor or ceiling, explosive gadgets, and spectacular action scenes.

We hope that this movie is only the first of a series whose second part, logically, should be called Rainbow Six!

What we liked about this project

This board game, whether you know the Rainbow Six: Siege video games or not, is ultimately a tactically addictive game that will hook you from your first game and that you will immediately want to play again. Despite the simplicity of its rules, it has great depth, a large learning curve and great replay value. It is unlike any other game on the market; you won’t find a competitive tactical game that offers you a cinematic assault with armed, gadget-equipped miniatures to move. It’s not a “big material” game like we have often proposed, it’s a much more contained game, whose core box will be proposed at a very accessible price. But in the end, it remains a very nice-looking game, which will turn many heads as it sits on your table: a nicely illustrated and very clear board, simple and efficient operator profiles that highlight the illustration, cardboard furniture to assemble for a full 3D immersion, and of course, beautiful ultra-detailed miniatures, very faithful to the video game’s characters.

As I said in the introduction, you will soon have other 6: Siege articles, which will focus this time more particularly on the gameplay. Be there, Operators!

6: Siege – The Board Game

Soon on Kickstarter! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1162110258/6-siege-the-board-game

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