R6 Reinforcements and Rotations Guide (2026): Spend All 10

Reinforcements decide what kind of round the attackers get. Every reinforced wall is one less way in, one less line of sight onto the site, and one more job for the attackers' hard breacher. Every soft wall is a door you can open later, for a rotation, a flank or a new angle. This guide explains how Rainbow Six Siege X handles reinforcements today: the shared pool, which surfaces take them, the four hard breachers and the Hard Breach Charge, who denies them now that electricity is neutral, and then the other half of site setup: rotation holes and when to rotate between sites.

How the reinforcement pool works

The community Rainbow Six wiki describes the system like this. The defending team has one reinforcement pool of 10, visible only to defenders, and any of the 5 players can place any of them. Placing a wall reinforcement takes 4.5 seconds, and so does a hatch. Let go of the key and the reinforcement goes back into the pool; get shot during placement and it carries on, but die before it finishes and it fails. A Breach Charge detonated before the anchors are in fails it as well, and a reinforced wall that has been breached can't be reinforced again.

The arithmetic matters: 10 reinforcements at 4.5 seconds each is 45 seconds of placing, the whole preparation phase, if one player did them all. Split them. Our coaches give the walls to the anchors who will play the site and the hatches to the player who goes upstairs to roam anyway.

Read the wall before you reinforce it

Not every surface takes a reinforcement. The community wiki sorts Siege's surfaces into three kinds, and your Breach Charge's light tells you which one you are looking at:

Two details from the wiki help in practice. A reinforced wall isn't attached at its sides, so if the attackers destroy the top and bottom, the middle falls out too. And high-calibre guns can shoot an unreinforced hatch open, which is one more reason to reinforce the hatches over a site early.

Where your ten go

There is no single correct plan, because every site is different, but our coaches use the same order of priorities on every map. Work down the list until the pool is empty:

1. Walls the attackers will hard-breach. The outside walls of the site, especially the ones a Thermite or Hibana can reach from cover. If you leave one soft, it becomes the easiest way in.
2. Hatches above the site. An open hatch is a vertical entry and a sightline onto the defuser. Reinforce from the top before the attackers own that floor.
3. Walls that give attackers a sightline onto the plant. A soft wall next to the site lets them open a hole and shoot the defuser from the next room.
4. Walls you need to stay closed for a later rotation. Only now, and only if you have reinforcements left.

What you don't reinforce is as much a decision as what you do. The wall between your two site rooms and the wall from the site into a corridor you use to move are your rotation holes: keep them soft and open them during prep. The example in the plan at the top does exactly that: ten surfaces reinforced, the upper divider and Site A's hallway wall left soft. Our defense setup guide applies these priorities to full site setups.

The four hard breachers and the Hard Breach Charge

Only a few tools open a reinforced wall. The community wiki names Thermite, Maverick, Hibana and Ace, plus the Hard Breach Charge that several attackers carry as a general gadget. Here is what each does, from Ubisoft's operator pages:

ThermiteExothermic Charge

A charge with a wider destruction radius than a breach charge.

Opens hatches, floors and corners too; denied by Bandit, Mute and Mira.

HibanaX-KAIROS

A 40 mm launcher firing pellets you detonate together from range.

Works from range; a Mute jammer stops her pellets.

AceS.E.L.M.A. Aqua Breacher

Thrown; on walls it rolls down and can deploy twice, cutting clean holes.

Floors, ceilings and hatches: one deployment. Second charge 1.1 s since Y11S3.3.

MaverickBreaching Torch

A blowtorch that cuts small holes and sightlines in nearly any surface.

Almost silent, close range only, short on fuel; electricity can't stop it.

HBC

Hard Breach ChargeGeneral gadget

2 s to place, a 4 s fuse, no remote detonation; a small hole.

Carried by Fuze, Amaru and Nøkk among others; place it low to vault through.

According to Ubisoft's operator pages, the Hard Breach Charge is in the loadouts of Fuze, Amaru and Nøkk, among others. The community wiki gives it a 2-second placement and a 4-second fuse with no remote detonation, and it leaves a small hole: place it low and you can crouch or vault through. That makes it a backup hard breach, not a replacement for Thermite or Hibana on a big wall. Our hard breachers guide goes deeper on each operator.

Denying the breach

A reinforcement only works if it stays up, so the second half of reinforcing is protecting the wall from the hard breach. These are the defenders built for that, from Ubisoft's operator pages:

BanditCED-1 Shock Wire

Electrifies walls, shields and wire; a breach device that touches it is destroyed.

KaidRtila Electroclaw

Two claws, each electrifying metal within 0.75 m — walls, hatches, wire, shields.

MuteSignal Disruptor

Stops breach charges and launched explosives from Ash, Hibana and Zofia.

