Seven Circles

**Seven Circles** are a Chaos team coached by Zsinj since season 6, who was a complete newcomer to REBBL, as a fresh team who didn't get to participate in the final incarnation of "spin" matches in the pre-season.

The team was created with a Slaaneshi theme, completely without realising they ended up matching the jersey and logo of the Sage's infamous also-Slaaneshi-themed team Slaanesh\_Slaughterers despite the slaughterers being the REBBL champions in season 5.

The name Seven Circles was supposed to be a reference to Slaanesh's circles surrounding her palace of pleasure. Unfortunately, there are 6 of them, not 7. Oops.

## Awards

In the best of the best **Season 7 Team Awards** of the G-manual, Seven Circles were awarded the following:

* **The We Will, We Will Crack You Award** (**Winner**) for causing the most armour breaks in Gman season 7, scary!
* **The Billy Bird Team Award** (**Winner**) for also inflicting the most knock-outs
* **The Genghis Khan's Favourite Award** (**Winner**) for inflicting the most casualties
* **The Most Fantastic Team Award** (Runner up) due to scoring the 3rd-most fantasy points across the season
* **The Most Awarded Team Award** (Runner up) thanks to bagging so many of the other awards handed out

In the same end of season G-manual, Unf won **The Huge Jackedman Award** thanks to being the Big Guy who scored the most fantasy points across the season.

*The fact that Zsinj ended up becoming the editor of the G-manual during Season 7 has nothing to do with it!*

Following this, Unf was listed as the #1 Biggest Big Guy by Rodder in issue 19 of the G-manual. Although he had been playing for Fyarstars in season 8, it was his great development and coaching by Zsinj in seasons 6 and 7 that were ultimately responsible for his standing.

On 17th February 2019, Seven Circles finished **1st in GMAN Division 1**, claiming a seeded playoff spot (skipping the round of 64 and starting in the round of 32) and generally earning bragging rights for a season in an extremely competitive division.

## History

### Founding

In the pre-season weekly recap, Seven Circles were called out on their particularly ballsy build of including a Minotaur and 3 Chaos Warriors with just 2 rerolls and no apothecary. This gamble paid off, as they had a particularly strong first season of development despite facing teams that had managed to get the 4 pre-season spin games played for some initial development.

### Season 6 - Division 4

A ballsy initial build was followed by ballsy skill choices, with the first level ups (both on Chaos Warriors) being the Mighty Blow skill in favour of Block, as part of a risky strategy to kick-start development at the cost of reliability and potential injury.

In season 6, Zsinj had a lot more free time than he does currently, and took to recording most of his REBBL matches (in replay). They were:

Week 1 was not recorded, it was a draw vs Killeritch's wood elves, which had been tipped as a likely victory for the woodies.

Week 2 was a bye week against the only Dwarf team in the division (praise Nuffle)

Week 3 vs Rockomotive Gitstompers (Hummersepp)

Week 4 vs Pempelforter Drinkare (Andorson)

Week 5 vs StaRatS V (Gortsos)

Week 6 vs No doubt in failure (Morbus)

Week 7 vs Dangerous Lizards (Naoufel)

Week 8 vs The Society of Dead Poets (Palmu)

Week 9 vs Urwendors Chance (Urwendor)

The following weeks weren't recorded due to real life getting in the way, which was a shame because week 10 was a cracker of a match against Bobbybintang, including a turn 0 rock which killed Unf (who Seven Circles were relying on to make up for a lack of tackle against a blodge army). Fortunately Unf was saved by the team's surprisingly effective apothecary, although the rest of the match was a nail-biter.

Seven Circles had a most unexpectedly strong showing in season 6, winning 8 of 13 matches and finishing in 2nd place, behind only the undefeated Darkstar Second Liners.

### 1st Open Invitational

Oh how naive we were, going into an off-season swiss tournament for some relaxed SPP gain and friendly matches. The open invitational quickly earned its nickname of the devastational, including the loss of Seven Circles' star ball handler Avarita, an agility 4 Block beastman who was despatched by Gengar's team.They also lost a rookie goat, but nobody cares about that.

### Season 7 - Division 2

The great performance of Seven Circles saw them leapfrog a division and jump straight to division 2, in touching distance of the top flight. Obviously, the standard of coaching was much higher than what had been a group of mostly unknown div 4 coaches, a lot of which didn't return to REBBL.

