Team Legion

Team Legion is a roboteering team captained by Gabriel Stroud, who have now entered four series of Robot Wars with their robot Sabretooth. The team had a notorious streak of bad luck, failing to win a televised fight for over fifteen years, but developed as one of the most familiar faces in the show before reaching the Heat Final in Series 9. The team are named after one of their featherweight competitors.

The Team
After debuting in Series 5 of Robot Wars with Sabretooth, Team Legion qualified for every subsequent series, including Series 7 which the team qualified for, but had to withdraw. Leading up to the team's first victory, the Robot Wars producers took an apparent liking to the team, and frequently involved them with promotional material. Leading up to Series 8, Team Legion were the centre of one of three teaser trailers, showing the team gazing at Sabretooth lovingly to the music of Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. Gabriel and Esme Stroud also appeared on The One Show to promote the series, and the team's collective photo is used as the primary image headlining the 2017 series on the Robot Wars website, alongside Team Razer.

Gabriel Stroud
Gabriel "Gabe" Stroud is the captain of Team Legion, and is the owner of electronic assessment software company Assesstech. He is the lead builder of the Sabretooth series of Robot Wars, and consistently builds a new version of the robot for each series of the show. Stroud is also the robot's driver on most occasions.

Gabriel was specifically chosen to be a mentor in Robot Wars: Battle of the Stars. He joined Yorkshire triathletes Jonny and Alastair Brownlee, and the three entered with Jar. Stroud repaired Jar when necessary, and even donated one of his spare scoops to use on the front of the robot, although despite collecting a win over Interstellar: MML, the team eventually finished fourth in Episode 1.

Each member of Team Legion operates a featherweight machine, and in Gabriel's case, it is the team's namesake - rear-hinged flipper Legion.

Gabriel Stroud also collaboratively runs a podcast focused on robotics, particularly Robot Wars and BattleBots, known as Inside the Bot. He records this alongside his employee and member of Team Danby, Will Sedgwick.

Robert Pickford
Robert Pickford is Gabriel's long-standing teammate, having competed in all of Team Legion's appearances. The director of a building company by trade, he is heavily involved with the build and repair process of each Sabretooth machine, and occasionally serves as the robot's driver, piloting Sabretooth in its Group Battle with TMHWK, Crank-E and Aftershock.

In the team's featherweight competitions, Pickford is the operator of Django, a box-wedge shaped robot with a 'drisc' - a thinner spinning drum like that of Tornado and Infernal Contraption.

Polly Parr-Stroud
Polly Parr-Stroud (Polly Parr in Series 5) accompanied the team in their first two appearances. At the time of Series 6, she was a nine-year old schoolgirl. Polly brought a stuffed tiger with her in Series 5, serving as the team's mascot.

Esme Stroud
Esme Stroud is known by the family as "the Robot Wars baby", as father Gabriel had to leave the studio while filming Series 5 to be with his pregnant wife, who gave birth that day. Esme was born, and joined Team Legion in Series 8. Angela Scanlon regularly mentions this fact in interviews, stating that she wished Esme was named Matilda. Esme Stroud accompanies Gabriel in all of their publicity appearances, such as The One Show.

Esme plays an active role on the team, operating Sabretooth's spinning drum in the robot's Group Battles in Series 8 and 9. She would have maintained this role throughout Sabretooth's competition in Series 9, but had to leave the studio before filming was completed, as she had exams on the weekdays of filming.

Gabriel Stroud is building a dedicated featherweight to be operated by Esme, although this robot is not yet complete. For her active involvement with Team Legion, Women in STEM awarded her a finalist certificate for the Best Female Role Model award in 2016.

Harry Hills
Harry Hills was officially listed as a member of Team Legion in Series 8, and helped to design and build this version of Sabretooth, in his first heavyweight project. Hills was present with the team backstage, and was included in the team's photo-shoot, but as he is camera-shy, Harry did not join the team in the televised episode, nor was he present in the team's teaser trailer. Harry Hills was invited to join the team due to his links to Ellis Ware.

"I ended up linked with Legion for Series 8 because Ellis (of Pulsar fame) who had done all the design work/built all of Team Legion's current featherweights, Django & Legion namely, didn't have time to work on their heavyweight designs due to working on Pulsar. Myself and Ellis are fairly close friends and at the time I lived in the same county as Gabe and Rob. So the design job was offered to me. I took Gabe's list of components and designed a frame around them, similar to the unscaled cardboard models and drawings he had made. First heavyweight under pressure and time constraints. It looked the part but had issues intrinsic to the design. Aesthetics over function will do that, hah."

- Harry Hills on joining Team Legion

In Series 9, Harry Hills separated from Team Legion to form his own team, alongside his father Paul Hills. Together, they are known as Team Hobgoblin, and entered with their 'egg beater' spinner, Hobgoblin. However, much like Sabretooth in Series 8 before it, Hobgoblin was defeated by Eruption in its Group Battle as it could not self-right.

Harry Hills is primarily a featherweight roboteer, with his newest robots being Flatliner and Massacre. For more information, see here.

Al Cannon
Sixty-seven year old Al Cannon directs an engineering company, and is listed as the team's engineer in Series 9, assisting with the extensive repairs of Sabretooth in its heat. Gabriel Stroud refers to Al Cannon as the team's "secret weapon" after he had assisted the team behind-the-scenes for years, and Angela Scanlon told Team Legion to make sure he returned for Series 10 as the team's lucky charm.

Robots
''NOTE: Gabriel Stroud was also directly involved with the competition process of Jar, but did not build the robot. Harry Hills competed in Series 9 with Hobgoblin.''

Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 2
 * Losses: 6

NOTE: This wins/losses ratio does not include the performance of Jar or Hobgoblin

Outside Robot Wars
Gabriel Stroud's Legion and Robert Pickford's Django are both successful competitors on the featherweight circuit. Both robots competed at the Featherweight World Championship in 2016, where Legion did not experience high success, but Django reached the Grand Final, placing second after being flipped out of the arena by Explosion.

Gabriel Stroud recently acquired Dave Moulds' successful featherweight drum spinner 720, which he has rebranded as Sabre20. He also purchased Hit Man, a robot which attempted to qualify for Series 4, from its previous owner.

Gabriel Stroud and Will Sedgwick have conceptualised a robot called Jack the Ripper, which they would like to enter into a hypothetical third series of BattleBots. They are receiving outside assistance with this build from Will Bales, team captain of Shenanigans & Co of HyperShock fame.

Trivia

 * Leading up to Sabretooth's appearance in Series 9, the social media hashtag #prayforgabe became widespread in the Robot Wars community, spurring on Gabriel Stroud to finally collect a televised win.
 * For Series 9, Gabriel Stroud manufactured 'Sabretooth mission badges', featuring the names of every team member. After Gabriel famously spoke the line "What we've created... it scares me!" in the Series 9 extended trailer, this screenshot was taken out of context by fans for the purposes of jokes at Stroud's expense. He responded by running a giveaway, encouraging fans to create the funniest question to which he could answer "it scares me", offering a Sabretooth mission badge as a prize.