WamaiMag-NET

Pulls a thrown or launched projectile to itself and detonates it there.

Electricity changed with Siege X. Ubisoft made it a neutral element in Y10S2 (June 2025): it "will destroy any device that touches it" no matter which team owns the device, and it no longer injures operators but slows them. For reinforcements that changes little, because a Thermite charge or a Hard Breach Charge on an electrified wall is still destroyed. It does mean defenders can't put their own gadgets on an electrified surface. Ubisoft's Bandit page lists a trick worth learning: place the battery right after the attackers place their hard breach, which counters Thermite and Hibana and is hard to answer unless the attackers force you off the wall, for example with grenades. Kaid does the same with two throwable Electroclaws that electrify metal within 0.75 m, and they also work on reinforced hatches.

Two more answers don't need an operator pick. The community wiki notes that some walls can't be fully reinforced and leave a gap at the top: throw an Impact Grenade through that gap so it bursts on the other side and destroys the hard-breach gadget from relative safety. And Ubisoft's Thermite page names Mira's Black Mirrors as another wall that denies his charge.

Breaching on attack: clear first, then burn

From the attacking side, the reinforced wall is rarely the problem; what's behind it is. Ubisoft's Thermite tips say it plainly: watch and listen for Bandit batteries, Mute jammers and Mira's mirrors, and ask a teammate to remove them before you commit the charge. In Operation Split Fire the anti-gadget options are Thatcher's E.G.S. Disruptor (remastered in Y10S4, it finds electronics through walls and shuts them off with an EMP), Twitch's Shock Drone, Brava's Kludge Drone and Sledge's Impact EMP Grenades. The order our coaches teach:

1. 01Drone the wall

   Find the battery, claw or jammer behind it. Ping it so everyone sees it.

2. 02Remove the denial

   Disruptor, Shock Drone, Kludge Drone or an EMP — whatever your team brought.

3. 03Cover the breacher

   Smoke the approach and hold the angle a defender would swing to stop the charge.

4. 04Breach and use the hole

   A breach nobody walks through wastes the hard breacher. Have the entry player ready.

And remember what Ubisoft's Thermite page adds: his charge has a wider destruction radius than a breach charge, so it can open hatches, floors and corners as well. Don't spend it on a wall nobody will use.

Rotation holes

A rotation hole is a soft wall the defenders open on purpose, so they can move between rooms or sites without walking through a door the attackers are watching. Make them in prep, when nobody is shooting at you. The community wiki's notes on the Impact Grenade explain how to make a good one:

Impact GrenadeExplodes on impact

Thrown up to 20 m; on a soft wall it opens a walk-through hole if it bursts at the right height. Too high or too low and you crouch or vault.

MeleeSlow but free

Bullets and melee make holes in breachable walls; a few hits make a crouch hole without spending a gadget.

CastleArmor Panels

Ubisoft: any explosive destroys one, it takes 12 melee hits, and a panel a teammate pulls down goes back to Castle.

Where you put the hole matters more than how you open it. A good rotation hole connects two rooms you defend, is out of the attackers' sightlines from outside, and doesn't open a new angle onto your own plant spot. If a hole lets you see the site from the next room, it also lets an attacker in that room see the site. Ubisoft's Castle tips add a useful late-round trick: hit a panel eleven times in prep, then wait, and the twelfth hit opens it when you choose.

When to rotate during a round

Rotating is how a defence that guessed wrong recovers. It is also how defences fall apart, when two players leave a site at once. Our coaches' rules for moving during the action phase:

1. 01Rotate on information

   A breach charge, a drone dying, a call from a camera. Not on a feeling.

2. 02One player moves

   The anchor stays. The closest roamer or the flex player rotates through the hole you made in prep.

3. 03Say it before you go

   "Rotating A to B through the hole." Your team needs to know the angle you just left is empty.

4. 04Don't rotate into the plant

   If the attackers are already planting, play for the defuser from your angle instead of running into their crossfire.

The anchor and roamer guide covers who should be the one moving, and the sound guide covers how to hear the breach you are reacting to.

What "Half Reinforcements" could change

In its Community Checkpoint recap on 2 November 2026, Ubisoft said the Y11S4 Testing Grounds will feature Half Reinforcements, which it says will allow "new possibilities for defensive setup, site construction, and overall team strategy". Ubisoft hasn't published how they work, how many there are or whether they will ever reach Ranked, so nothing in this guide depends on them. If they come to Testing Grounds in December, expect more options for shaping sightlines, the same way rotation holes and soft walls already do. We'll update this section when Ubisoft publishes the rules.

Common reinforcement and rotation mistakes

Site setup is where defence starts, but it's only half the job. Read the drone guide to see your setup through the attackers' eyes, the vertical play guide for the floor above your reinforced hatches, and operator roles explained for who brings which anti-entry tool.