Now in the much more prestigious top half of the Gman conference, some of Seven Circle's matches were streamed by the sports reporters, and both of these edited "highlights" are some brilliant matches.

Week 1 vs Philbo's Phighting Phist (Philbo) *"This match had everything, including a player holding the ball piling on"*

Week 2 vs High Sails (Venachar) Another one well worth watching

There were also some shorter highlights taken from season 7:

Week 11 vs Nordic Nooblets (Bainsy)

And another highlight from the same match

In summary, although they came close to securing a playoff spot (despite not so great a WDL record), Seven Circles tailed off a little towards the end of the season and ended up placing 8th in an extremely tight division (for the mid-table teams) if you ignore the runaway success of Darkstar Second Liners and Ravens Claws.

### 2nd Open Invitational

Older and wiser, Seven Circles went into the 2nd devastational on the theory that as season 7 had seen a huge influx of fresh teams (thanks to the release of BB2 Legendary Edition), they were likely to get a somewhat favourable set of matchups. This was immediately blown out of the water as match 1 was against Findeco's much more dangerous Catastropy, a Chaos team who wasn't shy of the Piling On skill (at least at the time) and using it at every given opportunity. In a match that was always going to be decided by injury dice, Seven Circles found themselves pitch cleared early in the 2nd half. Absolutely incredibly, no permanent injuries were sustained, so Seven Circles took the better part of valour and promptly quit the 2nd Open Invitational rather than push their luck any further.

### Season 8 - On a break

Faced with the prospect of promotion to division 1 despite an 8th place finish (as most of the teams in Gman 1 were too battered and bruised to keep playing), Zsinj cast an eye over his roster and decided that in a division truly full of Claw, a 250k AV9 Minotaur was more of a liability than an asset, particularly as relying on Unf as the star blitzer had hobbled the development of pretty much the entire set of beastmen on the team. Season 7 had been spent with a prospective killer (who had only learned Mighty Blow) desperately attempting to cause injuries for more SPP, but the entire season went by without a single further casualty being inflicted (he was still on 6spp by the end of the season, despite all best efforts).

It was with much outcry from the team's fans that a transfer was arranged to Fyarstars coached by Drace, trading Unf for a Block beastman and Wrestle beastman, in the hopes of kickstarting the New Beastman Development Program (TM). Zsinj also took the opportunity and huge influx of funds to **finally** increase the team's number of rerolls from 2 to 3.

Fate had other plans, and despite the transfer going through and Seven Circles looking ahead to taking on Gman's best and most deadly, real life got in the way and Zsinj had to take a leave of absence from REBBL. As it was, the spirit of Seven Circles played on in Unf as part of Fyarstars, who managed to gain level 6 and sprouted Tentacles during the season, but also saw a permanent scar gained on his knee and his agility was permanently impacted.

### 3rd Open Invitational

The coming of Season 9 has seen Zsinj return to REBBL, including an entry to the 3rd Devastational competition. Although the team isn't chasing SPP gain like they were in the past, they're hoping to bring in some funding for further player transfers before the season starts. Fans are hopeful this might mean the return of Unf to his favourite purple jersey.

### Season 9 - Division 2

A return to GMAN after the break and it started with a much-hyped rematch with Philbo's Phighting Phist! Unfortunately there wasn't as much silliness as the season 7 match (though there was still enough, such as Philbo deciding to go for an uphill frenzy block into a 3 red dice block! All pushes) and the orcs took the win this time. Seven Circles are waiting for another rematch as the decider.

Week 2 was another rematch from season 7 - Venachar's High Sails! The High Sails had an absolutely abysmal season and this was no different, with an amazing 3-0 win for the Chaos team with effectively a pitch clear. The team went on to narrowly win their next 3 matches, against DebtMonkey's Unaccompanied Minos (who subsequently declared GMAN "too rough" and went back to REL), karlosibz's Warpstone Sneaky Servants who could not catch a break, and Aldar's Pink Power Puftah who just folded before the onslaught, although the first 5 of the 6 casualties inflicted all regenerated!

On a high of shooting up the rankings, week 6 brought a low point for the team against Hummersepp's amazon team Rockomotive Gitstompers. Until this season, Seven Circles had never developed any players with Tackle, although Seaon 9 turned that around where by the end of the season, 4 tacklers were on the team, although for this match there were "only" 2. No matter what happened though, it wasn't good enough - lots of pushes, lots of knock downs (the Chaos went many turns knocking over amazons without even a single armour break!) and the dirty player, Avarita III, was sent off on his first foul which didn't even break armour either (an unfortunate trend which Avarita III would maintain for the rest of the season!). In return the Amazons knocked players over all over the pitch, the apothecary was used early, and by the end star player Earth (the highest level warrior at level 6) was dead(!) and fan favourite beastman Acedia (diving tackle, block, tackle) took a movement bust which went on to be a serious detriment for the rest of his career as a safety. Literally adding insult to injury, the amazons of course went on to win the match and leave the rest of the season as something of an uphill struggle.

The team and coach weren't put off though, and in fact were clearly blessed by Nuffle to go on and win the next 4 games, made up of some of the big names of the division: FreddieGibbs' Da Big Mulligans, Majorbyte's Âlve, Ramaset's Voltrex Vanguard, and thus far undefeated vampires of Randomboy's Bloodsuckers inc.

Perhaps now coasting on overconfidence, the remaining three matches of the season were two losses and a draw, which were, amazingly, just enough to secure the 3rd place playoff spot from division 2 for the Superbowl playoffs! The team even managed not to take any important injuries since the amazon match, which was clearly another blessing of Nuffle, especially compared to practically all the Chaos teams in the REBBL in season 9.

### Season 9 Playoffs

For the first - and possibly last - time ever, Seven Circles found themselves among the best of the best in REBBL in the round of 64 of the playoffs. While the section of the bracket looked tough, the main ray of hope was the first opponent - Cakengrad's lizard team The Mesozoic Mighty Men. Having lost a block/guard saurus in the last week of the season, there weren't any standout stars among this assuming team and Seven Circles were widely tipped to do what claw teams tend to do to lizardmen, and open up the saurus with their can openers while hunting down the skinks too. Unfortunately it just wasn't to be, as throughout the entire match not a single one of the claw players caused an injury, just a few knock outs which quickly came back, and the entire team only managed to inflict a single casualty by Earth's rookie replacement (Earth II). Having gone in on hard on the winning by out-bashing classic chaos strategy, the resilient lizards (and now much-hated star player Slibli) were too much for the Chaos to handle and stopped a potential draw going to overtime to win the match. Slightly humiliated, Seven Circles crashed out of their first ever playoff game as so many teams do, perhaps even more upset at the fact that next season would be the meat grinder of division 1, featuring the best and most dangerous teams in GMAN, so future qualification to the playoffs was looking most unlikely indeed.

### 4th Open Invitational

The team decided to join the often-deadly OI partly due to the new "emergency apo" rule to keep the team slightly healthier than might otherwise be expected in a 2k+ TV matchup, but primarily for just a little extra cash to dip into the recently bolstered player market. With the introduction of the Immortal League to REBBL, and a favourable ruling from the trade commissioners, there was suddenly an influx of chaos players to the market. Perhaps more importantly, Zsinj and fellow Chaos coach Kanukki tracked down every coach who had retired a chaos team in season 8 or earlier and it was this that led to the introduction of Worm Crushspider to the team - a block/guard/tentacles/stand firm chaos warrior (what a pain he must have been to level up!) who soon also hit level 6 for even more tackle on the team, and who has been an absolute cornerstone of the team's formation since.

### Season 10 - Division 1

The much-feared introduction to division 1 was a gentle slope upwards with a collection of elf and skaven opponents, gearing up to all the other scary claw teams towards the end of the fixture list.

Week 1 vs Kummostern's RRMafia Mumblerats saw Worm Crushsppider immediately cementing his position in the team, between his and Unf's tentacles they narrowly missed a victory and instead settled for a 2-2 draw, not bad for a skaven team with a typical natural one-turner! The chaos warrior Wind suffered a -AV bust which cut his future career prospects short, but gman 1 is no place to fire a block guard MB warrior!

Week 2 was a much-hyped rematch with Randomboy's Bloodsuckers inc. In season 9, Seven Circles were the team who broke the vampires' 7 straight wins and one draw, which along with only one other defeat that season saw Randomboy claim the lucker noob award. The div 1 rematch went a very similar way with another victory for Seven Circles, although the vampires proved annoyingly immortal and still haven't suffered any serious casualties.

Week 3 was very nearly a defeat to TomasT's Absolute Disaster, with the chaos team narrowly bailed out by not one but two long bomb passes to equalise the score in a pinch.

Week 4 was the first definitive win over an agility team, clanmate Ramaset's The Voltrex Vanguard. The self-proclaimed least dangerous team in the division kept their title by not inflicting even a single casualty on the chaos.

Week 5 saw a surprise victory over Gaudi's skaven - the usually fantastic Ravens Claws. The tone was set when on the very first turn, Glart Smashrip Jr killed himself by rolling a skull on a block.

Weeks 6 and 7 were further back-to-back wins over orc teams Da Waagh Tigerz and Da Big Mulligans, who both had disastrous seasons finishing with only 6 and 8 points respectively. The match against Da Big Mulligans was an absolute whitewash, with Seven Circles racking up an incredible 5 touchdowns to nil, really boosting the spp of key players on the team (this was where Worm Crushspider managed to be fed 2 touchdowns to hit level 6).

Weeks 8 and 9 were very close-fought draws against Tyladrhas' Bloodthirsty Sea Guard and Gerbear's div 1 mainstay Maybe Orc Will Work.

At this point Seven Circles had gone 9 games undefeated, the only team with that claim in division 1 which was a real surprise, not least of all to Zsinj! This was brought to a crashing halt by Sage's Slaanesh Slaughterers, with an extremely snowbally match seeing Seven Circles effectively out of the game by turn 4, and amazingly the game ended early due to Zsinj having no players at all to set up on the line of scrimmage. Casualties from the match were much less than what could have been, with only the deaths of Wind the chaos warrior who suffered -AV at the start of the season, and the 6th iteration of fodder beastman Luxuria. The loss of a guard warrior (even with av8) was a blow as gman 1 is a very tough environment to level up a replacement, but even worse, the team couldn't even afford to replace him after acutely suffering from spiralling expenses for a long time.

Week 11 was similarly disastrous in a 1-0 loss to InfinitePink in a game where the chaos team felt like they only rolled pushes and claw MB did not work at all and worse, the game itself took forever to play out due to Pink's predilection to over-thinking his turns. Amazingly, only one casualty was inflicted by both sides in total! This match saw the only appearance of a mercenary player for Seven Circles (due to the damage by Sage) in the form of Krasly Muzzle. Annoyingly, the judges decided to award him the MVP due to his fantastic performance of doing nothing but getting removed from the pitch multiple times. Seven Circles could really have done with hiring him to speed up team replacements, but ended up saving the precious, precious gold coins for a replacement warrior.

Week 12 was the reckoning - BleedingHippy's Snow White & The 6 Chorfs, arguably the most feared team in REBBL for their propensity to win the game by literally killing all opposition. Unlike the more-rounded Seven Circles who still didn't have any clawpomb players, the 6 chorfs had plenty. In a reversal of fortunes from the previous match, this time the chaos dwarves found themselves with pillow hands, claw MB piling on not really doing anything, and the aggressive piling on of their opponents allowed Seven Circles to out-strength and out-manoeuvre the other team and claim victory. Just as planned?

With that somewhat surprise victory, Seven Circles moved back into first place in gman 1 and only had to win against Barmution's Death then Dishonor to claim the div 1 crown. It was a big ask when facing a very skilled coach, but Nuffle smiled on Seven Circles yet again and awarded them the dice they needed to steal the ball with a lucky play and run away to victory. Seven Circles were the winners of Gman 1!

### Season 10 Playoffs

Thanks to winning a top regional division, Seven Circles skipped the round of 64 and went straight in to the round of 32 against Gman 5's flyktsoda and his Army of Darkness.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/389784359?t=01h34m20s

It was fair to say the Army of Darkness (1.1) was somewhat intimidated by the killing power of the 600+TV overdogs, and made a series of questionable plays early in the match which let Seven Circles cruise to victory almost unopposed. New chaos warrior recruit Earth III even managed to (eventually) score a touchdown, taking him halfway to that all-important first level. If only every playoff match could be the same!

## Development style

Much like yet another successful Gman Chaos team (Khornago Kharnagers), and unusual for a Chaos team, there are no players with the Piling On skill. Instead, Seven Circles prefer keeping players on their feet as well as following the old adage *you can never have too much Guard*.